A special thanks to the generous grant from Teachers College Vice President's Grant for Diversity & Community Initiatives (DCI) for our first Summer Symposium on Multilingual Learning and Multiliteracies provided to Teachers College, Advancing Literacy. As we take a look back at the symposium, it was wonderful to have such a passionate group of amazing educators, leaders, and professors from around the world join us to share their expertise in the field for our 2 day Summer 2024, Innovations in Multilingual Literacies Symposium: Exploring Multiliteracies; Oral Language and Vocabulary Acquisition; and Inclusive, Culturally Responsive Pedagogies: Grades K-9! This symposium marked the beginning of an important conversation uniting experts from around the world to connect research and theory to help develop new ideas and innovations to influence the curriculum of so many students for the upcoming school year.
The ideas and energy generated at the Innovations in Multilingual Literacies Symposium, hosted by Advancing Literacy and professors of Teachers College, continue to resonate with so many of us who advocate for a more equitable education for Multilinguals and Bilingual Students. Across the symposium we delved into the value of oral language and vocabulary acquisition, culturally responsive pedagogy, multiliteracies and multimodal access in our curriculum, and the intersection of the brain and readiness for language development. It was beautiful to explore ways to make our teaching more culturally responsive and celebratory of multilingual learners. It was inspiring to see practitioners innovating from research, designing curriculum adaptations, and exploring ways to be more focused on both language and vocabulary development and building on the knowledge of our Multilingual and Bilingual Students. Seeing all these educators give their time to teach and learn with colleagues inspires so much hope for the endless possibilities for the work we should all be doing together to continue to amplify the voices of our Bilingual and Multilingual Students learning new languages.
The success of this symposium was due to the collective support of our dynamic team of professors - Agustín Reyes-Torres, Dr. Patricia Martinez Álvarez, Dr. María Paula Ghiso, and Dr. Karen Froud - and directors Alexandra Roman and Dr. Mary Ehrenworth, and the beautiful collections of books curated by Abraham Barretto at Lee & Low Books, Inc. Collectively they believe in the mission of creating more equitable academic settings for Multilingual and Bilingual Students. Each professor enlightened us with their knowledge and allowed the educators in our session to reflect on their practices and consider ways to redesign and enhance their curriculum. Our hearts feel full and thrilled about the way each of us brought a unique voice and created such a dynamic and powerful message to empower students' identities, connect their background knowledge and lived experiences, and bridge families, homes, and communities together with the school curriculum!
Working alongside each other reminded us about the power we possess as educators, to see the potential in our students, build on their linguistic, cultural, and educational capital and competence by allowing them to be active learners and providing them with the agency that guides them to make meaning and grow knowledge. Professor Agustín Reyes-Torres stated, "The role of the teacher is to guide students to be active and support them in connecting the dots to be fully engaged in the process of creating meaning and knowledge. In order to accomplish this, teachers must promote student agency in their learning and co-design with their students the learning and include multi-modalities to create a dynamic literacy experience." Also, it was powerful to be reminded by Dr. María Paula Ghiso that as educators “we need to honor the families as learning partners and connect with our students' communities, culture, and lived experiences by seeing them as assets in our curriculum.” Dr. Patricia Martínez Álvarez shared the power we have as educators to bring into our curriculum opportunities for multigenerational learning connecting with our students' homes and communities to bring their knowledge and practices into our instruction. Dr. Karen Froud empowered and amazed us to begin to understand how the brain handles more than one language and the connection to language development and its impact on reading and writing especially for Multilingual learners.
We can continue to work and collaborate by making the lives of our bilingual and multilingual learners at the center of designing instruction that allows them to bring their full identity, feel valued, and be included in our curriculum. We are looking forward to developing more events and learning opportunities at Advancing Literacy to continue nurturing powerful conversations connecting researchers, professors, educators, and leaders and continue working to bridge our students’ identities, culture, and community into any curriculum.
Best, Alexandra Roman
