About Me

My Guiding Principles

🌟 Individuality and Inclusiveness 🤝 

Multilingual Learners (ML) enter the classroom with a range of knowledge that is unique to the individual and of the learner’s home culture. Learners must be provided a safe space to share their knowledge and use their past experiences as a foundation for their learning of an additional language. The classroom teacher must encourage students to engage with others and foster an inclusive environment where no learner is discriminated against.  

🌈 Support, Accomodations, and Strategies 📚 

Multilingual Learners (ML) with specific needs must be provided for through a variety of supports and accommodations through the institution. Each learner must have a specific action plan for the language program with specific listings of their learning styles and strategies so that program providers are aware of the best instructional practices for the learners enrolled. 

💻 Technology for Education 📖 

In order for Multilingual Learners (ML) to increase their digital literacy skills, language programs must integrate the use of technology into the curriculum. The skills and strategies related to technology must be focused on authentic technology use, and not only on how to use technology, but also on how technology works and how to integrate technology into their learning experience. 

🌱 Focus on Development over Proficiency 📈 

Multilingual Learners (ML) will recognize the language learning process as a path of development that will happen over the course of an extended period of time. By maintaining the terminology that learners are language developers rather than proficiency seekers allows for the curriculum to focus on the development of language skills rather than a pipeline to arbitrary proficiency.

🧠 Metacognitive Knowledge 🔍 

Multilingual Learners (ML) must be taught the inner workings of the language so that they are able to form their own Interlanguage Grammar system rather than a set of prefabricated phrases for specific purposes. By including metacognitive and metalinguistic knowledge into the curriculum learners will benefit from the strategies of lifelong learning rather than constrained to the time in a specific program. 

🌎 Authentic and Expanded Learning 🎓 

Multilingual Learners (ML) will be provided experiences that are authentic to the use of the language in development. The society where the learner is taking the language program will become the place of learning. The learner in the class must be exposed to authentic texts and speakers which expand the learner’s sociocultural knowledge tied to the language being learned. 

🗣️ Diversity of Language 🌐 

Multilingual Learners (ML) must recognize the variety of Englishes from the Inner Circle, Outer Circle, and Expanding Circle (Kachru, 1985). Resources in the classroom must include a variety of dialectical varieties of English, with the opportunity for learners to explain their knowledge of their country’s development of English. English is frequently argued as becoming the dominant lingua franca, and learners must be aware of the ungrounded “Standard English” movement.