Services

We provide:

• A comprehensive framework for creating lasting and meaningful high-quality learning, school, and family engagement environments.

• Research-based practical strategies and tools for strengthening and transforming policies and practices using a systems-based strengths-based approach.

Most Frequently Requested Services:

• Keynote Addresses & Professional Development Institutes. A sampling of topics include:

Transforming Schools for Multilingual Learners: A Comprehensive Guide for Educators.  Administrators, principals, curriculum supervisors, coaches, mentors, teachers, and other stakeholders explore how to design and enact policies, practices, and structures for multilingual learners (MLs) K-12 to feel a sense of safety, belonging, value, and competence.  Based on the most recent research on policies and practices, this professional development experience explores changes to federal and state policies and their impact on MLs and their families; strategies to move from a deficit- to an asset-based approach; and 9 principles to design and deliver high-quality lessons across disciplines using dual language/immersion, transitional bilingual, or English-to-learn English models.

Beyond Crises:  Overcoming Linguistic and Cultural Inequities in Communities, Schools, and Classrooms. We have all been navigating unique times and often wonder how history will remember and draw from the crises we have experienced.  Explore how we can overcome inequities for our ever-growing, ever-changing multilingual learners and their families when we use a strengths-based interconnected community, school, and classroom partnership approach where students flourish.

Teaching to Empower: Taking action to foster student agency, reflection, and collaboration. We all want students to master academic standards and be confident, adaptive, and socially responsible. Above all, we want them to find meaning and satisfaction in their lives. Achieving these goals requires a concerted focus on the social-emotional and academic skills that empower students in and beyond the classroom.  Explore what an empowered student looks like in our increasingly diverse classroom settings.  Learn evidence-based strategies and authentic examples that show us how to foster a culture of agency, self-confidence, and collaboration that gives students the opportunity, responsibility, and tools to be active learners, thoughtful collaborators, and engaged citizens.

Teaching to Strengths: Supporting students living with trauma, violence, and chronic stress  According to the National Survey of Children’s Health, ‘almost half of the nation’s student population are experiencing one or more types of serious trauma’. Learn research-based ways to create a comprehensive and collaborative approach for building an instructional environment and approach that supports students’ assets, resiliency, and academic achievement.

Harness the power of partnerships for student engagement and achievement  Teaching effectively in diverse classrooms and building strong family-school partnerships has become more complex than ever–particularly when our student and family communities represent changing cultural, linguistic, racial, and economic experiences distinct from our own. Explore scientifically proven methods for tapping into the rich resources of students, families, teachers, the school community, and the community-at-large to systematically: build coalitions of support around learning and engagement; develop positive relationships with students and their families and communities; foster positive, reciprocal partnerships; promote peer-to-peer relationship building; support inclusive practices for the entire community of students and families.

Unleashing the Power of Academic Language Whether we measure achievement by test scores or graduation rates, the outcomes for some groups of students have not changed significantly.  An important means for understanding the achievement gap is to understand it as an academic language gap between students who carry academic language to, in, and from school and the growing number of students who are learning the academic language while simultaneously attending school.  This professional development draws from extensive research to provide a four-pronged asset-based model for addressing the needs of academic language learners and promoting family engagement.

Promoting Student Achievement Using Research-Based Tools  Many evaluation systems do not provide professional growth models that intentionally guide educators in their work with culturally, economically, and linguistically diverse populations. Discover how research-based evaluation tools based on students’ and educators’ strengths can be used to support teachers, coaches, and supervisors to meet the needs of dynamically changing student and family populations.

Supporting Success for Beginning English Language Learners  Discover how observation, interview, and reflection tools and activities can be used to build positive learning, school, and parent engagement environments for a diverse population of beginning English Learners [ELs]. Understand the diverse learning needs among ELs who carry academic language to, in, and from school; who are learning the academic language while simultaneously learning English; and the growing number who experience violence, trauma, and chronic stress.

• Technical Assistance & Activities:
  • • Policy Analysis and Writing
    • Strategic Planning
    • Strengthening Instructional Practices (Pre-college)
    • Leadership & Instructional Coaching
    • Enhancing Family-School Engagement
    • Assistance and development of customized online, hybrid, and blended courses
    • Grant Writing