April is National Bilingual/Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month, and I'm so excited to tell you about a special series coming from Science of Reading: The Podcast. I'm host Susan Lambert, and in upcoming episodes we're exploring how the Science of Reading serves multilingual and English learners.
We have an underserved area that's experiencing a massive growth in student population.
English Language Learner students are a fast growing student population in Indiana...
The number of English learners in Rhode Island has gone up by 76%.
California was the first state to implement the state seal of biliteracy, and since then, 49 states and Washington DC have followed...
There are so many kids that have this gift. By 2025, it'll be 25% of students in our country, but educators are not feeling like they have what they need. 30% of teachers, so only 30% feel fully prepared to teach multilingual learners. Well, that's not enough.
Leading researchers on literacy and multilingualism will help us explore everything from the science of language acquisition to the ways the education system has historically let down multilingual and English learners, including exclusionary laws and underrepresentation in education studies.
It's true that multilingual and English learners have been left out of a lot of research, but we do know a lot and more research is currently being done, and it's really worth exploring that research as well as best practices so that we can serve students based on what we know, align on what we don't know, and you can't do all of that in one podcast.
That's why we're devoting a whole series to this topic. In addition to unpacking the major facets of English language development, we'll explore how dyslexia manifests differently by language and hear about a special elementary school in a refugee resettlement community. Subscribe to Science of Reading: The Podcast to catch episode one—launching April 30th, 2024.