Join us for a webinar to help empower educators to effectively teach multilingual learners. In today's diverse classrooms, it is essential to equip teachers with the knowledge and tools necessary to support students who are acquiring English as a second language while maintaining their native languages. We will delve into promising practices, pedagogical approaches, and innovative strategies designed to create inclusive and successful learning environments for multilingual learners.

Cultural Competence: Understanding the cultural backgrounds and experiences of multilingual learners to create a welcoming and respectful classroom.

Language Development: Exploring techniques to foster language acquisition, including supporting home languages and the development of academic English.

Differentiated Instruction: Participants will experience a model lesson that uses adaptive teaching methods to accommodate varying language proficiency levels and individual learning styles.

Support Services: Identifying and utilizing support services, such as ESL programs and language assessment tools.

This webinar is designed for educators, administrators, and anyone interested in fostering an inclusive, multilingual learning environment. Attendees will gain valuable insights and practical tools to ensure that multilingual learners thrive academically and socially.

Regi Jones (They/Them) is the National Training & Curriculum Specialist for Life Lab. Regi grew up and attended university in North Carolina. Their passion for education began while working with groups of Burmese youth in the summer, which launched Regi into moving to New Orleans to dive into their curiosity about the connection between food and education. Regi primarily focuses on how food can be used to connect people across cultures and how what we eat is shaped by our own ancestral connections. When they're not thinking about how to draw young people into those conversations, Regi loves any outdoor activity, trying new foods, and playing basketball in the park.

Whitney Cohen (she/her) is a teacher, trainer, and author with tremendous commitment to and expertise in place-based education, student-led inquiry, strategies for engaging a diverse student population, school gardens, and the intersection between environmental education, Common Core, and Next Generation academic content standards, and the public school system. As the Education Director at Life Lab, Whitney leads educator workshops nationwide and has written and contributed to various activity guides, including The Book of Gardening Projects for Kids, The Growing Classroom, and The Soil Story Curriculum. Whitney is also a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz where she teaches a course on environmental education. Whitney received her MA in Education from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2002 and her BA in Sustainable Community Development from Vassar College in 1999. Prior to working with Life Lab, Whitney taught Earth, Life, and Physical Science and Introductory Spanish for five years in a low-income, public middle school. At this school, Whitney worked with the local community to create a school garden and a watershed adoption project. In addition to classroom teaching, Whitney has worked in environmental education and public health in California, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico.

This webinar will be recorded and available for viewing on this web page immediately following the presentation.

To turn on live captions during the presentation, please join using the Chrome browser and visit this page for instructions on how to turn them on: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/10538231?hl=en 

GIVEAWAY: One registrant will receive copies of Zora's Zucchini and Sylvia's Spinach by Katherine Pryor in both English and Spanish! Many thanks to our friends at Readers to Eaters for these great prizes.

Teaching Multilingual Learners in the Garden