Keynote: Today’s Schools, Tomorrow’s Students: Responding to Change in a Multilingual and Multimodal World
One could argue that schools have changed as much in the past two years as they have in the past two centuries. And at the intersection of innovation and exhaustion, educators worldwide have faced unfamiliar probletunities, teaching themselves not just new skills but entire learning platforms to keep all students engaged online. By necessity, we have unbolted learning from the physical space of the classroom and accelerated the evolution of education: from factory schools of the industrial era to personalized, multimodal and digitized ecosystems of the twenty-first century. However, this shift has also highlighted inequities by excluding some learners. International schools have become increasingly more diverse and more inclusive in the past two decades, and both multilingualism and neurodiversity have contributed additional layers of richness and complexity to the international school experience. Understanding the intersection of language, identity and learning helps us build on the assets of all learners to transform today’s schools to produce tomorrow’s global leaders, international scholars and transnational agents of change. 

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EAL for Classroom Teachers: Finding the Language in the Learning

Every teacher in an international school can support multilingual learners by integrating language and content. Students at every proficiency level deserve to engage with challenging academic content. By building on what students can do, teachers can scaffold learning. This session will provide practical tools like the WIDA Can Do Descriptors and the WIDA 2020 English Language Development Standards Framework to help teachers differentiate and meaningfully engage all learners.

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Beyond Co-teaching: Building a Culture of Collaboration to Support Diverse Learners

When teachers collaborate, it supports both student learning and teacher growth. When teachers plan, teach and inquire together, we model the 21st century learning skills we need to develop in our students. International schools need to develop an intentional culture and structures to support effective co-planning, co-teaching, co-assessing and co-reflecting. This workshop will explore how school can shift from isolation, fragmentation and segregation – to cohesion, collaboration and integration.  Teachers in all content areas will be introduced to a cycle of collaboration including co-planning, co-teaching, co-assessing and co-reflecting. This session will incorporate the recent publications: Collaboration: Working Together to Serve Multilingual Learners and Teacher Collaboration During a Global Pandemic. 

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