Coaching for Multilingual Excellence: Strategies for Vocabulary, Reading, and Writing Across Disciplines

Be the instructional coach multilingual students and their teachers need.

As the population of multilingual learners (MLs) in K-12 schools continues to grow, instructional coaches must support content teachers to recognize these students’ assets and address their linguistic, cultural, academic, and social-emotional needs. Leveraging her decades of facilitating and coaching experience in the fields of language, literacy, and professional learning, Margarita Calderón meets this urgent need with practical, evidence-based strategies to leverage the power of coaching in support of ML excellence.

Through the individual chapters dedicated to academic language, reading, and writing instruction and strategies to promote student discourse and social-emotional learning embedded throughout, this book will give coaches what they need to guide all teachers toward ML excellence. Additional features include

• A step-by-step framework designed to help coaches promote teacher efficacy with MLs regardless of program setting or instructional approach
• Clear guidance for how to structure coaching sessions with teachers, driven by research-based approaches and observation and feedback protocols for accelerating student comprehension
• Myth-busting facts about the do’s and don′ts of effective coaching for ML success
• Spotlights on the experiences of veteran coaches focusing on successes, challenges, and tips to remain resilient
• Individual and group reflection questions and tools at the close of each chapter

Offering solutions to the challenges faced by MLs that content area teachers must be prepared to address, this book is a powerful tool coaches can use to move multilingual instruction beyond compliance to excellence.

Dr. Margarita Espino Calderón is Professor Emerita/Senior Research Scientist at Johns Hopkins University. She has worked on numerous research and development projects focusing on reading for English learners funded by the U.S.D.O.E Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Labor, and collaborated with Harvard and the Center for Applied Linguistics on a longitudinal study funded by the NICHD.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York funded her five-year empirical study to develop Expediting Comprehension for English Language Learners (ExC-ELL), a comprehensive professional development model for math, science, social studies, language arts, ESL and SPED teachers that integrates language, literacy and content. She also developed two other effective evidence-based programs: Reading Instructional Goals for Older Readers (RIGOR) for Newcomers with Interrupted Formal Education. Additionally, the Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (BCIRC) program was developed for dual language instruction and is listed in the What Works Clearinghouse.

Margarita collaborated with George Washington University on a Title III five-year grant to implement and further study A Whole-School Approach to Professional Development with ExC-ELL in Virginia school districts.

She is a consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice and Office of Civil Rights. She serves and has served on national language and literacy research panels. Margarita is also President/CEO of Margarita Calderón and Associates, Inc. Dr. Calderón and her team of 10 Associates conduct ExC-ELL comprehensive multi-year professional development and on-site coaching in schools, districts, state-wide and international Institutes. She has over 100 publications on language and literacy for ELs.