Category Archives: MATSOL

Great Teachers are Lifelong Learners

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educating-yourself

Great teachers like you are also lifelong learners. You are continually looking to improve your skills and add new strategies to your toolkit.

At the MATSOL conference (only weeks away!), you can focus on skills and topics like these:

Reading, Writing and Literacy

  • College Ready Writing: Instruction for Long Term ELLs 6-12
  • Amplify, Not Simplify: Accelerating Access to Complex Texts
  • Adaptive Literacy Instruction for High School Newcomers and SLIFE
  • Pre-Reading Strategies to Support English Language Learners

Listening, Speaking, and Pronunciation

  • “Wisdom in Wonder”: Socratic Seminar for SLIFE and Beginner ELs
  • Say What? Boosting Academic Talk in the EL Classroom
  • Learning Science through Speaking in the Secondary SEI Classroom.
  • Teaching Listening as a Language Skill: Latest Approaches and Strategies

Vocabulary and Grammar

  • Applying Best Practices: Grammar Instruction in a Foundational Composition Course
  • Building Bodies of Vocabulary Through Meaningful Interaction
  • Individualized Vocabulary Development through Independent Reading
  • Breaking It Down: Teaching Word Learning Strategies

 

Looking forward to seeing you May 28 in Framingham!

Strong Students, Strong Teachers

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At the 2019 MATSOL Conference, you will find multiple workshops to help you use student strengths, building on their own funds of knowledge. You will learn strategies for recognizing and celebrating student identity and culture and explore social-emotional learning; trauma-informed practice; impact of poverty on learning; and creating physically and emotionally safe environments.

Here are some (just some!) of the workshops you can choose to participate in:

  1. Incorporating Story Books into Culturally Responsive ESL Teaching
  2. A Culturally Responsive Classroom Looks Like…
  3. There is no L without SEL: Social-Emotional Learning in ESL
  4. Practical Use of Translanguaging and Multiliteracies in the Classroom
  5. Empowering ELs by Turning the Tables: Students Teaching Teachers
  6. Telling Our Stories in Pictures and Words: Creating Identity Texts
  7. Walking in the Footsteps of Asian Students and Their Families
  8. The Dos and Don’ts of Family Engagement in Early Childhood
  9. Break (dancing) through cultural and communicative barriers
  10. To Teach Them, You Must Know Them – Brockton to Cape Verde
  11. Enacting Social Justice Principles in K-12 ESL Instruction
  12. Engaging Haitian Students and their Families

There is a lot to look forward to at the 2019 MATSOL Conference. See you there!

LOOK at these conference sessions!

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Bilingual classroom

This is a watershed moment for all of us who work with EL students. Thanks to the LOOK ACT (which you and MATSOL helped to pass), we have opportunities to teach bilingual students in ways we haven’t been able to do for years. How do we take advantage of those opportunities?

If you’ve been wondering about that too, consider attending some of these sessions at the 2019 MATSOL conference! These sessions are presented by your fellow educators in the field.

  1. Codemeshing and Multimodal Literacy: The LOOK Act’s Translingual Potential
  2. EL Student Success Plans: From the Ground Up
  3. Impact of English-Only instruction on English Language proficiency of ELs
  4. LOOKing at Our Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Community Engagement Practices
  5. Primeiro Eu Canto, Depois Eu Falo: Teaching Two Immersion Students
  6. Supporting Positive Identity Development and Language Learning in Science Classrooms
  7. The Politics of the Look Act Teaching Spanish Heritage Language

We are also very fortunate that the staff of the Office of Language Acquisition from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) are coming to share their perspectives on topics including Curriculum and Professional Development Updates from OLA, ELE Compliance and Alternative Programming Proposals, English Learner Parent Advisory Council (ELPAC): Getting Started, LOOK Act Requirements for English Learner Benchmarks, State of the State 2019: Update on English Learner Education, the State Seal Of Biliteracy, and The LOOK Act and Alternative Programs in Massachusetts.

There is a lot to look forward to at the 2019 MATSOL Conference. See you there!

 

Rapping the Quadratic Formula

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Jake Scott

Jake Scott

Jake Scott remembers a time when he had an immigrant student who was exceptionally good at math. Jake sent the student to a higher-level math class, but he soon heard the student was not doing well.

The student came back and told him, “There’s nobody who looks like me in that class, and I feel like I don’t belong.”

“I realized,” Jake told MATSOL, “that if I was going to send minority students to learn in that class, I had to be willing to raise my hand and go teach it.”

We will hear Jake, a decorated educator, wrestling coach, Math rapper, and author, give the keynote address “Empowering the Next Generation of ELLs,” on the closing day of the 2019 MATSOL conference, Friday, May 31.

Jake reminds us that the demographics of this country are changing. Educators need to prepare ourselves to show the emotional sensitivity, the flexibility, the welcoming tone, and the celebration of success that an increasing number of ELL students is going to require from us.

Jake is looking forward to being inspired by you and your work. (And if you want to hear what a Math rap on the quadratic formula sounds like, just click here!)

Re-Imagining Migration: Educating a World on the Move

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Who are the migrants in your classroom? Could one of them be you?

Adam Strom

Adam Strom

At the MATSOL conference,  hear Adam Strom’s keynote address: “Re-Imagining Migration: Educating Youth for a World on the Move,” on Thursday, May 30.

Adam Strom wants us to think about migration as what unites us. It’s not only the story of the 26% of school-aged children in the U.S. who are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

Migration is how many African Americans came to Massachusetts from the South. It’s how many of our grandparents got here.

It may be how you got here, too.

At root, Adam says, migration is a “good news” story. It’s vital to democracy to teach the immigrant experience, from Irish immigrants during the potato famine to Chinese immigration on the West Coast. We also want to hear from today’s migrant families about the challenges they face and how they are overcoming them.

Come hear from Adam Strom how we can provide ELL students with the social emotional supports and the learning experiences that will build their potential for leadership.

You Can Lead the Way, After the LOOK Act

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For the past fifteen years, school districts in Massachusetts have operated under restrictions that inhibited bilingual education, despite growing evidence that native language instruction supports English language development and academic achievement for English Learners.

With the LOOK Act on the books, we are entering a new era in EL education. What possibilities does this open up for educating EL students in their native language? And what can we learn from the experience before and after Question 2 restricted bilingual education in Massachusetts?

At the MATSOL conference, we will all find out!

Maria Estela Brisk

Maria Estela Brisk

Keynoter Maria Estela Brisk will speak on “Learning from the Past, Moving to the Future: The LOOK Act – An Opportunity for Quality Education,” on the first day of the conference, Wednesday, May 29.

“I’ve worked with MATSOL a long time, and many members are my students,” she says. “In all those years without bilingual education, MATSOL members have been amazing advocates. You have kept the flame alive.”

In the new environment since the LOOK Act passed, Professor Brisk believes, ESL teachers can lead the way—and ELL students will benefit.

Pre-Conference Institutes Sold Out!

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MATSOL members, you are a dedicated bunch. Not only have you registered for the 2019 Conference in record numbers, but you’ve signed up for two Pre-Conference Institutes on Tuesday, May 28, to become even better teachers.

Here’s what you can look forward to.

Teaching and Learning Content-Based Literacies: 
Systemic Functional Linguistics in Action

Presented by Meg Gebhard, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Meg Gebhard

This interactive session will help you explore how language works in different ways to construct content-specific meanings in the types of texts or “genres” your students are routinely required to read, write, and discuss.

The morning session will guide participants in analyzing personal and literary narratives using multicultural children’s literature. The afternoon session will focus on scientific explanations and arguments using authentic texts written by middle schoolers.

Co-Teaching for English Learners: Collaborative Planning, Instruction, Assessment, and Reflection

presented by Andrea Honigsfeld, Ed.D. and Maria G. Dove, Ed.D.

Andrea Honigsfeld

Andrea Honigsfeld

Maria Dove

Maria Dove

Are you an ESOL teacher who works with content-area teachers (or vice versa)? Do you want to improve your co-planning, co-instruction, co-assessment, and reflection processes—all for the benefit of your EL students?

In this pre-conference institute, these four key components will be illustrated using authentic video clips of both novice and experienced co-teaching teams. The presenters will guide you as you develop short-term and long-term plans to support the language, literacy, and content skills of ELs in your integrated classroom.

MATSOL Conference is Filling Up!

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matsol classroomHave you been meaning to register for the MATSOL Conference in 2019? This week may be your last chance. Registration is getting full!

You know that the workshops, the keynote speakers, and the pre-conference institutes are all top-notch. I know that you are the secret ingredient that makes the conference so special to all of us, year after year.

Register for the conference today! As an individual, you can register online using your credit card right here. If you are using a check or Purchase Order, or if you want to register as a group, fill in the form here and upload the completed form, then send in payment.

Looking forward to seeing you!

Helen Solórzano, Executive Director, MATSOL

Call for Nominations Extended – MATSOL Board of Directors

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logo-matsol_181007_400x192Deadline extended to April 1, 2019!

Show your commitment to MATSOL and help shape our future! MATSOL seeks competent, energetic, committed members to take a leadership role, work on behalf of the organization, and represent MATSOL members and stakeholders.

By serving on the Board of Directors, you will have the opportunity to:

  • Provide leadership for achieving MATSOL’s mission to promote equity and excellence for English Learners;
  • Help shape development of member activities, professional learning opportunities, and conferences;
  • Participate in advocacy at the local, state, and national level;
  • Encourage engaged and active MATSOL membership;
  • Build on our affiliate partnership with TESOL;
  • Ensure that MATSOL continues to operate as a healthy and vibrant non-profit organization.

In return, you will have the opportunity to expand your professional network, learn new skills, build your resume, and make a positive impact in our field.

Candidates may self-nominate or be nominated by a colleague. Deadline extended to April 1, 2019.

Find out more!