Why these strategies are for all scholars:

The newest ELD policy in the State of California, the English Learner Roadmap, has the following mission:

 

"California schools affirm, welcome, and respond to a diverse range of English learner (EL) strengths, needs, and identities. California schools prepare graduates with the linguistic, academic, and social skills and competencies they require for college, career, and civic participation in a global, diverse, and multilingual world, thus ensuring a thriving future for California."

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If we are to prepare graduates with the linguistic capacity to perform in this multilingual world, we must do better at teaching all scholars how to best understand and use written and spoken language.

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Language Matters: Using Multilingual Learners in place of "ELLs"

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Since DLA's single pathway incorporates world languages, all of our scholars are or will be at least emergent bilinguals. With many scholars coming to us with other home languages-- Farsi, Tagalog, Arabic, Mandarin-- learning Spanish will make them multilingual learners, a fact we should remain cognizant of as we explore how to incorporate these home languages into our classes.