Language, Literacy, and the Power of “Yes, And”: Teaching Multilingual Learners with Tan Huynh and Beth Skelton

How do we help multilingual learners move beyond giving the right answer to communicating like scientists, historians, readers, writers, and thinkers? In Episode 202 of the Adventures in Learning podcast, Dr. Diane welcomes Beth Skelton and Tan Huynh for a deeply practical, joy-filled conversation about making language instruction more explicit, more integrated, and more human for all learners.

Beth and Tan share strategies from their work with experienced multilingual learners, including the “input-output loop,” intentional chunking, sentence-pattern charts, and planning backward from the language students need in order to show what they know. Whether you teach early childhood, elementary, middle, or high school, this episode offers concrete ways to keep expectations high while giving every learner the tools they need to reach the mountaintop.

Along the way, we talk about collaboration, the importance of teaching students how to respond to academic prompts such as describe, contrast, and explain, and why compassion in education does not mean lowering the bar. It means building a better trail — with more ropes, poles, supports, and opportunities for every student to climb.

Why listen

• Learn how to integrate language development into the content you already teach.
• Explore strategies that help multilingual learners write, speak, read, and think with greater precision.
• Hear classroom-ready examples using science concepts, picture books, gestures, sentence patterns, and structured quick writes.
• Take away a powerful approach to collaboration as you lead with curiosity, connection, and “yes, and.”

Chapters

• 01:04 What multilingual learners need from schools
• 03:49 Why academic language must be taught explicitly
• 05:01 Helping students sound like scientists
• 07:34 Supporting experienced multilingual learners beyond the plateau
• 10:16 From reading a text to writing with purpose
• 13:19 Bringing intentional language into early childhood learning
• 15:17 The input-output loop: short chunks, meaningful processing
• 18:45 Sentence-pattern charts for content and language together
• 22:20 Keep the mountaintop high; give students more tools to climb
• 25:50 Teaching literacy instead of only assigning literacy tasks
• 30:20 Teaching students what prompts like “describe” and “explain” require
• 32:06 From social media connection to a powerful co-author partnership
• 33:32 “Yes, and”: collaboration that builds relationships
• 37:37 What brings Beth and Tan hope

Links and resources

• Look for Beth Skelton and Tan Huynh’s work, including Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals and Integrated Literacy for Experienced Multilinguals.
• Listen to Beth's appearance on Episode 109 of the Adventures in Learning podcast.
• Listen to Tan's Teaching ML's Podcast.

Call to action

Listen with a notebook nearby, because Beth and Tan offer ideas you can try immediately. Choose one upcoming lesson, identify the language students will need to express the content, and build in one small input-output loop: a short chunk of learning, a chance to gesture, talk, draw, write, or reflect, and a clear pathway for students to put their thinking into words.

The mountain stays high. Our job is to make sure more students have what they need to climb it.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Adventures in Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Diane Jackson Schnorr, and I am so excited to welcome this duo today. They do such incredible work with multilingual learners, and if you've followed the podcast, you know that my friend Bet Skelton actually holds the number one spot on all-time listen to podcast episodes. So I am so excited to welcome Bet Skelton and Todd Wynn with us today. We are going to talk about multilingual learning. We're going to talk about early childhood, but if you're an elementary or middle school or a high school teacher, you need to vibe with us because this is for you as well. Wonder, Curiosity, Connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr. Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Thank you so much for having me back, Diane. I had no idea that our podcast from a year ago is still sitting at the most listened to. That's exciting news.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Well, and I think that that speaks to the topic because I think that people really are interested in what multilingual learning is all about. So I thought maybe just as a recap, if you're a brand new listener, Tan, do you think you could start us off with a definition about what multilingual learning is and how you came to this?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yes, multilingual learning with well, multilinguals, let's start with them first, is a group of students who come from families who speak another language other than English, and they acquire English over their schooling experience. If they're here in the US, of course, multilingual can be any language. It doesn't have to be just English and like Spanish. It can be Mandarin and French. For our French people in Canada, like it would be Montreal, it'll be English and French, right? There or let's say the Portuguese would be speak speech uh speaking Portuguese and potentially Spanish, or maybe if the of Germans, Germans are learning what best.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

That makes sense. And so, Beth, why is this so important as we look at schooling to be able to address the needs not just of multilingual learners, but of all the learners in our classroom, including those of us who are struggling to be multilingual learners?

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Right. Well, in the US context, which is where many of your listeners are, these multilingual learners coming into our context, they will speak languages other than English at home. They are learning in English. And so they're learning not only new content, but they're learning it in a language that is not their home languages, their first language, their primary language. So teachers have to be really aware that the content itself has specific discipline-specific language. And if you're in kindergarten, you're talking about butterflies and the phases of metamorphosis. Those are all big words and big concepts that kids, even if they're going home and speaking English, didn't learn about around the kitchen table, probably. Some did, but they also have to learn how to talk about those phases and not just the word chrysalis, but also the words like first this happens, then that happens, right? So a procedure or a sequence or an event sequence, that's also part of the language that our students need to learn explicitly in the classroom, especially if they're multilingual learners, and especially if they go home and don't have an environment in their home where parents are using that kind of language, which is really common for even students who speak English at home.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

That makes a lot of sense. And I was talking to a teacher friend of mine yesterday, and we were talking about how writing seems to be the thing that gets shoved to the side no matter what. And how we give kids tools like AI and other things before we've given them the ability to crawl. We're asking them to run before we ask them to crawl. And so one of the things I love about the work that you do is you provide that scaffolding and the stepping stones to help teachers, students, and families embrace how do you use that language? How do you write in that language? How do you think critically? You know, and I think I told you before we came on. Um you gave me a copy of Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals last time I saw you, Beth. And you can tell as you look at it, it is definitely dog-eared. It changed the way that I teach when I work with teachers because it got me really thinking about that reflection piece and how you make things more explicit. Can you guys give some examples for people listening about ways that you would make it explicit? Tan, why don't we start with you?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yes, I'm just opening up a document that I uh shared with teachers yesterday. One second. And let me just show you. Can I just share my screen? Of course. Okay, so since I'm talking to all scientists here, I'm just gonna share you an example. Let's say my seventh grader, this is actually really what happened. My seventh graders were expected to learn about the tectonic plates and how geological features of the earth were formed by the movements of the plates. There's three types of movements of the plates: divergent, transform, and convergent. Each of them are so different. Like divergent boundaries, they move apart, while transform boundaries they slide past each other. So if we want our students to talk to contrast the different plate boundaries, we can ask students put a butt in the middle of your two descriptions. So they might say, in your description about your plate boundary, make sure you put a butt. They might say plate, divergent plates move away, comma, but transform plates move past each other. And now they sound like scientists. They can you can put, they even can put a full stop in the middle and put a however they might say, Divergent plates move apart, full stop. However, transform plates move past each other. Now, instead of just saying like the science, like the teachers in classes, we want our kids to understand content because we're so driven by the content. And we and we're we we celebrate that they get the answer. We ask them, what happens in a divergent plate boundary? And they go apart. We go, yes, that's right. What happens when a transform boundary slides past? And what happens is that they we celebrate the answer, but not develop the academic language simultaneously. So we simply ask students, absolutely great. Let's put the sentences together using comma but because these plate boundaries are all different. And that's how we can teach students academic language, not so that they can pass a test, but so they can express scientific ideas more clearly.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

I love that. And it's that idea that we're training kids to be scientific communicators, that they're able to communicate the knowledge and hopefully also be able to read and analyze down the, you know, and be able to pick things apart as well. Tell me a little bit about your newest book.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Go ahead, Beth. Start with you. So, Diane, you have our first book all marked up. And in the first book, we really talk to our audience, we're all general educators who work with multilingual learners. And if you are in the US context, that's about 99% of all educators across the United States have at least one student who goes home and speaks a language other than English. So it's really the general pop public of educators who need that. And so our examples in the book come from all core content areas and specials, art and music, that we give examples of how do you embed language into the regular content that you're teaching in social studies, in math, in science, in English language arts. And as we were presenting on our first book, many, many English language development teachers, those specialists who are responsible for teaching language as their sole job, they were coming up to us and said, This is great for my colleagues. What about us? And, you know, what do we do, especially for those students who have hit that intermediate level? And intermediate is a generic term in the US. Uh, many, many states are in part of the WIDA consortium. We're talking about students who are at this level three plus. And that means that they can speak socially and complete sentences. They understand most of what's going on in the classroom without any extra supports. They understand quite well. They're able to turn and talk to their neighbor, but they stay in the program called English language development or English language support services because they haven't tested out. And again, in the US context, in order to exit out of the English language program, they have to score a certain number on whatever the test is in your state. So these students are hanging out and they're staying there for long periods of time. And we call it like a plateau. And that's normal with language acquisition, but we don't see growth. And part of that is simply because the teachers hear them, see them, and think they're fine. It's exactly what Tom said. When they ask what kind of plate is this, they say convergent. And yay, they said a word, but they're not doing what Tom just described, which is showing the compare-contrast in a complete, complex, or compound sentence. So those English language development teachers were saying, what do we do in our classes to make a difference for these students?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

That's the seed. That's where it came from. So I love that. And can you, Tan, maybe give some examples from your book of some of the things people can look forward to?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Uh yes, one of the biggest ones I'm going to share with my screen again is because what we can teach students, and I know you work with elementary school, so we can start with reading a text. Like when we work with students, we can start by reading a text with kids. For example, I might be in fifth grade, I remember reading uh Island of Blue Dolphin. You read a text with students, and then you don't just wait until the end of the chapter, end of the book to do something. You have you segment the text just like a pizza pizza pie is given to you, and it's given to you in small magical pieces. You read the text to them. I'm gonna read the text here very quickly out loud. So the first page. I remember the day the Elut ship came to our island. At first it seemed like a small shell afloat on the sea. Then it grew larger and was a gull with folded wings. A gull is like a a seagull. At last, the rising, it at last in the rising sun, it became what it really was: a red ship with two red sails. So I just added a picture of two red sails with the text, but that's not enough. We want our students to process the text. So we do something called a structured quick write. We ask them a prompt, for example, summarize what the narrator saw, use nonverb detail, comma but nonverb detail. But then that's just not enough. We in our instruction, we we get the content and we identify a sentence structure, but that's not enough. We we actually need to help students do two parts of the sentence. So the guiding question, first guiding question we give them is what did the narrator think she saw? And the narrator, oh, the narrator thought she saw like a shell floating on the sea. Oh, what did she actually see? Oh, she actually saw a red ship with two sails. Two a ship with red two red sails. Now we ask students, get great. Can you combine the answer for question one with the answer for question two and put it together with a comma? But so now they should say, Do you want to give it a try, Dr. Snower? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

I thought I saw a small seashell, comma, but it was a red ship.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Absolutely fantastic. When you give that response, I not know not only do I know that you understand the content, but then you can process the text. Then you just developed academic language of comma, but. And this is what teachers can do and look forward to. Instead of giving them activities to do separate from the text that are fun, that are engaging. Yes. We also need to have text activities that are anchored in the text, that teach the content, teach the concepts, but also further their academic language. Because they already have social language, the kids that we're talking about. The kids who have been in our system for many, many years. These are called experienced multilinguals, which Beth already talked about.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Well, and I saw on your slideshow that you had Rainbow Fish down below. And it got me thinking about early childhood and elementary as well. And I think I mentioned to you that your previous book really influenced me because I've been doing read, connect, play, reflect with teachers. And the idea is that you find a diverse multicultural picture book, you share it with the kids, and you've just given me ideas for building in more intention in the question and building reading and writing as we're reading the book. Because I've put it at the end and I think that there's room for both, but you've got me thinking about that because now I'm like, okay, what can I go back and do as I'm reading Little Red and Big Bad Fred, for example. And then we look at connections. How do we build connections to the outer world, to the content? In this case, that book allows so many opportunities. You could do seasons, you can do sink and float. I tend you could do states of matter. I tend to use it for connections with Steve's energy stick. And there's a wolf who wants desperately to be a friend but doesn't know how. And so there's this moment where he, instead of being a conductor, he's an insulator. And so we play with the energy stick and talk about how do you transform him from an insulator to a conductor. And so that's that hands-on play where they have a chance to test it out, to be scientists, to see if they can transform a paper towel um wolf into a conductor. And then after that, you build in the opportunity to reflect, where you've got your sentence stems where they have to use that language that you talked about, like the wolf was an insulator, but when we added water, he became a conductor, you know, something like that. How would you take the things in the new book and sort of shape them for our younger audience?

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Well, I'll give you an example. And Diane, I think this fits in exactly to your framework. And tell me the four words again. I've got connect. Read, connect, play, reflect. Great. So let's say you're in the read phase and you're in that book phase and you were talking about, oh, I don't have to wait till the end. It's the chunking. And let me share my screen and I'll show you here on the chunking. And can you just give me a thumbs up that you're seeing the loop, the input-output loop? Great. So this was on Tan's slide as well. And this is in chapter two of our new book called Integrated Literacy for Experience Multilinguals. So, how do we integrate speaking, reading, listening, and writing, like all four of the language domains with vocabulary and sentence structures and build out beyond just single words. And so we call it the input-output loop. There's nothing new about this except for the shape, kind of like how we do this loop, and that we're going to shorten the loop. So a little chunk of input. And if we do that as a little chunk of input, it's any way that you learn, comprehend that language and content. So, Diane, this is the read part, right? Yep. You could also input, output, chunk it in the play part. So you could even like have a mini stop in the play and have them output. And so when they output, this is where they're maybe processing what did I just learn or what did I just hear? Or what was that about? And they're turning and talking or they're in small groups and they're labeling, drawing, building, gesturing, speaking, or writing as output. So you can see that all of this, if we can shrink that loop, it's not input, input, input, input, input, input, input, especially with the littles. So if we have younger kids, five, five-year-olds, we're looking at a minute, two minutes, three minutes max of some kind of input with the read. And then boom, we're into some kind of output. And again, that output could be a drawing, it could be a gesture, it could be a quick turn and talk, or it could be their writing right away that you're building writing into that. And so how it might look in this was a third grade class where we did this one, and it was about structural adaptations. And so the whole class was reading about hummingbirds, and they have special body parts that help them find food. And these structural, these are structural adaptations. So here's a keyword, it's bolded. They have long, thin beats, beaks to reach deep into the flowers for nectar, and you're doing the gestures, right? And the the kids are gesturing, and that's a chunk of text. And then you're adding all this like support for comprehension, like you're showing the long, thin beak versus the hooked beak of the eagle. So that's a physical adaptation, a structural adaptation. And we might have translation there for adaptation so that they can see that there is a cognate connection, right? And then you provide any supports, you you know, do whatever you need. The kids are just all right, you get it. Then you go on and express what maybe you read another chunk of text because now we've interacted with the first chunk. The next chunk, look what happens. They talk about the wings, they're strong and can move all directions. So they can hover. Notice that we're starting to get function for each of the structural adaptations. They have fast hearts to give them energy to fly quickly. Notice I can't talk without gesturing. These body parts help them survive. So now we have three different structural adaptations, the beak, right? The wings and the fast hearts. And now we have the kids' process and output, right? Using exactly what Tom did. But notice that we're now at this first grade level where I'm going to ask, what are the structural adaptations? And we support them maybe with a chart like this. And I'll say, what are the, what did we learn about? And because they have gestures, all I have to do is this, right? The and if you're not watching, if you're listening, I'm doing long beak, fast wings, right? Or fast heart and strong wings, and I'm showing the gesture right. And the kids then add that to the chart. Then I'm gonna ask the next question, which is explain the function. So now we're getting into academic. So first is just remember we learned three different structural adaptations. Now we're gonna connect it to the function, and I'm gonna add it so they can, right? So what's the purpose? Here's your connector. So what are the long beaks for? They turn and talk, or they write it into their chart, right? And we are now going to add all of those different functions. Look at what they could write at this point. Now kids could take this chart, it's not a sentence frame, but they can start to put together what are the strong wings for, what are the fast hearts for, what are the long beaks? And as we learn more and more about hummingbirds, this you can see the adaptations are going to get more and more, the functions are gonna get more and more. And it's they see that this is a pattern of how we use language with that connector, so they can. So it's a little bit different than simple sentence frame, which was in book one. This is called a sentence pattern chart. And we're seeing patterns. It's a noun, it's a verb, now the adaptation, then the connector, then the function. And it doesn't matter if they are researching polar bears, same structure. If they're researching giraffes, same structure. And this is fabulous for kindergarten. You could add pictures of the long beak, the strong wings, and the fast heart for the littles. They can start to talk in sentences like this.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Oh, you've just made me so excited. And I sense another sea change in the way that I'm presenting some content that I do when I go out into schools. I'm also like, ooh, I need you to contribute to the book I'm working on. I feel like there needs to be like a whole chapter devoted to this before you ever dive into read, connect, play, reflect. So I may be hitting you up after the podcast for a conversation that goes deeper.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Because we're we're really excited about this idea of chunking, right? And chunking to build language and concept. And we do chunking already, but Tan and I are about really explicit chunking around language and content. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Well, and I love the loop. Like I I've seen the loop before as well, but you've made it really explicit. And I think you've made it very easy for an educator to follow and understand. Oh, when I do this, then this. And I think that's powerful because we all know that teachers have so many demands on them. And so Sometimes it feels like you're asking them to do one more thing. But what you all have done is create ideas that actually serve multiple purposes and really help an educator to serve all of their students in an effective, compassionate, and honestly super enriching way.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

And to add to your point about like the the we don't want teachers to do more things. We want them to do what they're already doing differently. Right. And so they're they're planning for content. Like Beth, like the science, the science teacher who's teaching about hummingbird adaptation, they have certain content facts about hummingbirds they want them to know. So all we're gonna do is we're just gonna chunk the facts about hummingbirds, the beaks, the wings, the fast heart. Each of those things is gets an output. We give them an input like a beak, and we ask students, show us the beak of a of a hummingbird, and they go like this right away. Exactly. And so now the second we see that our students understand that, we then move to the next part, small, really fast moving wings. Right. And so it's what you just said about like compassionate education is not dumbing down. No compassionate education means the mountain stop stop, the mountaintop stays the same height. We're just giving more students more tools to get to that mountaintop. And teachers are in intentionally planning the tools that they're adding. Not everybody gets the same tools. A few will get a rope, maybe if you get uh like the poles, maybe two will get two poles and a rope. Right. But what you need is we're all gonna get to that top together and we're gonna plan for that.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

I love that analogy, the idea of preparing our students for a hike and giving them what they need to be able to make it, because some kids start with a lot of advantage and they just need good hiking boots. And other kids, as you said, are gonna need a little bit more support, but we're gonna all make it to the top of the mountain. And I like the idea that the expectation stays high for everybody. That's beautiful. Imagine a space where curiosity drives innovation, where empathy fuels collaboration, and where learning feels less like a task and more like an adventure. My message isn't about adding more to your plate, it's about changing how you see the plate entirely. I'm Dr. Diane Jackson Schnorr, and through the power of purposeful play, I equip leaders, educators, and organizations with the tools you need to unlock creative problem solving, deepen human connection, and build resistant ecosystems of empathy and innovation. Attendees will walk away not just inspired but empowered, with immediately usable strategies to spark curiosity in teams, to lead with empathy, and to infuse learning into their everyday cultures. You'll learn how play isn't child's work, it's the secret weapon of the world's most effective leaders and change makers. This is not a feel-good talk that fades by Monday morning, it's a movement. A shift in how we engage people, solve problems, and lead meaningful change. My talks and workshops are shaped by decades of experience in education and a transformative message that connects across sectors. Whether your audience is corporate, educational, or nonprofit, they'll leave ready to rethink what's possible, both personally and professionally. Because when we learn and lead through play, we don't just change organizations, we change the world. Check it out at drdianadventures.com. How are you all finding educators receiving your message? Because I assume you get to go out and teach together and are doing a lot of workshops along with your books.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

That is for sure. We we love to be together, but we also zoom in together and then separately. And the reception has been super positive. And it's because of what Tan just said. We're not asking teachers to do more. We're just asking them to be intentional about language. And sometimes it's just an aha that is a shift, like you had, Diane, as you were doing your books. Like it is what I'm doing. I just need an intentional layer for the majority of students that I'm working with. So that has been really powerful and positive. And then Tan has been doing a lot with our second book with English language development teachers. And so please share how that has been coming across with integrated literacy.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

The main things that teachers talk about is like, oh my goodness, I've been assigning tasks that are literacy-based, but I haven't been teaching them how to be literate. And so literate means how do you read, how do you write a complex text that when you and let's build backwards how to write that. I'm going to teach the scaffold guiding question one, guiding question two. I'm also going to teach you with the thinking verb instead of who, what, where, when, how. If I want to show you, if I want you to, instead of saying explain, how are the plates different? Instead, we we actually teach the word contrast. Contrasts the divergent plate from the transform plate because when they take the state standardized test, oftentimes it's not going to be a who, what, where, when, how. It's going to be a thinking verb. And then now students face sit down on that test and they're like, I can read most of these, but I don't know what contrasts is. And so then they just describe without contrasting. They don't use the word but, however, although, why oh, even though they don't use these expressions that scientists would have. Like, let me just give you an example. When I was in high school, no, no, my senior year of university. Like this is the top 43rd best liberal arts in the US. Now it's like $200,000 to get there. It's really expensive. $200 plus $1,000. I don't know how I got there. But when I was a senior, I had, I took like, I like, I did not do science until the end. I'm like, I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna wait until like the very last moment. And then I took the biology course. I loved her. She's fabulous. She had us go go do experiments in the river, and we had to talk about like the different layers of cinnamonary rock. And then I wrote her the essay and I said, This rock was I said, sandwiched between this layer and that layer was this rock. She then I guess handed into her like the whole paper, but she circled that one big one and was said, please come see me office hours here. Then I went and I was like, what did I do wrong? I thought there was, she's like, this sentence belongs in literature. We don't, scientists do not write flowery metaphoric language. We write They should. They should, right? They should. And uh, and no, I was like, oh, I thought English is English everywhere. She was like, no, no, no, no. Literary analysis, English is very different than biology English that we use. I was like, but nobody taught me that. And like, well, now I just did. So go change it. And I was like, okay, thank you. But that's an example of like, if we want students to be achieving the highest they can, we have to backwards plan at the language level what we want our students to produce. And that's what teachers, going back to your question, like how how what's the reception? The teachers are saying, I've just been assigning literacy-based tasks or content-based tasks, but now I have to plan backwards for the language they need to use to access that content and to speak like scientists or historians or mathematicians or artists.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

That makes a lot of sense. And even though I personally love your sandwiched, I also understand that you have to know the rules before you can break the rules. And there's a time and a place to be able to break the rules in any of these structures. But as you point out, you have to know what the boundaries are. And that's part of what we do as teachers, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:20

And I think, Diane, where Tan was going with this teaching explicitly the language of prompts or expectations. I'll do a really quick one for you and the audience. Often kids are asked to describe something. And they're, and scientists are always like describing what they see in the field, right? Or describing what happened. So let's just do a really basic one because there are people that may be listening and not looking. So, Diane, would you describe my top? Like just start with your blouse, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Your blouse is a beautiful turquoise and it looks as if it's made of shiny soft material. Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

So you use two structures that are almost always used when we ask students to describe something, regardless of what they're describing, if it's the blouse or if it's a structural adaptation. It starts with the thing, right? Is, has, or looks like. And you use two of those. Right? You use is and looks like. And I didn't even prompt her to do that. That's because you understand how the structure for describe works. And each of those language or thinking verbs that we would say, those prompts, describe, contrast, explain, all of them have different sorts of language structures. And when we explicitly teach students that when you see a prompt of explain how something works in science, that structure is going to be different than you explain why something works. And so the answer is different. And I'm asking you to do different functions and you need different language to do that.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

You all have collaborated together for a while. Beth, I'm wondering how did you meet in the first place? It's a great story.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

It's called social media. That back in the day when lots and lots of educators were using Twitter and we were doing Twitter chats and we were doing all kinds of live stuff on Twitter. I was following Tan, who was prolific. And I thought, this guy is amazing. And I'm using and sharing his work and I'm responding to his stuff. And he offered a virtual course. And I took it because I was interested in what is, you know, new in the field, what's happening in international education. Tan at the time was living in a different country in Southeast Asia when he offered the course. And I was responding to the prompts that he was giving. And at one point, he messages me, like a direct message and goes, Who are you? I think he read some of my responses and he's like, Why are you like taking my course? And so that's like just introduce myself. And then we ended up being both invited speakers, keynote speakers, for a conference in London. And Tan flew in from Southeast Asia and I flew in from the US and we met at this conference, and it was an absolute joy. And then he invited me to co-author the first book. And so he will share how we do that with him living in Cambodia and me living in Colorado. We are 12 or 13 hours apart all the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

We we use WhatsApp a lot. Um, so so we'll ask a question or I'll work on something and then we'll I'll send it over to her, and then she gets to edit and review, and she'll send it back to me. By the time I wake up, I'm like, oh, perfect. Beth has done this, this, and that. And so and the process goes on. But I think your question, connected to your question, like how how is this relevant to teachers? Because people who are driving or washing the dishes, they're like, how is this connected to anything we're talking about with education? Many of you collaborate with colleagues. Beth and I, like, I'm getting chills thinking about Beth. Like she is one of the she is the closest professional colleague I have, right? Like I like I didn't like when I when I got the offer to write a book, I was like, I want to write with someone else. And I was like, Beth was the first person I thought about. Right. And so how does this translate to teachers who are collaborating with others? It's always finding yeses, always finding opportunities to yes, to celebrate them, to add to their idea, never say yes and no. Yes, but it's always yes and yes, let's take this idea and let's do that. Or like so because the reason why the EL ELD teachers, if you're listening, the things we love to do the most, here's what I love to do the most. I love to take someone's idea and say, no, let's change it. Now we just broken, we've the door of collaboration has just closed. But now I'm on the def, like they're on the defensive. And then I have to spend all that time to convince them why they, why that my idea is better. And indirectly, I'm convincing them not very well that they're wrong. And nobody wants to be wrong. So when we're collaborating with others, this is what I recommend you do, regardless if you're ELD teacher or a special ed, this is what you say. You say, yes, I love that idea. And what if we, that's one phrase, or yes, and in addition to that, can we? Dot, dot, dot. And now we've just given them options to do that. And the last one, the last one is like very soft skills, but don't start the meeting with the agenda. Say, Boo, how was your weekend? Like, for example, Diana, when I met you, and I was like, I have I haven't heard about your summer. Tell me about your summer. And then we got to connect and feel about it. Yes, and like that's very intentional. And like, and it's it's because I want to know you and so with your strengths and your interests and your assets. And so, like, now that I know you're a mountain climber, like that's something that you love to do. And so, okay, like Beth loves up to do that too. And I love watching people mountain climb, so I'll be there watching you cheat you on. And so now when we know people, we can in when we start our meetings, we're just saying, how are you? How's your kids? Like, oh, I heard how was the ballet performance, or how was the football game, or like whatever you know about a person, because anytime you show interest, anytime you say yes, any positive interaction, five positive interaction will offset one negative, or one negative, said a different way, will offset five positive interactions. So we have to deposit, deposit, deposit into the relationship of our colleagues. So that's Beth and I are constantly, constantly saying, like, oh my goodness, Beth, without you, I can't do this. Or like, you're so amazing. I love the idea that you did this and dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And so we're always like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Han, I don't know if you know this, but if people are listening, you may have just solved the problems of the United States of America in one statement. If we follow what you just said, we can clear through all the division. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Well, too bad. I vote for how about Dr. Schnorr and Skelton for president and vice president. I'll let you decide.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

I I think we'll continue to do our job in education instead.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Yes, we've been given different gifts.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Exactly. So, my last question for today, and this has been such a charming hour. I always love to end the podcast by asking this what currently brings you hope?

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Right now it's the kids that I get to work with and their openness, their yeah, their their acceptance, their view on the world, and how willing they are to do everything that Tan just talked about, their connections. And when I I see that celebration of diversity and acceptance of diversity and acceptance of each other, that gives me a lot of hope as I look at young people and I think this is gonna make the world better. And how can I, as an educator, contribute to that and build on what they already bring to the classroom and, you know, encourage what is naturally, it seems like, in their curiosity, their openness, their their willingness to interact, their acceptance of each other. Can I encourage that in any way? Build on it.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

So the other side of instruction, wherever there are great students, there are great teachers. So what brings me hope is are the teachers. So I just like 30 minutes before I came online, I was with Auburn, like Albany, Albany, the capital of New York. Yes. And they were reading the book and I was supporting them through the book. And the fact that these teachers are on their summer vacations, showing up for students, not needing to, and I don't know, I don't know if they need credit or anything, but they just cameras on, coffees in their hand, dogs holding dogs around, and like grandkids, like they're showing up for their kids. And that is what, despite how difficult teaching in the US is, both privately and publicly, in particular publicly, the pressure that's constant and unrelenting on teachers, yet teachers stand up and they stand beside students and they stand in front and behind. That is what brings me hope.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

I agree with both of you wholeheartedly. One of the great joys of this past year has been being out among teachers in places where, you know, if we listen to our media, the message of diversity and multicultural literature wouldn't necessarily resonate in some of these states. But what I've found is no matter where I go, people are hungry for it. They're hungry to do the right things for their children. And we have more in common than we think. And so that gives me hope. It also gives me hope that you all continue to create these beautiful books that help us to become better educators and better advocates for our children. So I thank you for spending this half hour with me on the Adventures in Learning podcast. And I can't wait to invite you all back. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Diane. Thanks, Tan.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

It was an honor.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

You've been listening to the Adventures in Learning Podcast with your host, Dr. Diane. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe, download, and let us know what you think, and please tell a friend. If you want the full show notes and the pictures, please go to drdianeadventures.com. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.