Dr. Carol Salva: if you weren’t in school, you were somewhere, and you were learning some things, and there are advantages to whatever you have learned in life. And couple that with the fact that there is no reason that you shouldn’t learn quickly, as long as I show you what to do.

Mandi Morris: Welcome to the ML Chat podcast. I’m Mandi Morris, your host, here with my co-host, Andrew Brandt, and our guest today is an incredible educator in the ML space. She’s the author of Boosting Achievement, a keynote speaker, a representative in our field that is deeply recognized and appreciated. In case you haven’t guessed, it’s Dr.

Carol Salva. Andrew, this conversation was so delightful today.

Andrew Brandt: Yeah. No, it was so fun, and as you would expect from her, it has a lot of rich instruction. But what I love so much about Carol is just she’s so personable and so real, and her story is so relatable that it really just– it was just so fun to talk to her and hear of [00:01:00] her journey and how that’s impacted how she’s doing her work.

Mandi Morris: Carol also talked a lot about everything that Seif and Seif students can do and gave some great instructional moves and strategies around literacy and how to think about setting up a successful learning environment for secondary English learners that I think everyone listening to this podcast will really appreciate, and stuff that you can apply immediately.

Andrew Brandt: Yep. I say let’s just jump in, have fun, and listen to this conversation. It’s a treat. 

Mandi Morris: Welcome to the ML Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Mandi Morris, here with my co-host, Andrew Brandt, and we are delighted to have Dr. Carol Salva on the podcast with us here today. Carol, I met you in person at NABE. I was able to go to your session. That was so fun. I still think about the video of your mom.

Wait, were you guys playing … You were playing ch- not checkers. What were you playing? 

Dr. Carol Salva: Dominoes. Mexican train dominoes. It’s like a sophisticated form of dominoes for [00:02:00] us. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah, Selena was blaring in the background, and your mom’s all excited when she wins. It was great. I loved that video of your mom, like the energy, the excitement, and I’m just so excited to learn more about you and how I’m sure you carry a lot of that energy and excitement in your work.

So just tell us some about how did you get into education? What … People have heard of your books. They’ve seen you at presentations. They’ve read your blog. You’re well-known in the field. So let’s go back in time first and learn a little bit about like how did you end up getting into education? 

Dr. Carol Salva: Okay. Yeah, I’d be happy to talk about that, and it’s interesting that you bring up my mom.

Yeah, one of the reasons that I have a little, it’s just a little couple seconds of her dancing. She turned 90 about six months ago, and she has just beaten a lot of odds. As she’s had a lot of illnesses in her life, that she’s had diabetes since she was about my age, in her 50s. And she’s beat cancer more than once, just so [00:03:00] many things.

And it’s not that she’s free of pain and that kind of thing. She’s just super persistent, and of course, she’s, she’s doing okay physically, but to your point, when she hears Selena or when she’s playing a game that she really enjoys, she says, she’ll tell you, “I forget. I forget about all that. I don’t feel any pain.

I’m listening to the music. It’s a mindset.” So she’s one of these people that’s just beaten a lot of the odds, but she does have a determination about her. And so it’s interesting that you bring her up because she is the reason I got into education. She came to the United States when she was 19. She married my dad, came as an immigrant to Houston.

And so I was born here in Houston, and my sister, and I have three sisters, and my s- my younger sister and I are close in age, and we just were not, we were just not focused students. We didn’t really like school. Our older sisters were very [00:04:00] much academic and impressive and voracious readers, and they’re just, they did everything so well that Mary and I were just like, “Why are we even gonna try?”

And so we just went a totally different path, and we caused my mom so much anxiety. She kept telling us, “I came to this country for better opportunities for you. Why aren’t you taking advantage of it?” And we were just very, both of us were very, I don’t know, frustrated might not be the right word, just resentful about issues we caused.

We caused all these issues. I do remember that my dad was very, very insistent that we not speak Spanish or let anybody really play up the fact that there were two languages spoken in our home. And in hindsight, that might have been… I’m sure it didn’t help because we thought school was challenging. And remember, we weren’t reading.

My sisters were reading, and they didn’t have trouble. So I did not set out to become [00:05:00] a teacher. I had a lot of, like I said, a lot of challenges when I was young that I created situations. I didn’t even graduate on time. Graduated several years late, and my mom, only because my mom insisted. She kept taking me back to school even though I didn’t wanna finish high school.

So fast-forward, I’ve matured a bit, and I’m in my 30s, and my mom suggested that I get… I wouldn’t have even taken a class at the junior college except she insisted I try to do that in my late 20s, and I did it. And I was like, “Okay, it’s not as hard as I remember.” And I just finished. I got a bachelor’s degree, but I didn’t do anything with it, and she suggested, she saw in the Houston Chronicle that if you had a bachelor’s degree, you could become an educator.

So I got an alternative certification. I remember my sister Maryanne saying, “You can’t apply where we grew up. They won’t… They remember us. They’re, like, not gonna let you.” And so it [00:06:00] was, it was an interesting journey into education. And yeah, I became s- special education bilingual teacher In my 30s. It was very difficult, but I got a lot of help.

And I love- I’ve, I have a path with different things, and now my area of specialization is students with limited or interrupted formal education. And I’ve, I found it fascinating the first time they … I, I was a bilingual teacher for a group of … The whole, all of my students were learning English. They were third, fourth graders, and it blew me away that they just didn’t realize how smart they were.

They really didn’t think they were smart, and then it made me think, I thought I wasn’t smart. And so then it just became my mission to make sure they realized how very smart they were. And oh, we had great… I got a lot of help, but we had great results on state assessments and things that year. It just made me start doing a little de- bit deeper dive on mindset [00:07:00] and the effect that has.

But anyway, I could go on and on about it, but I didn’t, I never set out to be a teacher. I never would’ve thought I would make a good teacher, and ironically, I think the challenges that I had really helped me find my way as a teacher. 

Andrew Brandt: Yeah. And I think what I’ve also heard is it really helped you cultivate that empathy for your students.

I think that’s beautiful, and I think it makes a lot of sense. So you and I met at the NAELPA Conference. Not to rub it in Mandi, but I met her two days before you. And it was one of those moments where I look over and it’s, and it was a lunch, and it was one of those open lunches where you just go and grab a table, and I was like, “That’s Dr.

Carol Salva,” and there’s an open spot next to her. And it’s so funny, Mandi, I know we were talking about this on a recent podcast. Sometimes we see these authors or thought leaders or influencers and we’re like starstruck, and then you go and you meet them and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, you are just such a real human person that’s just like relatable and fun.”

And Carol, after talking to you, I felt really inspired partly because not only was that the case, [00:08:00] that you’re just so approachable, but your story is inspiring of just the potential that’s in our students that a lot of times we don’t see. ‘Cause it’s so easy to look at our students and see the test scores, see the attendance record, and see the deficit.

And just to hear kind of your journey of going from dropping out of high school, of course, taking your own route, and taking quite a while to find- … what you want to land in. Which there’s nothing right or wrong about the path. It was just a different path. And what I loved about it is you had a different path than the traditional path, but I think because you took that path, it gave you something that has propelled you to go so far in, and I think part of what you’re sharing there, what I hear is that passion I think is seeded in that compassion for what your students face, and I love to see that.

And it was fun to hear as well, so you’re one of four. I’ve got four daughters, and so it’s fun to … And it was fun to talk about the dynamic with your sisters. ‘Cause [00:09:00] your older sisters took a more traditional route. Yes. They took academics and they took, they were good at sports And so you’re, and so you’re like, “Those paths are taken, I’m gonna take a different path.”

Dr. Carol Salva: We didn’t do any of that consciously. It was like, it’s so interesting. Same parents, same house, a lot of the same teachers even, same neighborhood, same thing, and four different, just different experiences and different just ways to approach how you interact with the world. And yeah, it is interesting. Now I have my own daughter and two sons, and I’m watching them be so different.

And but yeah, like you said, Andrew, you just wanna honor everybody’s making their own way. The thing that breaks my heart is that I truly thought I was limited. Now, and I knew I had made a lot of decisions that were limiting me in what I could do with my life, and so you just start getting super resentful about that.

And it’s not that I didn’t have teachers saying, “You’re smarter than this, I can tell. Why [00:10:00] don’t you apply yourself?” I felt sorry for them. Mm. I was like, “You need to go spend time on somebody else, because I’m not smart. I can’t do these tests. This is all too difficult.” And that, that’s why when I just look at young people, whether it’s my own kids or any of that, any…

You’re like this, life is a long game, and you are playing the short game. You’re really thinking that between here and May is all that there is in terms of if you’re a successful person or not. That kind of thing is very interesting. So I, I appreciate you saying that, Andrew, because I do feel like it’s perspective.

It is perspective that I didn’t have when I was young. I remember it, this is funny, that my mom, I bring up my mom so much, Mandi, so it’s funny. My mom would tell me, “You know, you for some reason keep dating people who drag you further down.” And it’s true. I would just, I was just dating people who [00:11:00] didn’t, also had no prospects in life, and also were doing nothing with their lives.

And my mom would be like, “There’s this huge ocean of fish, and you’re fishing. There’s so many fish in the sea, and you’re fishing at the bottom of the ocean. Would you please just…” She’s like, “Would you…” Her idea of success would be, okay, look, we live in Houston, Texas. We have one of the biggest medical centers in the United States.

She worked down at the med center. She’s like, “If you could get an office job down there, you could probably marry a doctor so fast. You could, Carol, if you focused, you could marry a doctor.” And I remember going, “I don’t even meet a doctor.” But in my 50s when I became a doctor, I remember going, thinking, and talking to my mom about, ’cause I even dated some doctors.

And so it’s so funny where you know what? I don’t need to marry a doctor. No one needs to marry anyone for success. It is a long game, and whose timeline [00:12:00] was I even on in terms of what success looks like, right? Interesting. 

Mandi Morris: I love hearing you talking about this timeline, and I have a teenager now, and I’m experiencing now as a parent this, a couple of months is just a huge ask, right?

Or like that, like exactly what you’re talking about. And having to remember oh yeah, the, the, for the teenage brain it is, right? Like something a year from now, you might as well be talking about decades. Like it just, that- Yeah … is so far away. And it’s interesting that when you’re doing a lot of reflecting on yourself as a teenager, you’re thinking about man, where was the, why wasn’t I thinking about the long game?

And now you’re really focused on safe life students. And that population of students are a lot of students in secondary with interrupted formal education. And so now we’ve got a couple different things going on. They have the teenage brain, like every teenager. And lots of [00:13:00] missing academic years. So I would love for you to talk some about how your experience, it’s starting to make sense to me that this is such a passion of yours to work in this area for students.

How has that driven the work that you’re doing for both those students, but also for the teachers supporting them at this crux of being a teenager and I’ve got missing academic years, and how do I make this- happen for me. 

Dr. Carol Salva: Oh, yeah. So I didn’t, a- and also I didn’t set out to, like, focus on newcomers or d- definitely I didn’t even know what SIFE or SLIFE meant when I found myself in a position with the whole class where students that had missed significant amounts of education.

But I, it just, I feel like I landed in that right place. It was a real struggle to take what, by then, what I had learned a lot about second language acquisition and a lot about bilingual education, and I had a language arts background and some certifications in writing and [00:14:00] things. But this really threw me, because I was looking at this, okay, you are 13 or 9 or however old they are.

They are past the years where you’re supposed to be learning how to read and foundations. So many of these students didn’t have these basic skills, or the background for basic things, that I was just, talk about deficit lens. I loved these kids, but I was like, “I don’t know how you’re gonna make it. I just don’t know how you’re ever gonna make it,” because there’s so much missing.

And so it was interesting. I know for sure that first year, the biggest struggle those students had was my low expectations for what they were able to do, honestly. I loved them, but it was this I-don’t-know-how-you’re-gonna-make-it attitude, that pobrecito kind of thing. And so what is interesting and what I learned was, a- and you have to remind yourself of this, because when you’re working with a student who maybe doesn’t have the same foundational abilities that other students have, [00:15:00] our mind often goes to, why can’t, why did they not learn this?

What’s wrong with them that they didn’t learn this? So it is super different to be thinking of me in ninth grade, if I can’t read fluently, and I’ve been in our school system for seven years or whatever it is, nine, nine years, whatever, trying. Maybe I’ve been fake reading, maybe I have an issue with reading, whatever it is.

That’s different than someone who didn’t have the opportunity. Mm-hmm. So if there are years there where they did not focus or try or where ha- or that opportunity was not available to them consistently, it’s a different reason that we’re, they, it’s a different reason those two people are struggling with that if you orient yourself differently toward this student, okay, from an asset lens.

So we want to start with what do you have? So I can offer you for sure, if they are SLIFE or SIFE, that means they’ve missed years of formal education. That does not mean they have y- [00:16:00] missed years of education. It just is some other kind of education. Mm-hmm. They know things. They know things I don’t know.

They have been out in the world doing something, and that something, actually there are some advantages To, in the book, Anna and I write about some, some research, some brain research by Har- Carr and Healy on when you’re young and exposed to a lot of technology, there are parts of our brain that are atrophying that have to do with wondering and things like that.

And so you gotta look at the fact that if you didn’t even have education, you probably weren’t on an iPad either for a lot of your gr- there are just pros and cons, and it, for everything. So that’s the first thing, is if you weren’t in school, you were somewhere, and you were learning some things, and there are advantages to whatever you have learned in life.

And couple that with the fact that there is no reason that you shouldn’t learn quickly as long as I show you what to [00:17:00] do. Let’s take literacy. Let’s just take literacy. Every single day, a lot of these students, teachers will agree, every day they understand a little more English. That they’re in our schools, that they’re in our environments, English is being used around them.

Okay, so every day you’re listening, basic language is growing. Mm-hmm. Because you just understand things. They’re like, “They don’t understand anything. They don’t understand anything.” And as soon as I say, “It’s time for lunch,” they pop up and walk out. Okay, you understand some things because you would. You would because of repetition and environment.

Okay, so how often are your eyes going across English text as you’re acquiring English? There’s this big disconnect there where you will go six months in this country, and you will understand a lot of English, but you still don’t have high-frequency words. How do you not? You know the word I and the and of and is and a.

Those words come up frequently. If your eyes were just going [00:18:00] across text, remember you understand more than you can read independently, but if your eyes were just tracking the text, you would see the word and the and the its and a. You would see it frequently because that’s why it’s a high-frequency word.

So once you start realizing it, it doesn’t make sense to try to teach them foundations the way you would a five-year-old, because a five-year-old, especially because a lot of this is done for five-year-olds that speak English, right? So you can give them a sight word list and go, “These are the high-frequency word.”

Not sight words, but high-frequency words. “If you learn these, and you can just, just quickly identify them, that’s 50% of most text. I promise it’s gonna help.” We do that with littles. You guys that have kids, you remember, here are real top lists. You make sure they memorize these li- these words. The problem is when you don’t have the language yet, that, those words out of context, researchers would tell you out of context, and multilingual learners need some context It would be like me [00:19:00] handing you right now a list of sight words in Vietnamese or Arabic and saying, “Just memorize these.”

You don’t have the co- you don’t know those words yet. The, the … But if you enjoy a book or a story or something, or a, I don’t know, YouTube videos, whatever the kid likes, and your eyes go across the text while you’re listening to it, you will see the words in context. And so it’s this, we’re making things a lot harder than they need to be.

Indy, you said, what do teachers do, like, when they’re like, “What are we supposed to do with this kiddo who is an average teenager, so they’ve got all the anxiety of that, and the personality, plus they’re so far off?” First I’m gonna offer you they’re not that far off. They’re not that far off. A lot of the things that we’re trying to teach, there are real world applications that these kids have experienced.

Take environmental science and things, where they can make connections and be offered grade level access while they’re gaining language and while they’re gaining literacy. And then the sad fact is [00:20:00] that there are so many students born here in the country. H- ask any high school language arts teacher how many kids are walking around the high school, born here, reading at a second grade reading level.

And this is the thing. So I wanna make sure my students know you can get up to a second grade reading level n- it’s not even gonna be that long from now, and don’t stop, because you can catch up and pass up kids who are avo- like I was, avoiding reading, and fake reading. You don’t become more fluent, but we can teach you how to game a test and use context clues and all these things, even if you’re at, like, that low level of reading.

It’s sad that they’re not that far off, because we need to do the kind of things that we’re doing for these students, so many kids need. 

Mandi Morris: So an instructional move that you noted is having students track while they’re reading, and having opportunities for students to be listening while the text is read aloud or along with an audiobook.

That would be a [00:21:00] way of students making the connection in context. So something else you called out, that for our multilingual learners, they need it to happen in context, that they can now make the connection between this oral language they’re starting to pick up and what it looks like in written text.

Dr. Carol Salva: Yeah. Yeah. And we don’t even need to argue. I have n- Anna and I, Anna Mattis, who’s my co-author, we published a joint statement from the National Council of Effective Literacy and the Reading League. So science of reading people, multilingual learner advocates, there’s a joint statement that they put out with the things that I’m talking about.

Multilingual learners need context. Th- they still learn to read the same way, but we- he, if it’s the wrong context, so a good example is I put up an alphabet for my SIFE kids, ’cause I knew they needed the alphabet. Everybody needed different things, but they all would’ve benefited from the alphabet. So I put the alphabet up there, right?

And I’m not a kindergarten teacher, so I’m not thinking about … But I know that they need these sounds, [00:22:00] and the … Let’s say you re- let’s say Spanish is your heritage language, and that alphabet has a picture of a girl for G. So if your heritage language is English, you know the word girl, and the trigger for the guh sound is there for you, right?

You’re supposed to look at the girl and go guh, guh. That makes the guh sound. You look at the girl with the G. If my heritage language is Spanish, in my mind I’m thinking n- niña. Oso, be bear, m- but my mind’s thinking o- oso. Do you see why the context is just wrong? The context is wrong. Once they learn those words and they’re so

But why would you use that alphabet if the intention of that alphabet is to trigger that sound for monolingual kids? For English speakers. So I was in Omaha Public Schools, and the teacher had what’s called an environmental alphabet. An environmental alphabet would use the Y- the [00:23:00] YouTube symbol for Y, the Starbucks symbol for S or Snapchat, the I in Instagram.

We’re working with what she … I just walked around it with her, and she’s, “These, my kids know these things. I can give this to you for your students, but the trigger needs to be what they know. They think they don’t know anything, and they all know a lot of things. They know the name of our school, so that’s the picture we use for that letter.”

And then all these kids had those sounds so fast. It was just we’re g- using the wrong alphabet and then going, “Oh, these poor kids, they’re learning so slowly.” No, I’m using the wrong context. Isn’t that interesting? Just an environmental alphabet, and the kids will start bringing in the words they see. Like, they might bring in the D from Dunkin’ Donut.

I don’t know what they do. I don’t know where they go, but they know. So when they bring in things, suddenly you’ve asked them to pay attention to their environment and where these sounds are in their real world, and oh [00:24:00] my God, then the alphabet and the sounds are just so fast. It’s just not an issue like it was for me when I was trying to, when I was making it harder than it needed to be.

Mandi Morris: With your book, Boosting Achievement, you have a new edition coming out, and at NABI you talked a little bit about that you were really excited about this new edition but didn’t dive into what the changes were, what the new edition was focusing on. I would love for you to unpack that for us today. And has it released, or is it getting ready to?

Dr. Carol Salva: Yeah, no, it came out this year. Thank you so much. It’s very much hot off the presses, and I’m real excited because a lot of schools who used the first one that was about 80 pages, and this over 200, it, there’s just so much. It’s been, like, about nine years since that, or six or seven years since the first book came out.

And so we have, one of the things that’s updated is that we have educators, we have school districts, we have state agencies like the State of Colorado. We have federal agencies, the h- New Brunswick Department of Education, a province, [00:25:00] entire province, who used it, the first one, and created some of … Like, the State of Colorado created a rubric based on the first one, what they have their districts go through and rate themselves on how they’re serving SLIFE students based on our first edition.

But these educators, elementary, middle, and high school educators and school leaders and district leaders all wrote testimonials about how they use these practical things and the mindset piece and the system suggestions. So that’s something that’s nice, is that everybody can look at, okay, what is my role- And I’m gonna go tear to the back and look at what people in my role say they’re- how they’re using this.

We also created an activity guide. You can just flip through it, and there are, like, icons where all the activities are, and there are way more activities for the ESL classroom or group that you might pull. But a good deal of it is written for the content teacher, for the math teacher, the science teacher.

[00:26:00] So how you include students, we have just practical ideas for that. There is an entire section now on rapid literacy. So that is a training we’ve been doing for a few years, and we were going to write another book about the literacy part specifically, but it just made sense to just embed it as a part of this book.

Another thing they did that was great was when I did do my dissertation, when I got my doctorate, it was on the persistence of students with limited education. So the s- the participants in the study had come into high school missing significant education. Some of them were not literate yet, but they were coming into regular high schools, and we looked at positive and negative factors that supported their persistence because they graduated.

So what were the positive and negative things that happened for them? And that dissertation, my publishers made it very … made it a whole part of the book in a super easy way to [00:27:00] read it. It’s chunked into what did teachers do, what did systems do, community, and if they had family or positive and negative from each of those.

So that part is … People like that. There’s a program leader’s guide. Definitely a s- oh, there’s a suggested scope and sequence because we heard from so many teachers who are the … had my job, where they had a class for new arrival students, and some are SLIFE. Some have limited education, some don’t. How … And they don’t have a curriculum, or they have a curriculum where they felt like it didn’t differentiate enough.

So we have a suggested scope and sequence for the year with just activities and QR codes and things that they can learn from. Yeah, I’m just very … I very much appreciate … We had some people write parts of it for us. Pamela Broussard, who is a just … She’s very well known for her work with new arrival students, wrote a section on how to think about SLIFE students when they [00:28:00] first arrive, uh, through an asset lens.

And Elise White Diaz, who has a strong background in trauma-informed instruction, wrote a part about some practical ways to support students from hard backgrounds. And Marie Heath wrote a part about acculturation. There was just … I really appreciated people that came together and wrote parts of the second book.

With us. There’s quite a lot more than there was before. Updated videos, what was fun about the first one is we got permission from my students to film and share little snippets of their learning so we could g- watch this three minutes and go, “Okay, what should we keep doing? Why are they reading more now?

How is he decoding all this text now?” And just watch these old videos. Those kids are older now, and we have updated videos with them that are just really fun to see some of them, like where they are now. 

Andrew Brandt: I’m so excited to read this, and I love the elements you’re talking about that are very tangible about how is this work being taken, and what does it look like in different roles?

What are the scope and sequence look like? Just that, those tangible elements that teachers and directors can turn around and [00:29:00] apply. I’m curious, as you work on that next edition, what was it, what was delightful for you to learn about what people have done with your work? Oh, 

Dr. Carol Salva: gosh. I, what I love is that my work, when we started writing the book, I was still in the classroom.

I had started as an elementary teacher. The SLIFE class that I was asked to take over was middle school. I had to learn how to be a middle school teacher first, and then it was just a lot of learning that year. And then they moved me to the high school, and I stayed in the high school for a couple years, and that’s when this book started getting written because I was using the, I was using the strategies of Jon Sidelitz but just modified for students who can’t yet independently read a poster that might have some sentence starters and things on it.

And so when he came to visit me in the classroom and he decided that day there’s gonna be a book, we don’t have a book about this specifically, it was, it was just like my dream that this guy was here. Jon Sidelitz was in our [00:30:00] building. And then eventually I got to work for him when the book came out, and I stayed as a, teaching part-time.

So now my job is 100% working for Sidelitz. I’m actually the lead of our newcomer division, and what is delightful is that a lot of my role is going to campuses and going into classrooms and supporting teachers. So I, I’m usually hired to come in and model some strategies that we did in a training with them, but I end up learning so much.

Like when I walked into that Omaha, when I walked into Omaha Public Schools and saw that environmental alphabet. Like, she was doing things that she had seen in a training, but everybody takes it a step further or does something that makes sense to them. So there’s n- I ca- I can’t think of anywhere that I’ve gone that I haven’t learned something from the teachers that are using it or just had ideas that I didn’t have.

You’re just like, “Oh, I wish I would’ve thought about that.” [00:31:00] So that’s been delightful is to see these students being so engaged, and meeting teachers who look at it like I do. What can we learn from them? What can we learn from them? Because they already know a lot of things It’s not low background, it’s different background.

So I can teach you how to read, but I’m gonna learn all these things also in that process. And meeting teachers with that kind of attitude, it’s just energizing, and it is what we need right now, I feel, is these people who are making sure that students understand the long game, that, that life is a long game, that it’s a journey, and we’re gonna capitalize on what you have here today, but you’re looking long.

Mandi Morris: Carol, when you keep going back to the long game, right, and thinking about education, and it makes me think back when I was in school, and I didn’t really feel connected to school until I was in college. It w- school was very hard for me as well. I did not feel successful. And I think what happened is that I got interested [00:32:00] in what I was learning, and then I was willing to overcome my own fears and anxieties of not being good enough or smart enough or being embarrassed that I wasn’t good at these things.

School came very easy to my older brother. It did not matter what he did, it turned to gold . And it was like, I, it was just so har- it was so hard for me. And then in college, I think I also felt some level of independence around choice, where I thought, “Wow, like I, I get to show up and do this for me.” Like, I love learning about English learners.

I did my bachelor’s in TESOL. I then did my master’s in TESOL, ’cause I just found something that I loved, I felt so passionate about. And I, we’ve had guests on recently, and we’ve talked about, and I think a lot about interests and how engaged, how interested are students in learning? And you think about that high school age range is very different from middle school, where you get a little bit more of the compliance piece.

We don’t care [00:33:00] that you don’t like this. You have to sit. You gotta do it. And then you get to high school, and I think that that desire or want for independence grows, and then it’s a little bit of, “But do I really have to? Can you make me?” And I just wonder if you could talk some about when you think about the best lessons, the best version of what high school can be for students, for Saif and Saif, but English learners broadly, what does engagement look like, and how should teachers be thinking about that?

Dr. Carol Salva: Absolutely. I feel so fortunate that I was, uh, when I was put into high school, when I went back to the cl- classroom, period, and it was with adolescents, that I was following people. Social media was already a thing. Twitter was a thing. There were Twitter chats and things that you could follow people, and I was so happy that I found that early on because I had my own anxiety and imposter syndrome.

I didn’t want people to know I’m the specialist for the district and I’m really struggling with these kids. So initially finding people, and I [00:34:00] was following a high school teacher, thankfully, and I- and you’ll know this name, Larry Ferlazzo is a, he’s just a giant in the field. So he was teaching high school, writing a lot of books about motivation, intrinsic motivation, where he uses a lot of research on just motivation research.

But they have, he and his co-author, Katie Hulsenbeck, have written different books that specifically address- how to support a student’s desire to learn, not that they’ll comply or be motivated because I’m gonna give you something. But everybody listening, I promise you will agree with this. If you meet two kids and they’re both at a certain level, maybe they’re off level, they’re both off level, but one of them is very motivated, intrinsically motivated, and the other one isn’t, who’s gonna learn faster?

Who’s gonna learn faster? The intrinsically motivated kid is learning when I’m not around because they want to. So the goal has to be [00:35:00] how much more motivation can I sup- can I help grow here? I- they might comply, but our job becomes so much easier when we can, when they want to do things. And then I layer in, I’m gonna show you some things that are easy about rereading familiar text, about tracking print, and I’m gonna help you realize the more minutes a day you do of that, the faster it’s gonna go.

It’s just that simple. But you need to wanna do it. So Larry ha- in all of his books, all of his blog posts, all of his everything, I live by these things and it changed the game. There are four things that he goes to, and I’m gonna ask you to think about your college experience, Mandi, and which of these did you have?

Because these things really support intrinsic motivation. One is relatedness, so relationships. That’s not just like being somebody’s friend. It’s that the student feels like someone they hold in high regard values them also. Also, like the relationships with each other. Am I gonna get laughed at if I take– So focus [00:36:00] on relationships and holding students and making them feel valued and valuable, but they feel that sense, right?

Rel- if I don’t have a good relationship with somebody who wants me to do something, it’s not as motivating. Relevance. Do I– If I’m asking a kid, “Repeat after me, track the print,” if that seems babyish to them, they’re not gonna be very motivated to do it. But if I explain the science behind oracy being a precursor to literacy, and if I show them the one-to-one word matching and the math on the high-frequency word re- You know, if I give them the relevance, or if I tell them the person, when you verbalize, you internalize and you remember the…

Okay, now I don’t have any high school kids that think that’s babyish. Just one sentence a day in a math class, or a lot of it because you’re becoming more fluent, relevance is big. How is it relevant to my life has to be, or it doesn’t have to be, but that supports motivation. Another one is autonomy, and you talked about that, Mandi.

Do I have any [00:37:00] control of my destiny? Do I– Am I even offered little choices in the classroom? You can turn it in like this or this, or you can choose this book or this book, or you can… Any choice Is in very direct alignment with motivation. And when I talk to teachers, a- a lot of times they’ve signed up for a training, and I ask them, “What if you signed up for this training,” and I said, “but we’d rather you go to the training next door?

That’s gonna be better for our school.” Are you as motivated if you didn’t have the choice? So any choice supports motivation. And then, and like you chose your classes in college, all those things. And then the last one of those big four is a sense of competence. So if I am not getting better at something, if I don’t feel like I’m ev- It’s not that I’ve mastered the thing, it’s that I feel myself getting better.

I’m having these little wins. They’re so addictive. And but if you don’t [00:38:00] realize that you’re making any progress, if this just seems so difficult always, your brain wouldn’t even continue to try to do it. You feel like you can’t do it. It’s just not motivating. But if you have a little win, and another little win, you’re like, “Oh, I can get better at this.”

So those four things, Sir Ken Robinson did a TED Talk, and he talks about how teachers are like gardeners. You n- you, you can’t make a plant grow, but you can put these things in the environment that would have more motivation grow, just like sunlight and this and that. Put autonomy, a sense of competence, good relationships, and relevance, and you’re gonna have a lot more people wanna do what you’re trying to get them to do.

Mandi Morris: I feel like an entire high school program just needs to be built off of the last five minutes of you talking. I feel so inspired right now, and I’m listening to you and visualizing what all of those things looked like in college for me. And it’s like [00:39:00] you’re just naming them, having someone who held me to high standards, having someone who believed in me, so then I wanted to show I can do it.

Having someone who was available also to help me feel that competency when I didn’t see it or believe it in myself. And I just, I think there’s so much that high school can do to mirror more of what that college experience looks like, because college naturally gives you a bit more of those four, and probably would help encourage a lot of students that being engaged in this environment younger can help propel you into fields and learning even beyond.

Dr. Carol Salva: I just love that you said that, because a lot of our content in a high school classroom, it just is what it is. It may not be interesting to you. You may have no interest, but you have to pass this class. You have to learn to read something you don’t wanna read. So then we don’t have to have all four all the time.

But you could do other things, like show the student that they’re getting better. at using [00:40:00] context clues or being able to use strategies to navigate text. You know, show them that sense of competence. Hold them in high regard, like you said. Start with what they did right here. And I love what you said, Mandi, is you might not even realize, a lot of times our kids don’t realize they’ve made growth.

We have to stop and go, “Okay, where were you in August? Can I just show you two things that show you, you are seriously growing?” It’s research that it’s not just about classrooms. That’s people who run factories and people who run … That is the kind of like how you can help people want to do what you want them 

Andrew Brandt: Absolutely.

It’s, and it’s actually ironic that the thing that our kids fail at the most, they spend the most time failing at, are video games. Yet that’s the thing that often our kids are very drawn to. And it’s, wait a second, why is this, why does this happen? ‘Cause you s- when you play the video game, you spend most of the time failing, but then the progress is so visible that it creates what you were just naming of when they can see that progress.

[00:41:00] You don’t need to, you don’t need to sit there and try and force that plant to grow, to play off your analogy. You just create the reflection of saying, “Hey, look, you were at six inches a month ago. Now you’re at six and a half inches, little plant.” And that in and of itself 

Dr. Carol Salva: When I read a blog post Larry did on this when I was in the classroom and I was struggling with some kids who just did not want to apply themselves, and I was trying to tell them, “You’re smart.

You don’t know I was like you when I was your age,” and all of it was falling flat. But I had to sit… When he s- when he, when I read about the sense of competence and the small wins, I had to sit there and go, “Okay, that kid, when was the last time he had a little win in front of the other kids?” And we can set that up.

Larry calls it just, like, a fixed fight, like you’re fixing it, like you’re gonna prote- or tell him, you’re gonna call on him, and it’s gonna… Just ma- fixing it to where they have wins, because how much would you apply yourself if you never had a win? How much, how discouraging. I [00:42:00] g- I like the analogy of Pac-Man, your video games, and Pac-Man is, I’m aging myself, but if you started that game, if you put a quarter in and you hit three, and you got killed, and then three dots, and your guy died again, and then, and it never went past, like, three, you would walk away from that game.

But that’s not how it is. You get three, and you die, but then you get seven, and you die, and then you get 25, and you’re like, “Oh my God, I can be, I am getting better at this.” It’s addictive. It’s a… I try to tell my mom, those slot machines that she loves so much, that’s fake competence. You’re not really, you’re not really getting better at it, but the sounds and everything make you think you are.

It’s addictive. You gotta have little wins. You gotta have little wins, or you would walk away from that machine. You would just walk away from it. You would d- think, your brain would be like, “This is a no-win game.” 

Andrew Brandt: Yeah. No, absolutely. And to your comment from earlier, our students are making progress oftentimes just by being in an environment with English.

They’re absorbing it, and our role, [00:43:00] one of our most important roles we play is just to hold up that mirror and reflect and see, “Look how you’re progressing,” and the excitement that comes from that. That’s, that’s a little bit of an aside from the work we do with Flashlight. That’s what we get so excited about, is just by holding up, letting kids see the data of their progress, that alone drives so much excitement in students.

Dr. Carol Salva: That’s why, like, partners like Flashlight are so important, because I’m busy teaching. Every day I’m thinking about the next lesson, and how am I going to support the kids that didn’t get today’s lesson. But if I have a partner that’s offering me, “Here is data, here is…” You don’t have ti- I don’t always have time to really look at where kids are, where they were.

Or any partner that can help support so that my, what I’m, h- as I’m planning these lessons, I’m thinking more about where kids really are, and where they should be, and where the outliers are. It’s just another data point that is so important. It really should fortify [00:44:00] what we’re doing. I mean, we just really appreciate that.

Andrew Brandt: Yeah. No, and absolutely, and, and students, when they can see their progress- They, they’re motivated. And to your point earlier, y- their motivation is something you can’t just, you can’t put a price on. No. Because if a student’s motivated, they’ll keep learning wherever they have the opportunity to, not just when their butt’s in the seat.

Dr. Carol Salva: That’s the thing. So there are ways to help kids be more motivated about a task that isn’t their choice, but any time you can give choice, there’s se- there’s just ways to support. But using those four things specifically are the ones I’m always looking at, and you would just maybe use more of one or the other.

But rele- these things are always important. So I wanna just layer a few things, and tell me if you don’t think this LIFE kid could catch up and be successful. One is, we’re gonna make sure that we realize that we can b- everybody can have access to what the class is learning today while they’re gaining language and while they’re [00:45:00] gaining literacy.

Most teachers will tell you, “I could use visuals,” or, “I could let ’em…” There’s just different ways to offer access. That doesn’t mean that the student can independently pass a test right now on, on this for the reading and the writing and the English. But if you’re giving them access to the content, eventually when they have more language and literacy, they have the background because they were offered access.

So we gotta start right away not saying there’s anybody who doesn’t deserve to be in that biology class, ’cause they might be like me and decide to go back to school when they’re in their 20s. And hopefully somebody taught me some biology back in the day that I can… So everybody needs to have access to grade-level concepts.

And then our schools are already set up for students who don’t, have not mastered the content. We definitely, we have tutorials, we have summer school, and every single day that student has more ability To be able to do it independently. So we already have places if you’re off [00:46:00] level for content, we already have the

We know that this is not a disability, it’s not a cognitive issue, so we can speed up their language acquisition by making sure that they understand, you know, like we’re talking about, helping them become more motivated, ’cause we know the more you do, the more you can do. So we’re gonna make it accessible.

We’re gonna ask you and help you spend more minutes a day that are not hard understanding how you’re becoming more literate, and that’s gonna propel your language acquisition too, using text. But that it’s not hard text, rereading text, text read aloud, that kind of thing. And then knowing that this, if we can light and ignite some motivation in a student, those deeper layering all these things, it’s like why would they not be successful?

How could they not be successful when, again, it’s a long game. Maybe they’re not gonna pass the test this year because they still are li- are becoming literate. [00:47:00] I, I didn’t pass every test. That’s n- I didn’t pass every grade. I didn’t pass every class. It’s not the end of the story. So as long as you gave them access to the content, when they have to go take that again or their next step in the journey, they have content and they’re at a different point with language acquisition.

And so I don’t want, and I don’t want administrators to misunderstand that, oh, all our language learners don’t need to pass the tests this year. They should. All of them should, unless there is something like I’m just learning to read. That’s a very small percentage of your multilingual learners. I’m not saying that everybody can have a long game, but in terms of state assessments and things, I’m saying what you’re gonna do for these kids who you feel like, oh, what are we gonna do for them?

Okay. The practical things I’m gonna offer you to do for them in terms of strategies in your classroom, that when you raise the tide, all the boats are gonna go up. So you’re gonna have higher passing scores for the rest of the kids, because the [00:48:00] things that we show you are part of Tier 1 instruction, and so everybody’s gonna learn more.

You, you are gonna have better passing rates. It’s just a few kids that we’re talking about should not be segregated from the experience. They just need patience. 

Mandi Morris: I’d love to get your perspective on this when we’re thinking about, you’re talking about students in Tier 1 classrooms And I’m thinking about my own experience as a, an ELD specialist for years, and I would follow students to classrooms, core content classrooms, middle school level, see what that experience was like.

No shocker to anyone listening today, it’s a lot of sitting in the back of the classroom silently, right? And I’m listening to you, and now you’ve got me doing all this reflecting of what school was like, and thinking about all of that, and I’m remembering back to thinking all of these peers are so good at this thing, and I don’t know how they’re so good, but I’m watching them, and it’s so easy for all of them.[00:49:00] 

And I’ve, I felt connected often with my English learners. I was a monolingual student growing up, but I understood that, how is it so easy for everybody else, and how, what’s disconnecting? And I just, I wanna go back to that competency piece. What advice would you give to a Tier 1 teacher, so like talking about the content grade-level teacher, for finding opportunities for that student to showcase what they bring, the knowledge and the competency that they bring, so that they have that moment to shine and feel like, “I’m not the one sitting back trying to understand how this is so easy for everybody else.

I’m the one having a moment to show off what I know, what I’m good at, the competency that I bring.” What could that look like in, say, a secondary Tier 1 classroom? 

Dr. Carol Salva: Oh, yeah. And I’d love to give you a link to a video. It’s about three and a half minutes long, and it is a sci- an eighth grade science teacher that was in the middle school with me the first year [00:50:00] that we got such an uptick in refugee students, and we had these 32 SLIFE students in a school that didn’t have a lot of background for even EL support.

So we were being very reactive, and we, the first semester, they were segregated into this, what we thought was like gonna be like a newcomer program, but we didn’t have any good planning in place for that. So in the second semester, when we realized they can do more, and Carol’s not the best science teacher, even though I’m certified, to have them all day and be their science teacher.

So I went to a science teacher. Her name is Katherine Stokes, eighth grade science. And it’s the second semester, so we’re getting close to state assessments, and but my goal that year, my district had tasked me with what should it look like moving forward? See if you can do a little newcomer program.

Learn what you can. And I was feeling super strong that they needed to be More out in the gen ed and [00:51:00] maybe a language acquisition class, but more let’s help the teachers include them, right? Like you’re saying. So I asked Catherine Stokes if she would please take about six of them just for a couple of weeks to see how they do in her classroom.

And at first, she lets me tell this story, she was like, “No.” She was like, “I have- my class is full. We’re coming up on the STAR test. We’re coming up on state assessments. I don’t know what they would do.” And I was like, “Okay, I can come with them,” like you’re saying, Mindy. “I can come with them. I can help them.”

And she agreed ’cause she’s just an awesome person, and she said, “Okay, they can…” And I said, “I’m just gonna ask for your reflections after about two weeks.” So I came with them for one day, and then she told me, “We don’t need you anymore.” So I didn’t even come with them anymore. She was doing something where she…

Now, think about her classroom. Her classroom was already set up with kids working collaboratively. The kids were working in groups, so she put [00:52:00] these kids in around the classroom. She did not put them all in one place. She said there was times where they could sit over there and talk to each other, but there was always time where they were working with the other students in the classroom.

She just does that as part of her instructions, where kids get mixed up and mixed up in different ways. So after two weeks, this is where the video starts. I walked into her classroom, and I was asking her, I wasn’t videotaping, I was just telling her, “Okay, so I’m gonna need, I know you’re busy, but I’m gonna send you a, a form to give me some reflection.”

And she was like, “For what?” And I said, “Francis and those kids aren’t gonna come anymore.” And she said, “Has it been two weeks?” And I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “No, you can’t have them back. Just leave them. They’re fine. They’re fine here for the rest of the year.” And I said, “And I love that,” first of all. That at first she was like, “I don’t know what they’re gonna do.

I don’t know how I’m gonna serve them.” Now it’s eh, you can… And she even told me, “You can’t just keep moving kids around this building, Carol. They’re fine.” And so I asked her, “What are they doing in [00:53:00] here?” And she started to walk over to the wall, and I said, “Can I film it on my phone?” And she said, “Yeah, I’ll show you what they’re doing.”

So she goes over to the wall, and they’re going over all of these science concepts, the classes. The class is empty, but she’s showing me things that are on the wall on high and low pressure systems and how that affects weather and all kinds of really complex tectonic plates. Just different things. And she’s, “These kids did the drawing and the labeling, but their group got a really good score because of the way that they were able to represent and explain to the class.”

And I was like, “And your room is full of environmental print.” She’s, “Oh, yeah, they’re basically making the anchor charts, and anchor charts are really important.” Like, she, she was doing stuff. Their interactive science notebooks that had all kinds of foldables and drawings and things were perfect for these kids.

perfect for them. But you don’t think about it as a science teacher, like, how are they gonna hit the grade level standards? One of [00:54:00] those groups did so great because the girl in the group was the only one that had seen an active volcano really. And r- there’s things where we look at, Anna and I wrote about, here are things that any kid can do, right?

And, and it’s right here at the beginning of being practical. Most students could illustrate, they could make a model, they could act things out, and they could compare things if they’re looking at two things. They can sort things into groups. Like, we, we usually ask teachers, “Would you agree that your most marginalized kids can do these things?”

And everybody’s, “Yeah.” Okay, those are the highest levels of Bloom’s. That is analysis. You have to comparing and contrasting things. Drawing a representation of something like democracy is way harder than just memorizing answers, and they d- that doesn’t even go deep. So c- what Katherine Stokes knows is that projects like that are good learning.

They’re really good learning. They’re [00:55:00] better than just memorization for that test that’s coming up. And then if you teach like that, these kids will- 

Mandi Morris: Wow. I just love that so much, Carol. And you kind of just glossed over a bit that the one group that did so well was because the, that w- you were leading to that, right?

That the student was the only student in the classroom who had seen an active volcano. So you’re talking about these science things. That, 

Dr. Carol Salva: that actually happened back in my classroom. She actually was teaching that concept, but the girl came back so excited and telling all of my class. So I got to watch other kids just learning from her because, yeah, she has some real-world experience that made a connection where she got that opportunity to glow, like you said.

She got the opportunity to be held in high regard for her background. And we have no idea what kids know until we have them comfortable and sharing, and then you start to see i- it, that stuff [00:56:00] bubbles out. You know, those kids did not pass the eighth grade STAAR test that year in science. They didn’t, because they were just learning to read and write that year.

But when they passed high school biology later, i- in, later in their c- which they need to graduate from high school, they’ll tell you they learned a lot of stuff back in Ms. Stokes’ class that semester. That’s what I’m saying. You cannot give them access ’cause they will need it even depend- whether they pass this year or not, you’re the only one that’s gonna teach them that, and they will need it eventually.

It will serve them later. It’s beautiful, right? 

Mandi Morris: It’s so beautiful, and- I’m 

Dr. Carol Salva: grateful to teachers. I’m so grateful 

Mandi Morris: And I’m so grateful, we are so grateful to have you here in this conversation with us today, and to learn from you. I was so excited to be able to learn from you in person, and then to have this opportunity today, and to be able to share it with our listeners.

We’re just so thankful that you made time to be here with us. This [00:57:00] conversation is so exciting, and I also feel, as an educator, I can listen to this, and there are so many things that I can just take and I can do on Monday. And then there’s so much that I can just take that’s about my mindset, and I can do that immediately.

Yeah. So that just feels, it feels so good to me. And for our listeners, we are so thankful. Thank you for being here with us today. 

Dr. Carol Salva: Oh, I appreciate it so much, Mandi. And thank you also, Andrew, because I really loved that lunch also, and it’s like when we all just sit and talk about the real challenges, not just with teaching, but with our own kids, I just feel like it helps everybody feel like none of us are moving through perfectly.

But we’re all showing up, and it feeds what we need right now. Again, our kids are going through a lot of challenges. Teachers are going through a lot of challenges, but the way people in history have gotten through these things is when we’re together just supporting each other. Again, I really appreciate the way that you guys partner with districts, and [00:58:00] the way that you partner with teachers to help us be as effective as we can in the classroom.

I feel like I’ve moved into that kind of role now, that I’m still just super grateful to teachers and whatever I can do to support. So thank you for letting me be on the podcast. I just, I was so tickled when you came up after the session, Mandi, and said, “Did you wanna be on a podcast?” I was like, “Yes, I 

Mandi Morris: would love to.”

Dr. Carol Salva: So thank you. Thank you for this. It really inspired me too to talk to both of you. 

Andrew Brandt: I, I would love to name a thread that I’ve seen going through this. I, I’d be curious your thought, Carol, but I feel as you tell the story of your mom and how she advocated for you and saw your potential growing up, I just see this crossover to the work you’re doing now, and advocating for our students and the potential they have, and I just think it’s beautiful.

And one thing that I loved about your journey is you took a little bit of your own path, a little unconventional. But then as you found your way and your stride and what you’re passionate about, it has propelled you to do amazing things. But what I often see is that s- that kids who take a little bit of their own [00:59:00] path through trial and error often are the ones that find that, that grit and determination to go do amazing things.

And it’s a little bit for our teachers out there who are looking at some of their students and saying, “Man, you have so much potential. I just wish you’d figure you’d see that.” Like for me, I’d say recognize that those are the same students that maybe it takes a little longer to find their stride, but when they do, they’re gonna go and be the Dr.

Carol Salvas of, of the world. There’s so much potential in your classroom. Just keep believing in them. Keep s- keep advocating for them, keep giving them what they need, and they’re gonna go do amazing things. 

Dr. Carol Salva: Thank you for saying that, Andrew. I do believe that to any teachers that are listening, there’s no way you’re gonna know your impact, but it’s never for naught.

You might just be planting seeds right now. It’s so important, so thank you for that. 

Andrew Brandt: Absolutely. Thank you so much for being on the show. This has been phenomenal. 

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