Jennifer Lovellette: [00:00:00] What’s the first word that comes to mind about a multilingual learner? And for me, it’s brave. It’s brave to, to try and speak another language. It’s brave to come over here from another country at such a young age and try to learn the culture, learn the school system. 

Mandi Morris: Welcome to the ML Chat podcast. I’m Mandi Morris, your host, here with my co-host, Andrew.

We had an incredible conversation today with Dr. Jen Lovellette, and she’s doing inspiring work, and just an incredible amount of good work happening in her school district for English learners. 

Andrew Brandt: Totally, and it, it- as I listened to her, I could just feel this raw energy and passion and love for this work.

And I was, and I, as I was listening, I was like, man, I wish, I’d love to channel that, and as, as I’m sure a lot of us would, like channel that just excitement for the work we do. And I think what I, the thread I got from this is a lot of it comes from her passion for both understanding her students and understanding her teachers.

And as she does, that helps drive that [00:01:00] excitement to serve them better. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah, and it was pretty incredible hearing her talk through the different initiatives they’ve accomplished in the school district. Educators have a lot of heart in the work that we do, but she has really been able to take all of that learning from students and teachers and implement it in such a strategic way in their school district.

And you’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear how there is just so much here that she’s doing, so let’s go. Dr. Jen Lovellette is the secondary literacy and multilingual learner specialist for Indian River School District in Delaware, where she supports a growing population of multilingual learners across the district With over 24 years in education, her career spans middle and high school teaching, higher education, instructional coaching, and leadership.

With a doctorate in organizational leadership from the University of Maryland, Jennifer is passionate about equity and access for all learners, and works closely with educators to strengthen literacy instruction while supporting language development in the [00:02:00] classroom. Dr. Lavallee, welcome to the ML Chat podcast.

How are you today? Thanks for being here. I’m 

Jennifer Lovellette: wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. It’s such a privilege to be able to be on the podcast with you guys and talk about everything that I’m passionate about in my career and my journey through life thus far. So, thank you. 

Mandi Morris: Oh, we’re looking forward to it.

Just to get us started, tell us a little bit about your school district. Andrew and I were talking before we came on today. It was like, oh, wow, like we were surprised at how high your ML number is compared to your overall student numbers. So unpack your school district for us. Tell us a little bit more about where you are.

Jennifer Lovellette: Yeah. So Delaware, the first state, is a very small state, but we are very mighty in our ML population. Over the course of the last 10 years, our overall student population for ML multilingual learners has grown 110%, which I think is something that is very [00:03:00] unknown amongst the nation, and there are many reasons why our population has grown over that time.

We have a lot of migrant students, families that have moved here. We have chicken plants where they come and work. We also have a lot of farmland that is farmed. But we, my particular school district, is located at the southern end of Delaware. So the state of Delaware is broken up into three portions, three counties, and they are very different.

So we are located at the southern end, and our student, overall student population is a little over 10,000 students, with about 25% of them being multilingual learners. So a little bit over 2,500 students are multilingual learners. And the number one language that is spoken is Spanish, but something else that is interesting is that we have over 20 languages within our school district.

So that is very exciting because of how diverse our student population is [00:04:00] for multilingual learners. 

Andrew Brandt: That’s super interesting. I would not have pegged Delaware as a state that has a large migrant population. 

Jennifer Lovellette: Yes. 

Andrew Brandt: I, out in Washington, migrant is a very big part of our programs here, especially on the eastern half of the state where we have a lot of agriculture, but really across the whole state.

But I think that explains a lot of that diversity. No, that’s phenomenal. 

Mandi Morris: And so you have one in four students Is an English learner, and it sounds like the changes have happened in the last handful of years. Tell us more about what that shift has looked like and felt like for your school district, for your teachers, and what is the work that you’re doing now to speak to that changing need?

Jennifer Lovellette: We are lucky in the fact that because our state is so small, we work very closely with our state representatives at the state office around multilingual learners and supporting multilingual learners throughout the entire state. And because of the increase of our student population and the lack of increase in our staffing within our [00:05:00] district, we have had to get creative in how we look at supporting our students in the classroom.

So the state has transitioned into more a, of a push-in model for support. We look at across the state the main support that we give our multilingual learners is push-in or pull-out support, and we have transitioned to mostly push-in support in our own district. So what that looks like is Instead of students being taken out of the classroom into another classroom to be fixed over here and then put back into the classroom, the learning occurs in the classroom.

We all research and teachers know that learning o- occurs in the classroom, so we wanna keep the students in the classroom. But we still wanna support language development in the classroom. So we, over the past few years, have certified multilingual learner teachers that have pushed into classrooms to help co-teach, and we followed various co-teaching models within that.

We’ve also [00:06:00] had, in each of our buildings, ML coordinators and ML interventionists that help provide supports and scaffolds to students and to teachers. So looking at content teachers and giving them the tools that they need to help support all students in their classroom. So we’ve really looked at the push-in models versus sheltered instruction and pulling out students to fix them over here and then put them back in, and we’ve had a lot of success in doing that.

We have exposed students to grade-level, high-quality instructional materials, and we are shifting the mindset of they can’t to an asset-based mindset of our students can, and this is how we’re gonna help push our students and get them to where they need to be. 

Mandi Morris: What does that work look like? The shift from the student can’t, there are so many gaps, I don’t know how to do this in my classroom, it’s just overwhelming, to that asset mindset of we [00:07:00] can.

Educators need the right tools and the right strategies, the right training. We can as educators and the students can. What has that shift looked like on the ground in your school district? 

Jennifer Lovellette: Yeah. So I think the number one thing is seeing multilingualism as a superpower, right? It is such a strength that our students are able to speak more than one language.

I have a direct personal connection because I grew up in a multi- multicultural home. My mother immigrated here when she was 18 from South Korea, and my father is from Kentucky. So I grew up in this home that just was amazing. I had all of these- cultural pieces from my mother from South Korea that I got to experience in terms of language and food, and it was celebrated.

And then I also had this bluegrass piece of my family from my father, and it was just a wonderful experience to be able to celebrate both cultures. And what a [00:08:00] superpower. I can speak and understand Korean, but then also I communicate in English, and it’s such an asset, I think, in so many different areas of my life.

So we really push- I take that and I bring that to the work that I do, and really push that lism is a superpower, and how do we celebrate that within our schools? And we do a lot of work around collaboration with teachers, and working directly with teachers to take what the students bring to the table and amplify that in their classroom with their other students.

One of the pieces, and I talked about this at the conference, at the WIDA conference this past year, is our multilingual learner institute. And I’m very proud of that, and I feel like it’s helped grow the capacity of our teachers, and I’ve seen it then pull through within the classroom to actual instruction in the classroom.

And we- a couple of years ago, we were trying to figure [00:09:00] out the best way in moving to this push-in model to support all teachers throughout a building. Even if an ML teacher wasn’t able to push in to support in terms of co-teaching, or if an ML coordinator wasn’t available to be in the classroom for support, how could we build teacher capacity around supporting all multilingual learners, all students in their classroom?

And me and a cog- colleague, we sat down and we were talking about, “What are we gonna do? We don’t have enough staff. All these students are going into the classroom. Our ML population is continuing to grow. Teachers are panicking ’cause they feel like they are not prepared to support these learners in their classroom.”

And what came from that was our ML institute. And basically we started it our first year. It was a summer retreat, so we pulled all of these teachers together, and we asked each building in our district to come with a team. And your team [00:10:00] should consist of interventionists, administration, ML Coordinators, teachers, content teachers.

We wanted a good mix of team members to be a part of this work. So every building came. We were very excited during the summertime, and we wanted to make sure that we started off grounded in text. And so we sat down, we looked at a ton of different texts that we have used throughout the years, that we’ve pulled information from, research, all of that, and we landed on Valentina Gonzalez, who is amazing.

She has a text out on co-teaching, and so we used that text to ground us in the work that we were getting ready to do for that ML Summer Institute, and then the work that would continue on throughout the year. So the buildings came together. Valentina came, and she was our guest speaker, and we kicked it off with her, [00:11:00] and the focus really was on co-teaching that first year And every building had to set a building goal for the year.

By the end of the summer work and the work you do throughout the year, what is your end goal for your building? Is it to educate all staff a little bit more on what it means to be multilingual? Is it to look at access scores? We’re a WIDA state, so we administer the access testing. What does it mean to receive a 1.0 versus a 4.0?

Do the supports look different? So is that s- is that a goal for your building that you wanna set? So every building came up with a different goal. We worked through it. They set action steps throughout the year, and then we set dates throughout the school year where we all came together. We talked about what action steps we’ve taken, where we were in meeting our goal.

Were we successful? What challenges we had. And then by the end of the school year, they had to give a presentation of what they did. [00:12:00] So some of them, they ranged from everything from PLCs, like pushing in to support that, sharing some of the basic information around what does it mean to be a multilingual learner.

They ranged all over, and we had elementary, middle, and high school. And I will tell you that the presentations were amazing, and the teachers really enjoyed being part of the ML Institute, and the product and what they were able to accomplish throughout that school year was incredible. So we then decided, why stop?

So we went into the next summer, and we wanted to ground ourselves in text again. So we used Andrea Honigfeld’s co-planning book, and she came and was a guest speaker to kick off that summer work, which was incredible. She’s just amazing, and we loved her text on co-planning. And what we were finding through all of this work that we were doing is we could co-teach, but it really came down to the planning piece and the [00:13:00] intentionality of the planning that we were doing.

And that’s why we thought Andrea Honigfeld and that text was so relevant at that point. And she came, she kicked off the summer again. We set new goals. We had some new members from each of the buildings as teachers transitions and movement and everything. We had some new members. We had administration get more involved because we were like, “Wow, look what’s happening.

Look at the work we’re doing.” And it was fantastic. So they set a new goal. We really talked around collaboration. I also think too, having elementary, middle, and high school all together in one room discussing what elementary’s doing for those students to support them, and that way middle school knows What’s coming, same thing with high school, was extremely valuable too, and that’s that collaboration piece that I feel is really important and that we were moving more towards for that second year of the ML Institute.

Mandi Morris: You mentioned how important the planning component [00:14:00] is for teachers when they’re going into that co-teaching model, and what I’m hearing from you without maybe you saying it is the amount of planning that you and your colleagues did for the Summer Institute. There’s so much intentionality of the types of teams that you were pulling together, the ask that all grade levels are present for all schools across your district.

You want an admin on that team, which I think is so powerful. Sometimes we pull the ML educator and maybe a co-teacher, and admin aren’t there, and then they don’t feel like they have the support or the buy-in from leadership within the building. Could you talk more specifically about … I’m just imagining a director or teacher that’s hearing you talk and they’re like, “I wanna do a Summer Institute.

Like, that sounds really powerful.” Talk a little bit about what did that planning look like for you and your colleague, and how long did it take you to really get that up and running before you had your first institute? 

Jennifer Lovellette: Yeah. So [00:15:00] I might be making it sound very easy. And it wasn’t. We talk about mindset- And buy-in.

And so we needed the buy-in of administration and teachers in order to pull something off like this. We, my colleague and I both had very supportive directors, and so we typed up this proposal of just a summer institute. So we started there, and I think also too, the increasing number of multilingual learners in our district was a benefit because it almost forced the hand that teachers were gonna learn, have to learn how to support all of these learners.

They weren’t– The numbers were not going down, and they were going up, and so it was almost like a sink or swim. Are we going to figure out how we are gonna support all learners in our classroom, or be hands-off, and then we’re gonna have students who really struggle in our classrooms? So we typed up this proposal, and initially it was just to have [00:16:00] Valentina Gonzalez come and do a little workshop with us.

And then in thinking around and talking to teachers, they really wanted this. They really wanted, because they were finding that, especially with our ML coordinators, they couldn’t be everywhere at one time. And teachers were asking, like, “How do I support these students? I have all of these newcomers that are coming in.

There are gaps in education.” We had SLIFE students, and those are the students that have gaps, interrupted formal education. “How am I supporting that at the high school level?” So it was just all these questions, and they just, they wanted to know. They wanted to learn. And one of the pieces, and you kinda hit it, is we need admin support, right?

To do this work, to have time to collaborate, to have time to plan, we need administration to create schedules that allow that to happen. And so it was, we don’t just want the ML teachers. We don’t just want the ML [00:17:00] coordinators. We want everybody to be a part of this because those students are all of our students, not just the ML coordinators, not just the ML teachers.

They’re all of our students. And I think, too, as we built these teams out, and they took the information that they were learning through these institutes back to the buildings and disseminating it out to their content areas, the buy-in started to grow more and more. And that’s how we were able to go from year one to year two, and now we are currently in year three, which is fantastic.

Andrew Brandt: Wow. That is– It’s a phenomenal journey to listen to, ’cause at the beginning, I’m thinking to myself- The challenge of building support for students in a population that’s rapidly growing and that teachers didn’t previously need to support, it’s challenging. I think most of our listeners can appreciate that challenge in general, but especially for a school district that the ML count grew so rapidly.

I imagine there were some teachers that were very reluctant, and it was not easy to win them over. And [00:18:00] you probably still have some that you’re trying to win over. But as I’m thinking to myself, and as you answer, there’s a couple things that really stood out. The first thing that you said that I absolutely love is just telling the story of the ML student, and I think that the reality is that we– the stories communicate a lot of meaning.

When you- and as you share that story, it helps people see and feel the reality and the challenge of being a language learner, and I think that went a long way in helping getting, getting your team on board with, okay, how do we wrap our arms around these students and provide the supports that they deserve and that they need?

And so I love listening to that. The second part that really stood out to me, and I’d love to hear a little bit more about this, is I think it can be intimidating for a, a leader or an administrator to think, okay, how do I lead this work? Do I need a new curriculum? Do I need to this- do I need to build this robust plan?

Which obviously there’s a lot of planning that goes in, but it sounds like you leaned largely, at least at several intervals, on books, on authors, and letting that kind of be the syllabus of, hey, let’s take this work. It’s already done. We’ve got this book. [00:19:00] Let’s do a book study. Tell me more about u- using that as a, as an approach, ’cause it sounds like that was a pillar of some of the work you’ve been doing, and each year picking a book.

Jennifer Lovellette: Yeah. It’s interesting ’cause, like when we first started, we knew that we wanted to ground our … We n- we had these great authors, like researchers that we had pulled information from. We listened to the needs of teachers and what the struggles were that they were having in the classroom, and we immediately thought co-teaching.

We had staffing that were coming together, an ML teacher and a content teacher together teaching in the classroom. And we had done a lot of work in our district around co-teaching models, especially with dually identified special education, ML, and what those models look like and when they are appropriate in the classroom.

And so we looked at parallel teaching. We looked at one teach, one support. But as we had those conversations and dove a little bit deeper, we found that it really [00:20:00] did come down to the planning. Because you could have a teacher who comes in two minutes before the bell rings, and they’re there to co-teach, but did they really have time to look at the lesson that they were getting ready to teach to really internalize what they were getting ready to do with students to prepare for where the struggle points would be, to prepare for scaffolds and supports to take down that language barrier?

Where did that happen, right? And a lot of times it wasn’t happening. It was really the one teach, one support that we were seeing a lot of in the classroom, and teachers were struggling with, “I need time to plan. I need that collaborative time to have those discussions. We need to talk around individual students and the needs for particular students,” especially in classrooms where our multilingual learners range.

So we, we could have a student who was born here in the US and has been with us for eight years, but still is a multilingual learner, in the same class as [00:21:00] someone who just came to the country last month So even in, within that we need to plan and differentiate our instruction. So that led us into the second year in looking at co-planning, and what does co-planning look like?

It doesn’t need to look like you and I having the same planning time and we sit down for 45 minutes every single day to map this out. We had to get creative on that because at the secondary level especially, planning times don’t align. You’re lucky if you get common planning with another content teacher who teaches the same curriculum as you.

So what does that look like? It could look like a consult. It could look like a teacher swinging by and having a five-minute discussion with an ML coordinator in the hallway, “Hey, I’m getting ready to teach this. Like, any recommendations to help support a newcomer in my classroom?” It could look like a Google Doc that we both, when we have time and are able to type [00:22:00] into, and it might not be a verbal communication or conversation that we have about that student, but we could put it into a document where we’re then able to support that student and see growth or struggle points that we need to go back and address.

So it was a lot of conversation around that, and looking at really supporting the individual student and getting creative a little bit with how we do that. I will say, too, prior to this actual ML institute, I did a book study with the state where we looked at Dr. Vania Soto and her shadowing, ML Shadowing.

Her book was all around the tool to go in and shadow students. And I was newer into this role, and so I really wanted to understand the day in the life of an ML student. And so for three years, we showed students in our district, and we looked at mi- elementary, middle, and high school students. So we [00:23:00] took students and we followed them as they transitioned from elementary to middle and to high for three years, and we looked at their entire day.

We would go in for two-hour time slots and just in different times of the day, and see what was their experience in our school district as an ML learner. And it was extremely insightful into what their day looked like, and how as a district we were supporting them in learning the language. And I will say the biggest finding that we had was we were over-supporting our students.

We were not giving them the opportunities to struggle, and that is where the learning occurs. The learning occurs in that productive struggle, and we were not doing that enough. It didn’t really matter the curriculum at that point. It was we were trying to … And this is, this comes from a good place, where educators, we see someone struggling or a student struggling, and we wanna support them.

We [00:24:00] wanna throw everything at them to support them. But what we were doing is they learned to, that they didn’t have to do anything, that eventually the answers would come from the teacher, or eventually we would move on. Or if I didn’t say anything, they would give me all of the sentence frames or the vocabulary.

They would just give it all to me, and I didn’t have to really try as hard. So that was probably the biggest eye-opener in following those students, along with The discourse that just didn’t happen. We just didn’t have a lot of student discourse happening. And in doing that for three years and then going into this ML Summer Institute, it was like we had this perspective of what a day in the life of a multilingual learner looked like in our district.

And then also too, as a- on the teachers end, how do we support that through co-teaching, through co-planning, to put those pieces in there where they do have that productive struggle, and we are using our grade level high-quality instructional [00:25:00] materials to support that. 

Andrew Brandt: Loving this theme that I feel I am seeing come up over and over again.

One of them, and you mentioned it earlier, I loved how passionately you mentioned and talked about celebrating the multilingualism of our students and their culture And then later talking about really understanding their needs, and then now listening to you talk about shadowing students, and then you talked about telling the story of students.

I love the both, I think the intentionality with which you focus on understanding your students, ’cause that act alone really moves mountains and moves per- shifts perspectives, both for yourself and for your team, to just take time to sit and listen and to observe and to understand. I’ve got a follow-up question, ’cause I’m really intrigued by the shadowing.

You said two-hour segments. Are you following just certain students? 

Jennifer Lovellette: Yeah, so we picked, we picked a couple students at the elementary. Two students in elementary, two at the middle school. We tried to do different grades, and we did feeder schools. The kids would move from ele- we knew they would move [00:26:00] from elementary into a specific middle school, and then into a specific high school.

So that way we could follow them. Our county is pretty big, so we have a northern end and a southern end, so we really focused on more so the northern end of our district, where our multilingual learner population is a lot larger. And we also looked at, we do have an immersion program, a Spanish immersion program within our district, so we looked at students who were newcomers in our district, and we put into immersion classes to help support their native language.

So we tried to pick a span. We also looked at duly identified students. We were very selective in the students that we picked, ’cause we wanted to have a good variety of students. And then what we did is in the beginning, middle, and end, and this follows Dr. Soto’s model that she has in her book. In the beginning of the school year, we picked two hour time spans at different points in the day, so we came back three times to see that student, so that way we had a full picture of what their day looked like.

[00:27:00] And then we did that for each of the students. It took a lot of time, and then we did that in the middle of the school year and at the end of the school year. But just the value of the data that we collected was incredible, and then we did that. So then students who were in fifth grade, when they moved up to sixth grade, we then visited them in middle school to see how they changed from that transition of elementary to middle, and then the same thing with high school.

And it was an incredible experience. I am really lucky that we were able to do that here in our district, and have the time to be able to do that and collect that data. And then what we ended up doing is we did that for three years, and we transitioned into handing it over to our ML coordinators in each of the buildings.

So each building in our school district has an ML coordinator, and they oversee the ML programming that’s happening in each of the buildings. They do all of the testing, the screeners. They support classroom teachers around language acquisition and all of that. So [00:28:00] we transitioned The shadowing to them, so that way if they did have a new student who arrived and they wanted to get an idea of what their day was like, they had those tools to shadow that student.

And so I think it’s been great. It was very insightful. We were able to share out with administrators, and it was an eye-opener for them, too. For me, as a secondary person, it was fantastic to be able to go into an elementary school and see our little multilingual learner friends there, and just, like, their day.

It was, it was very cute. Confirmed that I am a secondary person just in my mindset. But it was great, and then my elementary colleague, she came with me to secondary, and it was a big eye-opener for her to see the secondary world, too. It was great. It- from that it blew up to, ooh, what can we do next? To support these kids.

Now that we see what the day looks like for them, and we look at our dually identified students, our ML students, what is– where can we support the [00:29:00] best to get them to grow in language? Because language is the barrier. The academics, it’s there. We just need to, we need to break down that language barrier so that way they can access that.

So it was great. 

Mandi Morris: You noted that one of your biggest takeaways is the students were being over-scaffolded in their instruction. And I just at NABE here recently, there was a lot of conversation around over-scaffolding students, and I went to a session that addressed that, and it, the room was packed. A lot of conversation, a lot of questions around how do we know when to implement what scaffolds, and how do we know when to take them away?

How did you address that learning, that takeaway for your school district to help educators feel more confident about when a scaffold is needed and when it’s time to remove a scaffold? And then sometimes the skill shifts or the need shifts, the rigor adjusts, and you have to add those scaffolds back in.

It’s this constant adjustment with [00:30:00] formative assessment. What did that look like for you guys to actually implement on the learning? 

Jennifer Lovellette: Yeah. One thing about our district is at the secondary level, about 80% of our multilingual learner population are long-term ML students, and most of them, about 80% of them, were born here in the US.

So then we are trying to figure out how do they start with us in kindergarten, and now they’re getting ready to graduate. So for 12 years we had them, and they are still a multilingual learner. And I think that, that was the biggest piece too, in working with we’re over-scaffolding. Like I’m going into classrooms and we’re seeing kids who are just sitting there, and they’re passing along in these content classes and moving up, but the language isn’t coming.

So what’s happening? And we know with BICS and CALP that social language comes like around [00:31:00] three years. So the students will are in the hallways, they’re talking to their friends, and it sounds like they’re acquiring the English, but then it’s not transferring into academics So then comes the discussion.

We hear them in the class- or out in the hallways with their friends talking, but then they get into the classroom, and they’re not able to complete the assignments. They’re struggling really with the academic vocabulary and having those discussions in class. So then that is, what are the opportu- opportunities that we are giving them to learn English?

Where are those opportunities? Because if you think about it, students, when they’re home, they’re probably speaking their native language. They’re probably at home with family, and they’re talking in their native language. Maybe in school, they might be with a group of students who have the same na- native language, and they’re speaking in that native language.

So where, as a teacher, are you giving them that opportunity to learn English? That’s in your classroom. So in the classroom, what [00:32:00] supports and what scaffolds are we giving to help grow that language? Are we taking away opportunities because we’re giving them so much support In an assignment, or we’re not giving them the opportunity to have that student discourse where they’re talking it through and rehearsing what they’re gonna say before sharing out an answer or giving that time, that wait time that we talk a lot about with multilinguals, to then respond.

So y- we look at all of those supports, and when we were shadowing, it just seemed like so much. It was so much in terms of the discourse wasn’t happening that they really needed. The assignments that were being given were almost to a point where anybody could come in at any time and do that assignment without the knowledge of what the lessons were, just because there was so much over-scaffolding.

And we do have those conversations with teachers, “When do I pull back? When do I give [00:33:00] more?” And it comes down to the individual student and having a discussion around that individual student and what their needs are. So we want them to struggle. We want them to get frustrated because that’s where the learning is gonna happen.

But we don’t want them to get to a point where they just give up and they don’t even try. So we do start off the year, I always tell teachers, “Your supports in the beginning of the school year should not look the same at the very end,” because then that shows me there has been no growth over that year.

So what we start out in the beginning is we do give more support in the very beginning of the school year, and then as we work through that curriculum, we start to slowly pull back piece by piece. It doesn’t have to be we take everything away all of a sudden, but we slowly… If you gave sentence frames in the very beginning with a word bank for them to pull from, hopefully maybe by halfway through the school year, that word bank isn’t needed, but we still need the sentence frames to help with the structure, sentence writing, and all of that.

So it is [00:34:00] dependent on the student and how quickly they grow, but we do wanna make sure that we give those opportunities to acquire the language and we’re not constantly just giving them everything, and we wanna see them struggle. It’s okay if they’re not getting 100% on every single assignment. We, you look at what they’re able to do in the very beginning of the school year and at the very end, and we look at the growth that they’ve made in their language acquisition.

Mandi Morris: Dr. Lavallee, uh, you mentioned earlier that- Your dad was from Kentucky, your mom was from South Korea. Tell us some about your journey into the world of education, and did you grow up in Kentucky? Did you grow up in Delaware? Tell us some about how did you get to where you are now doing this work that you’re so passionate about.

Jennifer Lovellette: My journey has been funny. I feel like my path I thought would go here, and then it’s taken a couple detours here, and I have absolutely loved every little detour I have taken, because it’s put me right here in this spot. I grew up in a culture, in a society where [00:35:00] assimilation was big. So it was be like everybody else.

My mom really pushed speaking English. My mom, when she came over when she was 18, enrolled herself in high school so she could learn English herself, which was just amazing. She learned it within a year, and it was incredible. But we still celebrated all of the cultural pieces that she celebrated as a child growing up in South Korea.

I spent my summers in Kentucky with my grandmother during summer break, and I got that whole side of, from my father with great home-cooked meals, sitting out on the front porch. I have a distant cousin who’s a country singer, and I soaked it all up as a kid. I just loved it all, not knowing that those experiences that I went through, some very challenging experiences where because of the way that I looked, some people automatically assumed I didn’t speak any English.

And so there were like weird experiences like that- [00:36:00] That have transferred into what I do now, where I want to know who the student is. I want to know their background, their journey to get here, because that is so important. We do some activities in some of our professional learning where we ask teachers, “What’s the first word that comes to mind about a multilingual learner?”

And for me, it’s brave. It’s brave to, to try and speak another language. It’s brave to come over here from another country at such a young age and try to learn the culture, learn the school system. That is the first word that always stands out to me, and I felt like that as a kid too, especially with my mother, how brave she was to come over at 18 not knowing anybody and making this amazing life for her, my father, and her kids.

And I think a lot of my strength comes from her. But in my journey to get where I am, I did not know that I wanted to go into education until my last [00:37:00] year of my undergrad. I always thought as a young child that I would go into medicine or engineering. I just have this really a math mind. And then one day I went and tutored a student in an elementary school, and in that second I knew I was done.

I just, education was my way. So I started out teaching, and I have worked with multilingual learners over, over 20 years now in classes that I’ve taught at middle school and high school, and then even at the collegiate level where I’ve taught college classes of s- of teachers wanting to go into that.

It’s been an interesting ride, and now I’m here at- working for our district, helping to support our multilingual learners and seeing, especially with the literacy side of things, how that is all connected. And we’re doing a new implementation of a new curriculum for English classes this year, and seeing how literacy really builds into language acquisition and where that [00:38:00] kind of falls in with our students too.

One thing that I wanna point out too is that at the secondary, one of the biggest challenges that we’re having is the influx of newcomers that we’ve received at the secondary level, especially at the high school level, are older and have these gaps in education. And so we get these students who are 16 starting out in ninth grade and have not been in school since third grade And so now the goal then is to get these kids to graduate and get all of these credits that are required for graduation.

And I think when I took on this role outside of the shadowing and the ML Institute, one of the other biggest challenges was our dropout rate for our multilingual learners, and how do we keep these kids in school? How do we get the graduation rates up and the credits for these students? And one of the conferences I went to, there were these great presenters from Baltimore City Schools, and they had a, an amazing newcomer program.

[00:39:00] And I just soaked up every word that they said, and afterwards I reached out to them and I said, “Hey, could I come and visit your newcomer programming and just kind of see what it’s all about?” And they were so wonderful and welcomed us. And so we spent a s- a, a whole day in Baltimore City Schools and visited their programming, and the whole time I’m thinking, “How do I take this back to our district?

How could I make this work In our district. And we did. We came back, we created a newcomers SLIFE programming at the high school. We mapped out trajectories for year one through year four. We have English language development courses, three levels. We also have what we call language of mathematics, language of science, and language of social studies, because what we were noticing is the academic vocabulary and the background knowledge, especially the background knowledge, was lacking for a lot of our newcomer and SLIFE students.

And so [00:40:00] we created this entire programming. We are in year two of implementation, and we have kept students from dropping out. We have seen growth in the language development courses of our students, and excitement for school. To me, that, that was the biggest thing, is those teachers who teach those courses are amazing teachers, and that relationship building that is so important at that age and at that level is there.

The time is there to do that, for them to trust you, and it’s just been amazing. I think there have been students who have come up and they’re not multilingual learners, and they’re like, “I, I think I wanna be in the language of mathematics course. I think that would help me in my algebra.” So it’s been fantastic, and it’s been exciting to watch.

And the teachers for the language of classes, we utilize the HQIM that’s being taught in the actual math, science, and social studies classes. And we take that [00:41:00] curriculum and we build the academic vocabulary and the background knowledge in those language of classes so that way… And it’s parallel, it’s at the same time, so that way when they are going to algebra, they’ve already learned what a coordinate plane is in language of mathematics, so then that transfers directly into the credit-bearing class that they need so they can be successful.

In a– Last year when we first rolled this out, one of the math teachers, she’s, “I gotta tell you, our multilingual learners are killing it. Better than the regular students that are in the classroom. Their grades, just night and day.” So it’s been amazing, and I feel very lucky that I was able to create a program like that in our district and implement it last year.

Mandi Morris: That is absolutely phenomenal. I think I– Like, I am listening to you talk about this and just, like, my mind is blown. That is such a strategic And supportive approach. I feel like when we talk a lot about [00:42:00] SIFE and SIFE students, it’s a lot of, “I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to do.” And then we have these, “Okay, you could do some type of five-year plan, or you could…”

Um, we’re t- we’re trying to find ways to accommodate it, but then putting really the burden on the student and the family to make decisions, academic decisions about here are your three or four options. Which one do you want to do? What you’re offering is a pathway that is just illuminated for your students and your parents that is incredibly supportive.

Here is the way. Here is how we are going to support your student to success, and no wonder why your dropped, dropout rates are decreasing. Students must feel such a level of ability and confidence having these classes that are teaching all of the language they need in order to be successful in content classes.

This is just, what a brilliant plan, and to roll that out, I feel like a lot of schools would’ve started with one content area, and it sounds like [00:43:00] you went big. You did all of 

Jennifer Lovellette: it. It’s funny because I remember when I took on this role, I, I have … Probably my weakness is I see everything I wanna do, and I try to tackle it all at once, and I really have to pull back and say, “Okay, let’s, I’m gonna work on this one thing.

Here is a big piece. That’s where I’m gonna put all of the energy into.” And I was just very fortunate to have a great director and other district members to support me in that, and support me in creating these courses and this plan, and allowed me to move forward. And I had teachers who were like, “Yes, I wanna teach that class.

Let’s get it going.” And just seeing, we have students now who would’ve dropped out, and they’re going on to college. They’re going on to … We have Del Tech is our community college. They’re eager to sign up for that their senior year. It’s just when you don’t set the bar down here, it’s [00:44:00] amazing to see how far kids fly and how far they go.

It’s just incredible. And when you have the support of teachers who truly care about these students and how successful they are after high school, after they leave us, it makes the world of a difference. And we are f- very fortunate to have that here in our district. 

Andrew Brandt: Dr. Lovella, I’m loving listening to this.

I just, your energy, you really love this work, don’t you? I’m just gonna take a stab here, but I’m guessing at night when you’re going to bed, your wheels are turning about, “Okay, there’s this student, or there are these… What can we do to better serve them?” And I’m even guessing that when you’re on vacation on the beach, you’re thinking about it.

I, uh, I– And I love that. I, I had a colleague I used to work with, and she said, “My, my kids have just learned to know that for me, doing this work that I do is like going to Six Flags.” I just love the work I do so much, that it’s like every day is like an adventure of trying to figure this out. It’s a challenge.

It’s how do we serve these [00:45:00] kids? And you can feel that energy, and I think there’s a lot of power in that for the team around you as well, who can just feel that excitement and energy that you have. My question is this: What advice do you have for Maybe one of our listeners, or maybe it’s somebody from your team who is feeling like some of that excitement and energy is waning a little bit.

What do you, what do you recommend to channel some of that excitement to just go do this work? 

Jennifer Lovellette: Yeah. So two things, I think. We’re in the year where I’ve been in classrooms a lot and buildings a lot, and I do see that teachers are at a point of saturation. It’s, we’re a little bit over halfway through the year.

There’s a lot of behavioral things outside of just classroom instruction that are pounding down on them right now. And to me, it’s connect back to the student. So take the time, talk to your students. Building relationships and getting to know your students is incredible because that’s your why. That’s why we do all of this.

And you’re right, I, at nighttime I think about all the things I’m excited to [00:46:00] do the next day or for the rest of the week, and I get to do that. And there’s that saying, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, right? And not to say that I don’t have stressful days or down days, but I look at the kids that we have in our district and how amazing they are and their families.

One of the things that we did in our district for a couple years is we celebrated diversity with a diversity night in April’s Diversity Month, and we had each of those buildings pick a country, and the students helped to get information around that country, talk about if we had any of those students from the country, they were excited to share their culture.

And we had a night where we had all these different countries set up, tables set up. We had performances. We had dances. Our community donated food. We didn’t want anybody to pay for anything, so everything we got was donations. And it was incredible. That, when I look around and I see the families and the kids [00:47:00] that we have in our district, and just how amazing and supportive they are in our community, that is the why.

And I think it’s important when we are stressed out and kind of losing sight of things because of the hundred other things that we have to take care of as a teacher, we bring it back to that. We bring it back to the kids in our classroom, their families, and this is the reason why we, we do what we do. 

Andrew Brandt: I love that.

I absolutely love that. 

Mandi Morris: Dr. Lovella, if you have a new teacher in your school district, think of like your fresh teacher and it’s a little bit of like where do I start? What’s most important? What is the advice that you give to that new teacher? 

Jennifer Lovellette: Start small Pick something small and do it consistently. So don’t try to come out of the gates with 10 scaffolds or 10 supports.

Pick one thing, do it well, and do it consistently. It might not work the first time or the first couple of times you try it, but keep with it and stick to it. It might [00:48:00] be a routine that you get the kids into. It could be wait time as a support. Don’t give up the first time you do it and you don’t get a response.

Keep- pick something small and keep with it. 

Andrew Brandt: I love that. So then my next question is similar. What advice do you have for a new director, a new, like, coordinator who’s taking the leadership role Over a team of ML instructors 

Jennifer Lovellette: Yeah. So I think my advice would be to listen. Go meet with your teachers who are in the field, and they’re in there every day with the students, and listen to them.

Listen to what their needs are, listen to what the struggles are, what’s going well, what they, where they’re finding success at, and take all of that information back and figure out how you can support them for the needs that they’re having, but also celebrating the successes that they’re also having.

Mandi Morris: You’ve implemented a lot of really big and significant changes in your school district, of course, with your team, and you’ve mentioned your director and other district personnel [00:49:00] that are there alongside of you. What is something that you feel like has had the biggest impact? If someone’s listening today and they think, “Man, you’ve done so many great things, and I, I don’t know where to start.

Like, I wanna do all of the things that you talked about today,” what is one thing that you just if you do one change in your school district, like this is the thing that has brought us the biggest impact? 

Jennifer Lovellette: I think it’s the collaboration. We, collaboration with not only myself, my director, teachers, colleagues in what our district needs, but also collaboration within school buildings and sitting down with teachers.

There’s so much value in listening to a sixth grade teacher in one building talking about the struggles and how she navigated those struggles, and another sixth grade teacher in another building maybe talking about those same struggles, but unsure of how to navigate that. So the collaboration between the two, when we’re able to bring those teachers together, [00:50:00] and I’m listening, and they’re sharing out, and they’re vulnerable in that piece too because that trust and relationship has been built.

But the collaboration that we have with the ML Institute, bringing everybody together, listening to each other, and the successes that we’re having or the challenges, is extremely, has been, I think has been probably the biggest catalyst for change in our district. Yeah. 

Andrew Brandt: I love that. What book or author are you following that is just delighting you right now?

Jennifer Lovellette: Let’s see. Gosh, I’ve so many that I read. Andrea Hoeningsveld just put out a new book on duly, supporting our duly identified students, so looking at special education students who are also multilingual learners. I’m reading, I actually have her book here already tabbed. So it is Dimensions of Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners.

That is one. There is a broadcast on NPR. Her name is Shereen Marashi, and [00:51:00] she does a podcast on code switching, and she presented out at a WIDA conference. And I love listening to her because the code switching is telling stories, and she is from Puerto Rico. Her family is from Puerto Rico, and she talks about her family members who are older who have passed, and she was able to record those stories before they passed.

And hearing the voices tell the story of just different things that happened in their life, how they mi- immigrated to the US or just listening to that and having that recorded and how after someone passes, you don’t have those recordings, you don’t have those stories, you can’t hear their voice, and how important and impactful that was in her life.

I, I believe it was her grandfather that kind of started all that. She started recording him telling these stories. And I always think about that when listening to our kids and their families and our students and [00:52:00] just the journeys that they’ve taken to be where they’re at today. So she’s another great one that I like listening to, and I believe she still has her session on Barbend.

Mandi Morris: Dr. L- Lavallee, this has been just such a pleasure to talk with you today. The work that you’re doing is inspiring. It is truly incredible what it sounds like you have been able to accomplish in your school district in not so many years, and it just makes me feel excited to know all of the students that you’re impacting and all of the students that are just getting this incredible system of support when they show up at school from these amazing teachers that sound really willing to do this work.

It was a wonderful conversation. Thank you for being here. 

Jennifer Lovellette: Thank you so much for having me and for allowing me to share the great things that are happening in our district. This was wonderful. Thank you.