Kate Seltzer: So I always say I learned to teach English language arts by teaching bilingual kids, and I’ve really never known any other way to teach than by thinking a lot about scaffolding and differentiation and attention to language and of course language and interaction with all of the other things we like to talk about.

Identity, power, right? All wrapped up together. 

Mandi Morris: Welcome to the ML Chat podcast. I’m Mandi Morris, your host here with my co-host, Andrew. Wow. This conversation today left me feeling so hopeful and inspired. 

Andrew Brandt: Totally. It was. It was very real with Kate, and I love talking through both Translanguaging and advocacy and really having a common thread of just connecting with our students.

Where they are. 

Mandi Morris: So much of her work and what she talks about is about relationships. It made me think a lot about when you have that relationship. Bucket filled up. There’s [00:01:00] so much that you can do to empower your students in their journey of learning, and she just focuses on that from the perspective of Translanguaging and we talked about her current book, her new book that’s coming out.

There’s just so much goodness here, both in theory, but also in practice for what teachers can take and do in their classrooms. 

Andrew Brandt: Yeah, and I love the, also the, the emphasis on his teachers. I think there’s a lot of failing of all the things we need to know and be able to do and accomplish and teach. And just the emphasis on just being open, finding where your kids are connecting with them, and just showing up vulnerably and doing the work.

And really that’s where a lot of the power of instruction is. ’cause we can be curious about where our students are and connect with that. So I just, yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation. 

Mandi Morris: I did as well. So here we go. You’re gonna love this podcast today. Let’s go. 

Today’s guest is Dr. Kate Seltzer, associate professor of ESL and bilingual education at Rowan University, a former high school [00:02:00] ELA teacher in the South Bronx. She’s recognized for co-authoring the first teacher facing book on implementing Translanguaging pedagogy, the Translanguaging classroom. Her work focuses on helping educators recognize and leverage the linguistic strength of bi and multilingual learners while advancing more affirming and equitable language practices in schools.

Kate, welcome to the podcast today. 

Kate Seltzer: Thank you so much, Mandi. So happy to be here. 

Mandi Morris: I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I was at WIDA in the fall and was in your session, and at some point in your session made this connection like, wait, this is. Kate like Priscilla’s, Kate Priscilla is an incredible educator on flashlight’s curriculum and instruction team, which we don’t spend a lot of time on the podcast talking about flashlight, but this is an opportunity to just shout out.

Priscilla is an amazing educator doing incredible work here at Flashlight on our team, and I came to you after the podcast or after the. Session at WIDA [00:03:00] and was just able to make that connection and I just really enjoyed your presentation and it was just so fun that we had a human on earth in common 

Kate Seltzer: and a really good human in common.

For sure. Yeah. Priscilla and I started our teaching careers together. A very special place in my heart. She’s an absolutely wonderful teacher and is very good at teaching other people how to bring some of what she does into their own classrooms. 

Mandi Morris: Absolutely. And even in the work that we’ve done, we’ve referenced Kate, your work on Translanguaging and trying to think about what does it look like to apply TRANSLANGUAGING into curriculum and supplemental curriculum for English language learners.

Of course, as educators, we know we can have. Great practices in our classroom, but when we’re constantly having to retrofit our curriculum, it’s very taxing. So we are on the other side, on the development side, really thinking about how those practices can impact the creation of resources. [00:04:00] But Kate, I would love to just.

Start here with going back in time and hearing about your journey as an educator, and then take us through where you are today. We wanna hear about your book, but yeah, let’s go back in time. And where did Kate start? Her education. Career. 

Kate Seltzer: Okay. So we’ll go back in time. So I. I had never planned on being a teacher.

That was not when I was thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up, that was not necessarily something that had come to my mind. And then after I graduated from college, from undergraduate, I, even though I had been someone who felt like she always knew what she wanted to do, I got to the end of my undergraduate degree and was like, I’m not ready to do any one thing.

And so I decided to do some travel. And so I. Moved to Guatemala in Central America and I was working at an NGO there, and it was a school and a nonprofit [00:05:00] and I was there for six months and just had a really formative experience. And part of what I was doing there was working with little kids. And so when I came back to New York where I was living at the time, I thought maybe I’ll try my hand at working with little kids.

And so I. Put my name in for the New York City Teaching Fellows, which was is still an alternative certification program in New York City, where after a very short seven week training period over a summer, you get your own classroom that fall. And so even though I had saw myself as working with little kids, I think there was a more of a need at the secondary level.

And so I was placed in a secondary. English language arts track, and I got a job in the South Bronx. And so that’s where I began teaching. And because I spoke Spanish, I was put on a team, a grade level team that served all of the [00:06:00] students labeled English language learners in the school, which in the South Bronx was a large percentage of the student population.

So I always say I learned to teach English language arts by teaching bilingual kids, and I’ve really never known any other way. To teach then by thinking a lot about scaffolding and differentiation and attention to language and of course language and interaction with all of the other things we’d like to talk about.

Identity power, right? All wrapped up together. So I was a high school ELE teacher for about six years. And then I really found myself asking a lot of questions about bigger picture questions about how we approach teaching multilingual learners. And a good friend of mine who is also a very well known person in the field now, Nelson Flores was my co-teacher actually at the high school where I taught.

And he really persuaded me to go check out the CUNY Graduate [00:07:00] Center, which is where I ultimately wound up getting my PhD and meeting Elia Garcia, who was my mentor, is still my mentor, my academic mom, and learning about. What we call Translanguaging from her Ophelia Garcia is really the, she brought Translanguaging as a theory from its context where it really began in Wales with students in Wales who were alternating input and output English and Welsh and Ophelia really saw some deep connections to see.

Mostly Latina population of learners in New York and in the us And so she really brought Translanguaging into the US context specifically for Latina Spanish speaking students. And I learned. Everything there is to know about Translanguaging from her and, and we co-authored the Translanguaging classroom together in 2015.

And then very recently I took [00:08:00] over as lead author on a second edition of that book. And it has very much been, I always say Translanguaging is not a teaching program. It’s not a curriculum, it’s not a set of strategies. It’s really a way of approaching. The overall education of bilingual children. It’s a way of thinking about language and how language works and all of that I really have brought with me both from my experience as a teacher and my experience learning molia.

Andrew Brandt: Oh wow. That sounds like such an amazing journey and of course an amazing mentor in Ophelia. I’m curious, so for those of our audience that have heard about Translanguaging, ’cause I think most have, but maybe don’t know. What it is? How would you describe Translanguaging? 

Kate Seltzer: Yeah, so Translanguaging is two different things.

It’s, but they’re interrelated. So first it’s a sociolinguistic theory, right? It’s this idea that bilingual people do not have two separate language systems in their head, right? They have one [00:09:00] integrated linguistic repertoire, and they choose features from that repertoire. When they interact with different people, they’re in different contexts.

They’re doing different things, right? In terms of translanguaging as theory, it’s a theory of language, right? It’s a theory of bilingualism and multilingualism, which really went against, I think a lot of how the field thought about bilingualism for a long time, right? Which was this separation of language rather than an integrated model, which is what Translanguaging says.

So from that theory, there’s the other side, which is practice. Right, and so that’s, how do we take this sociolinguistic theory, right? That those don’t separate their language practices, that every human being has one integrated repertoire. How do we recognize that in the reality of daily classroom life and translanguaging as practice is leveraging the translanguaging or the flexible language, use that bilingual, that is a norm in bilingual homes and communities and [00:10:00] making classrooms.

Look more like those bilingual homes and communities than something that is really more along, more aligned with a monolingual norm. And so Translanguaging as theory is very much informing translanguaging as practice. And the practice piece is, I think what I talk about a lot with teachers. 

Andrew Brandt: It’s so interesting ’cause when I came into my career and started first, started working with school districts around multilingual instruction.

At that point they’d call it, I’d hear about code switching and how it was frowned upon on like how you gotta keep, you gotta keep languages separate ’cause then the code switching. So what, and I’m guessing some of the audience, some people are probably still a little bit of that camp or that where we came from.

What do you think we learned that has evolved our thinking on this? 

Kate Seltzer: Yeah. The way I try to explain the difference between translanguaging and code switching is it’s not so much in the presentation of the. Language performance, right? What we call code switching or translanguaging probably looks and [00:11:00] sounds the same, right?

But it’s the underlying thinking that’s different when you talk about translanguaging versus code switching. So code switching assumes that there are two systems to switch between. Translanguaging would say there aren’t two different systems to switch between. We have one integrated. Holistic repertoire and we make choices about the features from that repertoire that we want to employ at any time.

And I think the thing about bilingual people is that they very much have to suppress certain features at certain times. Right? Very few of us are using our full linguistic repertoire at any one time. But translanguaging is what happens when. Bilingual people do not have to suppress any of their features, and they can communicate using their full linguistic repertoire.

Now, that will look or sound a lot like what you might have thought of as code switching, but it’s the thinking that lies beneath it. It’s that theory [00:12:00] piece that is different between the two concepts. 

Mandi Morris: I think something that stands out to me as well in a difference is code switching felt often like there’s a right and a wrong language that you should be using in this environment.

There’s a better option, there’s a preferred option. And while we understand that students being in a an ELD classroom, being in a classroom where their goal is to become proficient in English, that is like a target that they’re working towards, but. Code switching didn’t amplify the benefit of that home language in the same way that I think the work behind Translanguaging is doing.

It feels like I, I don’t know if I almost wanna call it like a movement behind Translanguaging, but it feels. Bigger. It feels like a shift in thinking that, I love how you described it as there’s one thing happening, right? And whether you speak three or four or five languages like it, it’s coming from one [00:13:00] place, not five different places.

And I just appreciate about this shift that I feel like is happening in our field, that it students are just more empowered that those languages or language, additional language. They bring you benefit. 

Kate Seltzer: Yeah, I think you’re spot on. And I think that, you know what I think Translanguaging research has tried to show is that that kind of flexible fluid languaging that might have once been described as code switching is not a deviation from a monolingual norm, right?

It is the norm, right? It is the norm and has always been the norm in bi and multilingual. Contexts, and I think for a long time, certainly like you, Andrew, when I was learning about teaching and hearing about code switching, there was this idea that there was some deficit oriented thinking, I think around code switching, right?

If a student doesn’t know enough of one language, they’ll [00:14:00] switch into the other, right? So it was almost like compensatory, right? Rather than. No, it’s just that’s the way that bilingual people use language, right? It’s very different than the way monolingual people use language, right? So I do think Translanguaging is recognizing that norm, rather than saying it’s some kind of a deviation from a norm, 

Andrew Brandt: it feels more inclusive.

It’s just something, as we talk about it, it just feels like the whole approach is really inclusive of all the student brings. And I don’t know, just I, I really like how it feels. We talk about it. I’m curious, I’m gonna put you in the spot, Kate. Is there a story that comes to mind of a student of maybe, is there a face we can put with this of what Translanguaging looks like in action?

Kate Seltzer: Mandi will remember this from my WIDA presentation, and this is actually a video I came across on Twitter a million years ago, and I use it in presentations all the time ’cause I think it’s such a great video. But it’s a little girl. She’s probably three, maybe four, and her name is [00:15:00] Samantha. And Samantha is in a conversation with her caretaker, her father.

And this little girl wants nothing more. She’s sitting on her sink. She wants nothing more than to wash her hands. We don’t know why this is so important to Samantha, but it’s incredibly important to her and she and her father are arguing, right? You just, he’s saying, you just washed your hands, and she’s saying, no, I’m dirty.

Look, and of course this whole interaction is happening in this absolutely beautiful, brilliant mix of English and Spanish and everything in between. And at one point the father says. They their hands, like why? Right? Like this very trilingual, mixed, flexible interaction. And of course they’re like yelling at each other and this adult man is being owned by this three, 4-year-old child.

And it always gets a great laugh from the audience when I’m talking about it, but it’s also such a brilliant example of the communicative norm of. Multilingual children and [00:16:00] multilingual families. And the way that I talk about it in, in presentations that I do is a child, like there are millions of children like Samantha who go into schools every single year, are enrolled in kindergarten, and we have an option, right, as schools of how we look at them.

Do we look at them as people who are in need of, call it academic language, school language, more English. Or do we recognize them as brilliantly gifted linguists who are learning how to use language differently in school? So that’s a video I always love using, not only ’cause it’s funny, but because it’s so illustrative of everything we’re trying to do in terms of shifting perspective toward multilingual students in schools.

Andrew Brandt: And then on a personal level, I just have to laugh because I’ve got a three, almost 4-year-old and I’m pretty sure. You were probably in my bathroom when you recorded that video. ’cause that is just like such the norm right now. Of course she doesn’t speak Spanish, but she has her own language that I’m trying to [00:17:00] decode and communicate, and that is a day in the life.

Kate Seltzer: Yes, I always say anyone with a three or 4-year-old knows it doesn’t matter what languages you’re using, you know this. And I, I always say little kids are the best trans languages because they have not yet figured out that what they’re speaking are too named language. Right. They’re just speaking the way that their parents speak or their grandparents speak, or their community speaks.

And it’s really only often when you get to school that you learn, oh, actually what I’m speaking are two different quote unquote languages. Um, as little kids, even in monolingual English speaking homes have the same understanding right when they come to school, because. Every family, every person has their own way of using language that they then figure out how to integrate into their life at school.

Andrew Brandt: Yeah. This is something, Manny, you mentioned earlier, right and wrong, and that’s a kind of a theme that I feel has come up several times with our last guest, with [00:18:00] Jeff Weers. I know it came up around. A lot of times how we’ll deliver instruction with kind of the idea of, okay, let’s get the student to give the right answer.

And it’s just interesting to see that theme come up multiple times that for kids it’s just, it’s communication, it’s relationship, it’s learning, and it’s us that puts it in the box of this is language English, this is language Spanish, or whatever language it is, and how do we structure this and how do we put you in this box and how do we help you do what is quote unquote right and miss the bigger picture.

Kate Seltzer: A colleague of mine, Jonathan Rosa, has a great line. I heard him say once at a talk he gave that we’ve met many children, many young people who have a problem with school. There are very few young people who have a problem with learning. Right. And I think making that distinction between what we expect in school and what we expect from.

People is, is really important and I think for a very long time, bi [00:19:00] and multilingual students have been misperceived. As having trouble with learning, when really it’s just a misalignment between their schooling and their lived experiences as bi multilingual people 

Mandi Morris: and you live in such a unique area and have an opportunity to teach and a unique area.

Many people who come on the show live in places where. There are six English learners in a building, or 10. Right. Really small numbers. They have more limited resources, and you’re talking about the exact opposite. You started out saying that you learned how to teach ELA in secondary setting. Two BI and multilingual learners.

I would love to hear you talk more about in practice. What did you learn from that experience and how has that impacted your work in the world of Translanguaging now? 

Kate Seltzer: Yeah, like you said, the norm of my. Classroom when I was a ninth and [00:20:00] 10th grade, ELA teacher was Translanguaging. There I, I don’t even know how to imagine a classroom that did not have translanguaging, which is to say that there was never a time when it looked or sounded like a monolingual English space.

And so that looked like. I would, because I used mostly English in the classroom. I would do like a, a little mini lesson, would organize our learning. And then when students were in collaborative groups, they were engaging with that learning, using any language, small group conversations, group work, project work was always very flexible in terms of linguistic process.

Even if then at the end of their group work, they were producing something. That was in English, so I really learned how just because the product is rendered in one language or another, the process can be very [00:21:00] flexible and multilingual. And in fact, even if I had policed the process, had said, we can only think, brainstorm, write, pre-write.

In English for an English text, the process would’ve been multilingual anyway because multilingual students were doing it right? And so I think one of the things I learned as a teacher of bilingual students is the sooner you can recognize, respect, leverage students’ bilingualism in their learning, not only does learning in English follow, but your relationship is.

What is so important, right? All students, all people want to be heard. Respected thought of as people with dignity. And I think when we recognize students’ full linguistic identities, we are treating them with dignity and with respect. And the relationships I had with students were, were always [00:22:00] one of the strongest parts of my practice.

Mandi Morris: Kate, how do you convince teachers that are really uncomfortable with losing control of the classroom or that feeling of. But I don’t know what they’re saying. I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know what’s going on. And it comes from a good place. It come, right? It can come from a heart of I really want them to be successful and I don’t know how to ensure they’re being successful when I might have 3, 4, 8 different languages in the classroom and I, I don’t know how to control this.

And I think education does attract a lot of like very type A, like a weird type a bunch. And there might be a little bit of that of it’s okay to let go some. I also love what you said. Even if you had policed to them and said, you can do this only in English, they would have spoken in multiple languages Anyway, that’s just like facing the brutal facts, right?

Like it’s happening anyway. But how do you talk to that teacher? [00:23:00] And say, you know what? It’s gonna be okay. Or how do you coach them to get to a place of accepting this is really going to strengthen the outcome. 

Kate Seltzer: Yeah. This comes up in almost every interaction I have with groups of teachers who are learning about translanguaging, and like you said, I don’t.

Think it typically comes from a place of bigotry or maliciousness. It comes from a fear of not being able to do their job well, and that I can completely understand and empathize with. And so one of the things I always talk about is exactly what you just said, whether you allow it or not. The metaphor we use in the book is the Corte, right?

A current of students. Translanguaging is always flowing through your classroom. We as teachers have the choice. Do we let it flow only below the surface or do we say, let’s bring it to the surface and use it right to do something? Not just for their English learning, but for interesting things to [00:24:00] learn about language and content.

We talk, I think I. Try to get teachers to talk really openly and honestly about what they fear, what makes them uncomfortable, and sometimes that are, that is deep seated ideology about what it means to be in a US classroom. Why do US classrooms have to be in English? Right, and sometimes the sort of hidden common sense that we bring with us into our teaching, it’s important to bring that to the surface and critique it.

And so that’s why when I’m talking about Translanguaging, you can’t talk about Translanguaging as just a set of strategies that any teacher anywhere could use at any time. You have to delve into some of that underlying stance, right? That’s why Stance is such an integral part of a Translanguaging classroom.

The stance we bring to our work. Either opens the door or slams it shut when it comes to possibility. And so I think getting teachers to, to talk not from a place of [00:25:00] shame, but from a place of curiosity, why does this make you uncomfortable? Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve felt right that building that empathy for among teachers?

’cause we’ve all been in the scenario where we have felt. Our language has been policed, and I don’t think really anyone would call that a good experience, right? And so getting teachers to recognize ways that their language practices have been constrained, even monolingual English speaking teachers, we all have examples of when our ways of using language were constrained or made shameful, or.

Deemed inappropriate and getting teachers to see like whether you mean to or not, right? Whether it is your intent or not. The impact of not allowing students to use their full linguistic repertoire to learn is an act of policing. Not just their language practices, but who they are. And yeah, really leaning into that and then talking about [00:26:00] what could it look like to do this in small ways.

That’s the work I try to do with teachers. 

Andrew Brandt: I love your word that you used with stance and what comes to mind for me. When you say stance, it really has to do with how are you relating with the kids and how are you being it so they can relate with you. ’cause as you mentioned earlier, this really comes down, this work is so relational and there’s something in human nature that when we’re feeling insecure or we’re in a place we aren’t, that’s new for us.

We tend to wanna move more towards control, towards structure, towards rigidity, towards what’s the script, what do I do? I think that’s just, that’s a human nature that we have to. Be aware of combat and I just want to focus on what you said is a great way to approach that is with curiosity. ’cause curiosity pushes, moves us back in the place of openness of just, Hey, I’m open.

I wanna know what your experience is and I wanna explore this with you. Um, because then that opens up that place where our students can relate with us and we can find that connection point. That helps pull us away from that human nature to want to be in [00:27:00] a position of control, which oftentimes moves much towards, okay, it’s gotta be in English ’cause I gotta make sure I can understand all this and it’s gotta have this structure and we gotta hit this, these items in the syllabus.

So I love that, that focus on curiosity. 

Kate Seltzer: Yeah, and I think you’re totally right that, and that’s what I mean with we, I always try to, for myself as a teacher, but also with teachers I work with to assume. Good intent always right? Which is that very few teachers get into the game to be like, yes, I get to police students’ languaging.

Right? No, we wanna do our best. And let’s face it, if you particularly are a teacher who does not share your students’ language practices. It’s hard work, right? Being a teacher of multilingual learners is hard work, and so we want to be able to do our work the best we can, and I think, like you said, Andrew, sometimes, that we are called to do that by limiting the scope of what we do in the classroom [00:28:00] to standardization, to English only to rigidity, and I think that as teachers, we can actually reject that.

We can make a choice to reject that framing and that call to be a certain kind of teacher and do something different. 

Mandi Morris: Kate, what would it look like for a teacher on the other side of this who is listening to you and feels the level of inspiration and excitement that I’m feeling right now and says I, I wanna do this.

I wanna jump in, I wanna figure it out, and it’s gonna be messy. It’s gonna be new. It might be a little bit uncomfortable, but I’m gonna try to change the way that I think about this type of instruction in my classroom. This whole approach. How could a teacher even get students involved? The conversation or where would you suggest that teacher gets started?

Kate Seltzer: Yeah, I think so much of this is about relationship building and learning about one another, and so even the simple [00:29:00] act of asking students their linguistic backgrounds about their. Cultural frameworks. It’s surprising, but that’s something I have been in so many situations where teachers decide to take up translanguaging and they learn how much more linguistically diverse their classroom is than they assumed.

Because I think particularly there are many bilingual students who speak English just fine. And unfortunately in US schools, what if a student speaks English just fine? Whatever else they’ve got going on is not really any of our business. Instead, right. If you try to enter any classroom that you teach, assuming linguistic diversity, you find more of it, right?

And so I would just encourage teachers at first to, just back to the point of curiosity, start a conversation about what languages even are there in the room, and if not in the room, in their homes. Right. Maybe there are children in the [00:30:00] class who have a bilingual grandparent who don’t think of themselves as bilingual, but have another language in their home all the time.

Getting that knowledge of the linguistic experiences of the people in the room is, I think, a necessary first start. You could do that through a survey. You could do that through an activity. I’ve seen lots of teachers do. You get a, an outline of a person and you have. Students assign the different languages in their lives to different colors, and then they fill in the outline of the person with the colors that that they assigned to each of the languages.

And then you ask them questions. Why did you put Spanish in the hands? Why is French in the feet? Why is English around the mouth? And it’s a really interesting conversation with students about the role that languages play in their lives and identities. And that is just a nice opening of the door to then doing some things around instruction that leverage those, that linguistic diversity [00:31:00] for learning.

Mandi Morris: When you think about translanguaging. How do you think about language and culture and how do you recommend teachers think about that or approach it? I think. There’s been a shift in the last, I don’t know, we could probably say 6, 7, 8 years around culture and identity and equity and how we approach those concepts in the classroom.

And I think it’s impossible to separate language and the lived experience around that language and the family’s lived experience around that language and how that impacts the home life. And then in turn, impacts how I see myself as a student in school and how I. I show up as a student in school. I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about like how do you coach or recommend teachers to think about language and culture?

Kate Seltzer: Yeah, I think when we think about culture, I think it’s helpful to think about it as like culture is a way of being a way of knowing, and [00:32:00] unfortunately in school we often have a. An assumed culture that often doesn’t really match up with the lived experiences and ways of knowing of multilingual students.

And so I think. As teachers getting to know through talking to students about their lives, talking to families more, I think than is often done. Right? Like maybe making space for relationship building with families that goes beyond parent-teacher conferences. That goes beyond school sanctioned events.

Right? And I’m not even talking about doing things like home visits. But assignments maybe that cross the barrier between home and school, right? Interview projects, art projects that involve people in the home. I think just learning more through your relationships with students and their families is a good place to start.

I’d also recommend text, right? I always recommend books and [00:33:00] music and art that is. Created with the cultures with from within the cultures where your students hail from, right? So if you are finding yourself suddenly with an influx of students from Somalia, right? Are there books you could read by Somali authors?

Is there music you could listen to? Are there creators on social media that you could follow? It does take a little bit of effort on our part, but learning a little bit about the. People and the places our students are from just helps you make connections and maybe gets you a little bit removed from the assumed culture that really pervades a lot of our schooling, 

Mandi Morris: and I think it’s just worth calling out here.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not just talking about ELD specialists or every state has their own acronym, but the teacher who feels most responsible for teaching explicitly language in their classroom, e and l, you’re talking about all teachers? Like every teacher that has these students [00:34:00] in their classroom shares this responsibility.

Kate Seltzer: A absolutely. I think so many E-L-D-E-N-L, however you wanna call them, teachers feel so isolated in their work because there is this sort of false notion. That they are the only ones responsible for the education of bi and multilingual students. Meanwhile, we know from research that the concept of collective efficacy, right?

The idea that if everyone feels it is their responsibility to teach multilingual learners will find more success in that community. And so I think whenever I’m doing professional development or working with schools, I try really hard to get a nice cross section of teachers. So that it really isn’t just the ENL teachers or the ELD teachers that I’m talking to very often, they’re the ones who are like, you’re preaching to the choir, right?

We get this. We know this. Can you tell my co-teacher? Or Can you tell my [00:35:00] department head? And yeah, I think it’s really important to get these ideas into mainstream. Teachers mindsets. 

Mandi Morris: I’d love to shift to your book in particular. We’ve been talking about your book and of course Wi wida, the presentation you shared.

What do you have coming next? Are you authoring, you teach at the university? I’m also have just a lot of curiosities around how has. Teaching future teachers shifted, like how does that feel different for you now than maybe when you were in school? So tell us a little bit about what are you doing now in your teaching work and then for as an author, what do you have coming up?

Kate Seltzer: Yeah, I think teaching has in some ways. Not changed at all since I was a teacher and in and in other ways changed very much. And you know what has been a big shift in the way that I prepare teachers is more and more teachers are not creating lesson plans or unit plans. They’re given a scripted curriculum [00:36:00] and that is what they are teaching.

And so then the experience is not how do you plan a lesson through a translanguaging lens? It’s how do you supplement an existing curriculum through a translanguaging lens? Right. What texts might you add? What different approaches could you take with this particular activity? It’s adapting and supplementing something that already exists.

And actually I think that’s really good practice because you never know what kind of a curriculum or a set of practices you’re going to come across when you join a school community. And it’s why stance is so important to the Translanguaging classroom book, right? You bring your stance with you wherever you go.

Your stance can sh can make change to any set of curricula, any set of standards, right, can be viewed through that stance. And so we talk, I talk with teachers a lot about that idea of stance and then we talk about how that stance can be reflected in [00:37:00] practice no matter what those practices are. So that’s a lot of the work I do with teachers.

We talk a lot now about. Students’ rights, families’ rights. The advocacy that is required of teachers has always been required of teachers of multilingual learners, but feels particularly urgent right now. And I think really getting new teachers, especially like pre-service teachers who are not yet in classrooms to see themselves as stepping into a legacy, right?

Like you are stepping into a role that has. A long legacy of advocacy and what would it look like to take up some of those advocacy practices in your schools in 2026? And so we, that sort of leads in, I think, to the current work I’m doing as an. Author and a researcher is with my colleague at Rowan University, also a scholar of bilingual education herself, Rebecca ris.

[00:38:00] We just completed a book on what we call critical advocacy, and that’s how you can develop meaningful, effective, and sustainable approaches to advocacy as teachers. And other educators in schools who work with multilingual learners. And the book is really about how do you take what you’re already doing, right?

Be that teaching or leading or organizing, parent coordinating any of these roles that are so important for multilingual learners. How do you approach those through a stance of advocacy and criticality? And I think more now than ever, teachers need to see themselves as. Teacher advocates who are doing work on their student’s behalf.

Every day because the reality is that teaching any marginalized group of students is always political, and especially nowadays, we can’t ignore the political nature of our work and think about how that political intersects with our [00:39:00] personal and our pedagogical work as well. 

Mandi Morris: This feels to me like it falls back into a frame that you were talking to.

About earlier, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, it’s happening. It’s impacting students’ lives. They’re showing up to school with these events happening in their lives. Around their lives. So that’s the reality. That’s the hard fact for teachers. 

Kate Seltzer: I think that’s such a nice connection. I think that so much of what I believe is integral to being a teacher period is.

Talking about the difficult things, acknowledging the difficult things, and that doesn’t mean it has to be heavy, right? I think that sometimes people think talking about difficult things or letting students talk about the difficult things that pervade their lives has to be heavy. It doesn’t. Sometimes it’s creating a classroom that.

Is joyful and [00:40:00] creative, and where students can find outlets in content, choosing great texts, bringing creative writing and composition into the room, making space for students to tell their own stories that can be joyful. At the same time, it’s difficult. And so I think, you know, I have a lot of hope for teachers of multilingual learners.

I always have, and I certainly do. Now, it’s acknowledging that this is not the first struggle. Teachers have ever been in to serve by multilingual students, but we can be a part of that future. Right. And of creating something better. And yeah, it’s a difficult time, but we have to also be hopeful. 

Andrew Brandt: So that actually makes me think a little bit about our conversation from earlier where we were talking about the current that’s happening in the classroom and earlier talking about language and how like.

We can, discussion will happen in another language. Let’s embrace it and bring it to the center. This feels like an extension of that. Where there is, there are lot of emotions. There are [00:41:00] events, there are things that are happening in their lives that current is there, and if we embrace it and bring it to the center, it can become the place of both discussion, connection and it’s relevant for our students.

And our students learn best when what they’re forming language around is relevant. For them and sometimes what’s relevant is hard. 

Kate Seltzer: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s helpful to think of not just the translanguaging, right? That current of students languaging that flows through classrooms, but the many intersecting, sometimes oppositional this, that run through through classrooms, political, this ideological, right?

That sometimes. But up against the Translanguaging Corte, right? And rather than pretending those currents don’t exist, pretending that teaching multilingual learners is a neutral enterprise, we can acknowledge all of those Es and [00:42:00] help our students to acknowledge them because it’s not just about teachers acknowledging those things and understanding those things students.

Preparing them to enter the world with an understanding of the intersections of how they use language and how they are perceived, and how they use language to do things in the world. In ways that challenge, status quo ideologies. That’s preparing students for more than a standardized test, right? That’s preparing students for making better worlds for themselves.

Andrew Brandt: Yeah. There’s so many layers of benefit to doing, taking that approach, and as we’re talking, I’m even thinking about sitting down at the dinner table with my girls who go, who are, I’ve got four girls who are 11, nine. Five and three. And so of course, as a father I’m thinking, okay, how do I teach them? And of course there’s a lot of things that I want them to learn, but what I’ve found is the best way to engage them is whatever’s relevant in the moment.

Even though I always have, I, I’ll have like maybe a lesson I want to teach. It’s often gonna, it won’t land or it will come across [00:43:00] as canned. But if I can just take something that’s current and just say, Hey, let’s unpack this. Let’s talk about it like. It’s where the learning actually happens and we can just kinda be open and discuss.

And it’s fun to feel that cross crossover to here where just the benefit, both on the emotional connection, relational connection, relevancy, it requires a lot more openness for sure as an instructor. But the power. Is so much greater, 

Kate Seltzer: and it means that as teachers, we have to be aware of the world around us.

We have to be engaging with text. We have to be following what’s going on in the world and thinking about how we want to frame it and inquire into it with young people. I have to tell you, after I watched the Super Bowl halftime show, I thought, oh, if I were only. Still a high school ELA teacher. The conversation we would have about Bad Bunny’s halftime show, you could do a whole curriculum around it, right?

And [00:44:00] so really seeing the moment as an opportunity. To get students talking about all of these flows and Cortes that we’ve been talking about in this conversation. There’s so much potential to do that with multilingual learners, and it’s so interesting because they often come at things from a very different place than we do, and it’s an opportunity to learn and be co-learners with our students in those moments.

Andrew Brandt: I love that. I love co-learners, and it feels like it lowers the barrier of feeling like I’ve gotta show up and have all the answers for you. It’s more, Hey, let’s show up. We’re both learning together. We’re in different roles, but we’re both figuring this out as we go. 

Mandi Morris: Kay. I don’t think this will be a surprise to you when you do training and talk to teachers from all over, but these conversations look and feel different in different parts of our country.

And so just taking a moment for the educators listening to honor that. That I think it would be remiss not to that. For some [00:45:00] teachers, this work is a bit more complicated than we might be making it sound in of in our podcast, where teachers themselves are up against currents and have concerns about their own job security and legislation that has enormous impacts on how they see themselves in the classroom and see their students.

Within that learning environment. I wonder how when you’ve done presentations and you’re working with teachers from all over the country, do you have any thoughts to add to that? 

Kate Seltzer: Yeah, these are incredibly precarious times for students and teachers and schools, teachers, particularly teachers of marginalized students are really like in the political crosshairs in a way that they shouldn’t be, but that unfortunately is also part of the legacy.

Teachers schooling is very political. The control of minds is something that a lot of people want to get their hands on, and so schools are of course places where some of these [00:46:00] sociopolitical really make themselves known. For this book project, I was just talking about critical advocacy. We spoke to people who identify as advocates for multilingual learners across the country, and we spoke to about 15 teachers from 15 different states, some of which are very red states, some of which are not.

And what was so amazing is that each of them, within their very particular contexts. Found ways to do what they knew was right for students. For where I am in New Jersey, teaching multilingual learners through multicultural approaches, for example, is not just something that like some teachers feel they can do.

It’s codified in law, right? In state law in New Jersey, you have to teach certain histories, certain texts, but in other parts of the country that. That kind of teaching has to happen a little more quietly. We’ve talked a little bit [00:47:00] about legacy and what that looks like to recognize yourself as part of a legacy, as a multi teacher of multilingual learners.

Part of that is that there have always been teachers who do what Another New Jersey teacher educator, Brie Picower calls camouflage, right? Which is how do you do what you’re supposed to do on the surface while doing something a little more transgressive? Quietly. And so I think there is a, a legacy there too of teachers have always in different parts of the country and at different times, been constrained.

From teaching marginalized students? Well, and I think that there are lots of ways to camouflage that work. It doesn’t have to be curricular in terms of the actual thing you’re giving to students, the texts that are in your library. It could be conversations that you have with students. It could be storytelling.

You allow in your classroom. It could be conversations with families that occur off school grounds, [00:48:00] right? There are lots of ways to do what you know to be right. In ways that keep you safe. And I think that’s, that’s a reality, right? That teachers have always had to navigate. And so I think talking to other teachers who share your mindset and your stance and thinking together as Bettina love calls them co-conspirators, right?

Finding other co-conspirators to, to figure out how you can do this work in ways that let you keep your job and keep yourselves and your family safe. 

Mandi Morris: Really going back to something you said earlier, it’s having hope and building that community around teachers, finding community to do work that is the right work for students because it’s enabling students to feel seen and empowered to be their whole self.

And teachers building that community can really help to buoy their own hope as they are in turn pouring out that hope into the [00:49:00] lives of their students. 

Andrew Brandt: Yeah, and I think that’s really the, the power of it is giving that opportunity for students to learn to process and cognitively understand the world around them, both cognitively and emotionally.

And the reality is that, first off. I love what you phrased there, Kate. Obviously we advocate following whatever your local laws are. There’s nothing here that we’re, we want to advocate doing anything that would go against that. But I think what you’re saying, Kate, is there are opportunities to still create that environment to help students explore how they relate to the world and how we relate to the, the laws of our area.

Because in one way or another, we will have way, we will have opinions that differ with. Whatever laws in our state, in our city, whatever it is, and it, part of being a human and being in society is learning how to have our own opinions. Have our own perspectives and support those around us, while also living in civilized [00:50:00] connection that will have different laws.

And that that, as you were talking, the thing that came back, came to my mind, went back to curiosity. Like even having the conversation with students of, hey, this law’s in place. Why do you think this? Why was, why is this in place? What is it about? ’cause ultimately, I’m a firm believer that. We are all good people trying to do good things with different approaches and different ideas of the best way to do it.

And so just being curious about why some people may choose in some regions based off certain beliefs may choose to approach it a a different way that may feel limiting or constraining. But being curious about that and helping each of us learn that we are all choosers of our destiny in our place. What we can control while we’re in relation and in or in civilized society with those around us.

Kate Seltzer: Yeah. The way I always think about it is the pendulum is always swinging right back and forth between these different poles of acceptance and tolerance for diversity and all of these sort of more [00:51:00] progressive values. And often it swings one way and then in response it swings the other way. I’m not saying that.

Things aren’t lost when we swing so far away from some of the values that inform my work, right? I do think things are lost, and I do think there is damage that is done when we swing as far away as we have right now, but we have to remind ourselves that it does always swing back. And so I like to think.

Where will I be? Once it does swing back, will I be, how different will my work be? Like I wanna be doing the same work no matter where the pendulum is. Mm-hmm. And so I think we have to think of ourselves as like steadfast and resilient. It doesn’t mean the methods won’t change, depending where that pendulum is, but your stance.

Doesn’t have to change. And I think the ways we enact that stance in our practice can happen no matter where you are in time. 

Mandi Morris: Kate, this has been [00:52:00] such an incredible conversation. I am just so honored to have this time here together. We have covered so much in our conversation Translanguaging, and how to get this in your cl how to think about it, right?

And then what does it look like in practice in your classroom, your new and work the your focus right now. I’m just, I’m so excited about the conversation that we had and I’m wondering if anybody wants to find you, talk to you, where would they go? 

Kate Seltzer: You can definitely find me. You, you can email me anytime.

Seltzer k@rowan.edu, but then I’m also, I’m on Blue Sky and I’m on Instagram, Dr. Kate Seltzer, and I’m always happy to talk with folks about, about any and all of the topics we covered today. I learned from the consistent. Conversations that I have with teachers, as you said all over the country. And I look forward to continuing those with this new work around advocacy too.[00:53:00] 

Mandi Morris: Awesome. And before we hop off, we are gonna do some rapid fire questions. So we’ll keep these like short and quick and sweet. Andrew, do you wanna get us going? 

Andrew Brandt: Let’s go for it. One thing that I find is a lot of times when I’m listening to a podcast or reading a book, it’s easy to consume the content and feel uplifted.

But then it’s easy also to walk away and not have a tangible thing to run with it. So I’m gonna ask you a few just quick, short answer type questions and love to get your thoughts. So first off, for anybody who’s listening who maybe is a new teacher, just barely getting into this work, or maybe there’s a student they’re about to be, to get their own classroom, what advice do you have for a new teacher?

Kate Seltzer: Oh my goodness. I think what we said before about relationships is really important when you’re getting your feet. Building relationships with the other teachers around you, right? Forming a support system of people you can vent to run ideas by cry with sometimes. And then also really investing in your relationships with your students because [00:54:00] teaching is so much easier when you have relationships, meaningful relationships with students.

Andrew Brandt: I love that. I love that. Okay, next one. You had mentioned advocacy for a teacher who maybe is, they could be getting started, they could be tenured, but they’re like, Hey, I really, I’m, I really wanna be an advocate for my student. What do you, right. Where do you start to really be an advocate for your student?

Kate Seltzer: I think building your knowledge base about. Your own context and the rights that Multilinguals have, federally, state, local, right? Really starting to understand some of those policies because you have to know what you’re advocating for. And so knowing the realities that shape the education of multilingual learners in your state district is really important.

And thankfully, there are so many places where you can find that information, not just your, you know, state. Department of Education website, but also like tons of nonprofits have [00:55:00] really trackers for that kind of information around policy and rights. And so I would, it’s corny, but know your rights, know your students’ rights.

Know your students’ family’s rights, so that way when you see something going wrong, you know that there’s something going wrong. And then it’s thinking about what’s the best way to address it and. I always say that you should think about what you’re good at, think about what you’re already doing, and how you could shift what you’re doing a little to have more of an active advocacy bent to it.

Andrew Brandt: I love that. Okay, so then jumping over to Translanguaging, for anybody listening who. Intrigued or wants to start doing more with Translanguaging, what would, what Could they get off the podcast today or tomorrow, go into their classroom? Where do you start? Where could they start with Translanguaging? 

Kate Seltzer: So when I was a graduate student in New York City, I was absolutely lucky and blessed to be a part of a [00:56:00] research project that went on in New York State for six, seven years called the Cuny, CUNY.

Sib New York State Initiative on emergent bilinguals. It’s a mouthful, but the CUNY Nysci project was a massive funded research project that occurred across New York State and worked with schools and teachers. Around implementing Translanguaging with multilingual learners and that project has ended, but its website lives on and on.

The cuny ny e website, cuny ny e.org. I think one of the best resources is we have a bunch of videos of teachers doing this in their classrooms. Short five minutes and under. Teachers who have taken these ideas around translanguaging and run with them in a variety of different contexts across the state and New York is a very particular context, for sure, very.

Talk about a [00:57:00] legacy of BI and multilingualism, right? New York is certainly one place where that exists, but I think there are things that teachers from every context could really take away. So I would recommend. Logging on, going to that website and exploring free guides, free videos, free resources that really connect translanguaging theory to practice.

Andrew Brandt: Sounds like a gr, like a treasure trove of information. I love when you say videos that are five minutes or less. That’s right on my alley. 

 Kate, thank you so much for joining us today. It was just an incredible opportunity for us to learn together as our own little community today on this podcast, and I’m very excited for all of the teachers to be able to learn from you through this episode as well.

Mandi Morris: Thank you. 

Kate Seltzer: Thank you. Thank you so much. This was, this was a blast. You said it would be a blast, and you were right. It was such a great, great conversation and thank you for lifting up this work, which I think is so important and so urgent right now. 

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