Meg Burke and Bethany Gale: Building Professional Learning Networks

Bethany Gale: [00:00:00] We oftentimes forget that we’re working with kids. Kids are kids, no matter what language they speak, where they come from. Kids are kids, and their basic needs are the same. And so, I feel as though, in this area in particular, we’ve often been siloed as to, our kids are different, they need different things, they don’t communicate in the same ways as native speakers.

And I’m pushing back on that narrative. Smash those silos until we smash the silos. We’re never going to be able to help all kids. And it’s really, we, we know that all of our students, no matter where they come from or the language that they speak, one of the biggest things we need in society are people to be able to work together and to understand that we’re all different. And that’s an asset, not a deficit.

Meg Burke received her undergrad at Bloomsburg University, her masters in Educational Leadership from Gratz college, and a supervisory, curriculum, and principal certification in Educational Leadership from Delaware Valley University.

Bethany Gale received her Bachelors in Elementary Ed and ESL from the University of South Florida, and her Masters in Education  from Holy Family University.

Justin Hewett: Hey everybody, welcome to the ML chat podcast. My name is Justin Hewett here with my co host, Mandi Morris, [00:01:00] and we are thrilled to have you here with us today. Mandi, we got to have a wonderful conversation with Meg Burke and Bethany Gale today about professional learning networks.

What stood out to you the most from today? 

Mandi Morris: People start with the people, the, why are the people at the center? And they just are so passionate about the people they’re serving. Students, families, communities that resonated in every piece of the work that they’re doing. 

Justin Hewett: Yeah, it really did with me as well.

I have that here on my notes. I, at one point Meg talks about how when we’re creating a department or we’re creating programs or whatever it might be, a lot of times we’re thinking about The pedagogy, we’re thinking about the policy and really we need to start with the people. That really resonated with me as well, Mandi.

And I just love what they’re doing with these professional learning networks with the idea being, Hey, how do we share this experience that we’re going through? Share our learning, share our failures. With each other that we can learn [00:02:00] from each other and get better. And I think that, I think this is a powerful idea that can have a really big impact in accelerating someone’s career because it allows them to learn faster and then they can have a bigger impact faster.

And I just, I love this. I love this conversation. I think all of you are going to really enjoy this conversation with Meg and Bethany, and we’ll jump into it now. All right. We have two special guests today. Our first is Meg Burke. She currently serves as a Teaching and Learning Specialist and ELD Advisory Council Lead in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Over the last 28 years, Meg has proudly served as a Middle and High School English Teacher, Instructional Literacy Coach, and Supervisor of ELD and Inclusive Practices. Meg has her Master’s in Education and Educational Leadership from Gratz College. Our second guest is Bethany Gale. Bethany is in her 21st year teaching English Language Development.

She spent six years building a middle school [00:03:00] program and ten years building an elementary program and now is in her fourth year as the ELD and Title III coordinator. Bethany has her Bachelor’s in Elementary Ed and ESL from the University of South Florida and a Master’s in Education and Reading Specialist.

from Holy Family University. Meg and Bethany collaborate together to create professional learning networks to help promote professional learning around multilingual instruction, and we are thrilled to have you come and join us today. Meg and Bethany, welcome to the ML Chat Podcast. Thanks for being with us.

Bethany Gale: We’re excited. 

Justin Hewett: You should be, and our listeners should be excited. Mandi and I have been looking forward to this, and we’re excited to have this conversation because professional learning networks, PLNs, is not. necessarily one of the acronyms in education that we’ve necessarily heard a lot. We, a lot of times we talk about PLCs and professional learning communities, and a lot of times those are within a district.

And so we’re excited to learn more about your work in building PLNs and [00:04:00] We know you’re going to be speaking at the WIDA conference and doing a presentation there. What is a PLN? 

Meg Burke: PLN, as you said, it’s really a business term. A professional learning network extends far beyond where you’re housed and where you’re staying.

And in our school systems, really professional learning network. Networks didn’t really exist unless you had a K 12 in service day where you met all the teachers across the board from grades K 12, English, Art, History, everybody in the room building these networks. And right before the pandemic struck, a lot of teachers like Bethany and I at the time in our spaces were really forced to reach further than what our school was offering within a school day.

We didn’t have the time, right? We don’t have time. to sit and have a meeting. And so most PLCs are run pretty strictly. They’re not really organic. They’re told when you have to be there, who you have to meet with, and what you have to do. PLN is different in the fact that it can happen anytime and anywhere.

It can happen in a group text. It can happen on a meet [00:05:00] much like this. It really can happen on social media. And I mentioned that because Twitter really served as one of the, engines behind teaching and learning and growing your practice, even in your PJs, through professional learning networks, where we quickly found as teachers with a simple hashtag or tag, we could be in touch with educators and thought leaders all over the world.

And that is really where professional learning networks started to take off and they flourished during the pandemic. The first professional learning network I formed was called ELD Recess and ELA Recess. And it sounded just like that. It was a time during the week where people just jumped on and started sharing things.

And our motto was stay for a little and learn a lot. And it was really instant, it was fast, and it was free. And so Bethany and I have really held on to that model together. And we can go into how we met and how we built. Our PLN from that idea and so if you really think of it in its simplest terms, a professional learning community is done to you [00:06:00] within a system where you learn and grow a professional learning network far extends.

Justin Hewett: That is fantastic. I love that. I love that phrase. 

Mandi Morris: Me too. We probably 

Justin Hewett: learn a lot. That’s fantastic. And ELD recess just brings to mind that you are getting together and going to have some fun. Bethany, how did you and Meg end up starting to work together? What brought you together? 

Bethany Gale: Oh my gosh. At this point, I guess it was five years ago, a district that Meg ended up working for had a out some assistance at looking at their ELD programming and how to improve.

And I was a part of that team that did some of that work. And then in the meantime, that district had decided they needed a leader and they were in the process of hiring and they found Meg. Our districts were quite similar in demographic. Ben Salem borders Philadelphia. So although we’re a suburban district in a suburban [00:07:00] county, you can have one foot in Ben Salem and one foot in Philadelphia.

My district always had a large number of L’s. We always had the largest in the county, and I often felt as though I was on my own island because no one else was really like us. The need was not a scene. Want for professional development wasn’t coming because it just wasn’t needed in those places. When Meg’s former district had hired her.

I knew there was another me out there. So we found each other and connected. And when I tell you from the first email, we knew this was like a match made in heaven. We were very like minded. We were go, let’s get the learning. You know what? We have too many things to learn ourselves. Let’s divide, let’s conquer, let’s come back and let’s share the learning so that we can do as much as we can in the shortest amount of time for our students and families.

Justin Hewett: Oh, I love that so much. You sound like you’re both very resourceful and just driven to get out there and go make a difference. And at [00:08:00] flashlight, one of the things that we really look for and we try to hire for is people that are relentlessly resourceful. I just think that resourcefulness like that is just, it’s just something different.

It’s almost innate, right? And you just have to be really passionate and driven. About the mission that you’re on, that you’re going to go figure it out, right? Like you’re going to figure out what that solution is. And then when you find somebody that’s like you, that’s trying to do the same thing, they’ve figured out some of the same things, maybe they figured out some things that you haven’t figured out yet.

And you figured out some things that they haven’t figured out yet. All of a sudden there’s just like amazing fireworks and just incredible working chemistry. It’s really fun to hear. Sounds like that was what you experienced as you’re nodding your heads there. I would love to hear, what does it look like when I go to ELD recess and the bell rings and I get to run into a professional learning network, a PLN conversation of some sort.

I know Meg, you’re, you said, Hey, it could be just on Twitter and it’s, I’m searching through hashtags and communicating and doing some of that type of stuff, [00:09:00] is there a face to face component or like a zoom component or something where we’re meeting in person and working through different ideas and people are sharing?

Does it ever look like that? 

Meg Burke: Yes. So it’s flexible and it’s organic and it’s free. And that’s what Bethany and I love because when we met, I was hired out of this equity audit where this district was saying we have kids in front of us. We’ve never thought would be in front of us that are impacted by war.

Language barriers. None of us have ever experienced under the age of 10 what the kids were dealing with. And so we didn’t have time truthfully to sit and go. When can I find someone to help me? It was every day on demand boots on the ground. And because Bethany had been such an integral part of a lot of the work that I was hired to do, I had to put people over programs.

And so Bethany and I first met because I found her name in documents that were shared with me when I was trying to build out where to start and I just emailed Bethany and I said, Hey, Bethany, it’s Meg Burke. Here I [00:10:00] am. Can we talk? And Bethany said, Absolutely. When are you free? And we were not free. So I want to just share with you, we had no time in our schedule to be free.

So, we started deciding on times that we would talk on the way home from work, in the car. Bethany has her kids, she’s driving them to dance, doing all the things, I have mine, doing all the things. And Bethany and I would jump on that phone, if it was 15 minutes, it was 15 minutes that was worth every second.

And we didn’t put time limits on things, we didn’t build agendas, we said, here’s something we’re looking at that we need to find a solution for, but we don’t have weeks and months, we We have minutes and days because this impacts kids and families in our classrooms, and it affects teachers. And Bethany and I would get on that phone, it was an email, and a phone call, and a commitment.

And we said, you know what, we’re all busy, but any, anyone will tell you the best time you can make is It’s time you take for yourself. And I knew at that moment, Bethany was the time I wanted to take for myself. And sometimes we [00:11:00] laughed, sometimes we cried, sometimes we joked, but every time we left, we were fueled with an idea and a mission and something that we wanted to test out to see if it worked.

And we were okay with failing. We were okay with trying. We were okay being extremely far reaching. There were times Bethany and I, we said we would just throw the ball back and forth. And this is where. This whole idea of recess came from. It’s a playground and it’s a professional playground and sometimes it’s a therapy session and our commitment was every Friday at lunch, 12 o’clock, Bethany and I on that phone.

If I wanted to see her or show her something and I could hide somewhere and get her on a Google meet, yay. But if I couldn’t, I knew the phone was just as easy or text. And we, that’s where we started. And it sounds silly, but we always left with an idea, a concept and something we needed support in immediately.

And then we conquered and divided. 

Bethany Gale: I just want to add. And then from there we grew, right? We found more people within the county that had similar [00:12:00] needs and similar asks and similar wants. And we said, Hey, we’re meeting at lunch on Friday. Jump on a call with us. That led to more people. And then somebody saying, Oh, I have a friend in another district and they need to, Oh, Invite this is welcome.

Anyone is welcome that then led to a tech this group text message that Keeps growing and growing and I keep saying how many people can you have in the text message before they tell you it’s too big and then we’ve done professional development at Pennsylvania’s ELD conference through PDE, and that has led us to more people across the state and in other states.

So it, it just keeps growing and growing. And my hope is that when we present at WIDO, we find even more people to join us. 

Mandi Morris: I really enjoy hearing you talk about your relationship. It reminds me so much of how difficult work is easier with many hands. And you found one another, but then kept inviting others into the fold.

We know there are [00:13:00] others who feel like they’re on an island and how can we support one another and be there for one another. I’d love to hear more about the presentation coming up at WIDA. I know I’ve been to a lot of conferences in my career in education. You’ve both been to a lot of conferences and it can often be this.

sit and get experience and you might leave with some great nuggets. Maybe you’ve done a little bit of networking, but I think what’s unique about the presentation you’re doing is it’s really more about leading with connections and community and leading, not feeling like you’re on an island. So can you tell us a little bit more about what people can expect in your presentation?

Meg Burke: It’s called the power of the PLN, and it’s basically a 30, 60, 90. Plan of how to build it. And we talk about design often and unfortunately in teaching, sometimes we think our expertise is only as great as our years teaching. And that is not the case. And when we talk about a professional learning network.

It really doesn’t matter how long people have been in the work or what role they play. It could be teachers. It could be [00:14:00] new teachers. We’ve even had administrative assistants join our calls, which, and bus drivers, which we adore because we’re all part of this work and we just keep growing. And so one of the first things we do or what people can expect is we tell our story of how we met and then where we started with that phone call and then who we pulled in that process.

And then we challenge the audience to think about their spaces and what challenges and obstacles they face. And we challenge them to take one of our ideas and put it into practice. What could this look like in the next 30 days for you? And we’re going to challenge audience members to connect to each other because we’re in this work together, regardless of state or zip code.

And we’re all really being champions for our linguistically diverse population and students. And so for us, it’s a playbook. It’s a PLN playbook. Here’s what we did in the first 30. What can it look like for you? Who needs to be involved? Who does that call have to be? And what data are you using to drive needs that you have?

The needs that sometimes we think we have aren’t the [00:15:00] actual needs that need to be addressed. So we really draw upon people to think in terms of data and numbers. After that, they go into day 60. What does the next 30 days look like? And again, we tell them exactly what Bethany and I did step by step. Now go find someone new bill.

Then what do you do the last 30? Go build. And then at the end, we all come together and we share out. But the idea behind it is in that one session, we just built an entire professional learning network above and beyond where we started. And our goal is to smash the silos of our work. And I’m going to throw to Bethany with saying that’s her charge this year, which I love.

So Bethany, if you want to take over with smashing of silos in the PLN. I 

Bethany Gale: do. I feel an ELD. We oftentimes forget that. We’re working with kids, kids or kids, no matter what language they speak, where they come from, kids are kids and their basic needs are the same. And so I feel as though, and in this area in [00:16:00] particular, we’ve often been siloed as to our kids are different.

They need different things. They don’t communicate in the same ways as native speakers. And I am pushing back on that narrative, smash those silos until we smash the silos, we’re never going to be able to help all kids. And it’s really we know that all of our students, no matter where they come from or the language that they speak, one of the biggest things we need in society are people to be able to work together and to understand that we’re all different and that’s an asset, not a deficit.

So I just, I am, that is my call this year is smash those silos. Whenever I get the chance to talk about it, I do, I tag it in all of my work in district and out of district because That’s where we’re going to see immense change, I truly believe, is when we recognize what’s good for, I truly believe what’s good for elder is good for all kids.

But at the same time, it works the other way around sometimes too. [00:17:00] And sometimes we forget that. 

Justin Hewett: I love that. Smash the silos. Smash it. Bethany Gale for president, actually. That’s what needs to happen. Yes. See? We need to smash some silos. I love what you’ve described here. Meg and Bethany. This is powerful stuff.

I, I think about early in my career. And even today, I’m thinking about the different networks that I find myself a part of and some of them that have brought me the most joy and the most, the best ideas were those that just happened like you’re saying spontaneously or not even spontaneously as much as just organically and really our COO at Flashlight, Andrew Brandt, and I, Started doing kind of the same work and we would ask each other about what they were doing that was working and gosh, I just can’t figure this out.

This is my problem. Can you help me? And it’s just amazing how much camaraderie is built through that. What I see you doing is something that is my, one of my favorite things that, That relentlessly [00:18:00] resourceful people do which is they lead without a title. Nobody asked you to do this You are titleless leaders.

You have seen a kind of a problem or a challenge That people are facing and you’ve just stepped up and it started because you tried to solve the problem for yourself And you realized oh my gosh, this is such a benefit for us We need to share it with others. So then you start sharing it, through your intermediate unit, right?

Throughout Pennsylvania and then maybe some others. And now you’re coming to Ouida to come and share the gospel of the PLN. And I just, and I think it’s amazing. Meg, you mentioned earlier and it’s free. This is just really cool. It, you can tell that you are on a mission here to do this work. And I’m wondering how you feel like being a part of this PLN, creating your own PLNs.

How has that impacted students. 

Meg Burke: You took the words out of my mouth because we are loud and proud for the voiceless. And many of [00:19:00] our students and their families don’t have a voice. They’re part of systems that were never built for them. They’re here for reasons they never chose to be. And so one of the huge components that I am really leading the charge on are the voices of students in the community.

And when I first took on my role in my new district, I heard all the things the school didn’t have. And my first question was, did you ask the kids? Did you drive the bus routes? Did you go to the barber shops? Did you go to the hair salons? Did you go to the international food stores? Did you go to the pizza places?

Did you ask kids what they wanted and what they needed and how this educational system benefited them? And students and their families are part of our professional learning network that far extends the boundaries of zip codes in schools because our families are connected through their own identities that don’t live within systems of schools.

And one of the things Bethany and I found out early is there were so many missed and misconceptions about what kids wanted. And I’ll [00:20:00] never forget. I call it pizza palace. I knew one of my students was not coming to school. He was truant. And I was called in really, I called upon the PLN and I said, do we have truancy happening in 11th grade?

With our Latino male students across the board. And I sent out this message. What are we seeing? Why are, and all of a sudden everyone’s saying, yes, yes, yes. I’m thinking what is happening? Where, what are we doing? And so I found one of our students at the time working at a pizza place. I call pizza palace.

And I went in and I said, Hey, I said, Jose, why are you not in school? And he said, because I have to work and because school doesn’t like me. And I said, I don’t think it’s school doesn’t like you. I think school doesn’t serve you. And let’s talk about that. And I had him come in the next day and sit with me and tell me his story and his journey and all the reasons why I didn’t go to school.

And I shared this at our PLN. I shared this. Bethany will laugh. I shared his story and his journey. And I can tell you that for that one Jose, there’s at least 500 across the state of [00:21:00] And empathy is a universal language and a PLN is filled with empathy. It’s filled with support and not judgment and we do really hard things.

Someone once told me the most dangerous thing we can do is give an answer to the wrong question. And my family’s told me many of the times they feel like toxic charity. And if you think about that word toxic and charity put together, sometimes what our PLN was trying to do, wasn’t really what kids and families needed, and I pull them in every time.

I pull them in virtually. I pull them in with student empowerment groups. If a call comes in or a text, how do we translate this science lab for students? I go, did you ask the kids? I’ll go ask five. I took to my PRN with families. became WhatsApp. It became Facebook. It became very coveted time where my families trusted me.

They brought me into their homes. I went to their quinceaneras and I asked them the hard questions that teachers were maybe afraid to ask or administrators couldn’t [00:22:00] ask. And I asked them and I brought them back and shared their journeys and our PLN this year, it’s our third year in our PLN. And I will say that we have community members.

We have churches. We We have families, we have students, we have new teachers, you name it. It just keeps growing. And we grow from the inside out, not the outside in. And that’s the difference between a PLC and a PLN. 

Justin Hewett: Man, I love hearing about this. It is a snowball rolling and it is just getting, it is rolling down that mountain.

Now you have a lot of momentum and it sounds like it’s becoming something greater with every week, every month, every year which is fantastic. And I love hearing that. I want to dig into that a little bit. But before that, I want to go back to something that you said about Jose. He’s at the Pizza Palace and you said something along the lines of school was not serving him.

It’s not that school didn’t like him, it wasn’t serving him. And I think this is something that we see [00:23:00] across the nation. I don’t think this is unique to, His school district. And like you said there make about for every one of him there, maybe there’s 500 more just in Pennsylvania. I want to unpack that.

Why is that? What is it that our system or our school districts do that don’t serve maybe our secondary English learners or our students who have been in the system for seven plus years or whatever it might look like, what is it about our system that is not serving those students?

Bethany Gale: I think it’s very multifaceted, and I think a lot of it comes from not asking what the need actually is. It’s trying to fit, right, a circle into a square. It’s saying, these are the systems we have in place. Where can we fit this student with these needs into these systems that already exist? Instead of saying, what does this child actually need to be successful in creating the [00:24:00] systems upon that?

Meg Burke: One of the things I found early on as to why this happens is we build from programs, practices, and pedagogy, and nowhere in there do we start with people. And Bethany and I flipped the script, and we’re going to shout that out. Extremely loud from the rooftops of WIDA, we start with people. And I say that because when we hear the word ELD or ESL, all these acronyms.

I don’t hear the word people in there. I hear programs and ELD. This is my, I’ve been saying this now people giggle. I say ELD is not an intervention. It’s not something we do to students. It’s a federal law. It’s a right they have. It’s outlined. It’s a federal law. It’s title three. We have title six. We have, it’s a federal law that, that they have a right to access.

Free and public education, regardless of language or national origin, regardless of gender or creed or religion or [00:25:00] belief system, yet we treat this population of students within our systems I will say we, we are compliant. It looks like we are, but we’re not. And for so many of our students, we have the best intentions.

Our ELD teachers and specialists carry the weight of the world. I worry about what happens when they leave that classroom. And I know Andrea Kolb is so awesome at PDE office hours. And I give a big shout out to Andrea and Bob Neasel and Julia Puzza from PDE because they do PDE office hours. And it’s grown our PLN and many of the times they say to people in the field, they say, why aren’t you doing for our non English speakers the same you would do for our native speakers?

Why are you designing differently for them? Why are you removing them from classes to put them in shelter and instruction? And then we’re surprised When we’re in these designations from the state not showing growth over six years time. And I always come back on, on to the point that I’m making now that, what if we flip the [00:26:00] script and talked about native?

English speakers, the way we talk about our English language learners and like linguistically diverse. And I go to that often because that’s systemically where the issue lies. And Bethany and I have started to do a lot of work around universal design for learning, being formative and flexible, not only using data, but knowing the story behind the data is so important.

If you’re not looking at the right data and the right subgroups, You don’t have progress monitoring. You’re amplifying the wrong things. And if all you’re going to measure is proficiency and not what success looks like in a classroom for a student who values language as an asset, I think that is, is a heavier lift right now for a lot of us in the spaces we’re in.

But I think we can start the conversation and start to push on it a little bit because. Once we start pushing on it and talking about it and doing something about it and showing its impact on student achievement rates and disproportionality data, once we have those numbers to say, look at Jose now, [00:27:00] Jose right now is in one of our career tech programs.

You asked me about him. He told me what wasn’t working and what he needed. And I found him a pathway, but I can’t get to 500, but I can get to a Bethany and between the two of us, we can be more far reaching with these stories and these systems. That are free, they’re organic, they’re flexible, and they work, and they’re built on people.

They’re built on people. From the Y out. We don’t build from the what, the how, and the why. That golden circle. That doesn’t work. Simon Sinek talks about all the time, we built from the Y out, and that’s the power of our PLN. And Bethany and I will go to bat any day of the week to say, okay, great, we love how pretty your school is, how diverse your multilingual nights are, but how many families are you reaching?

How many are coming? Right? And how do you know what you’re doing is working? And that’s the power of the PLN, it challenges that. Did you have an impact? How did you do it? How did it work? How can we articulate that so it happens in other spaces? 

Mandi Morris: Meg you talked about formative assessment [00:28:00] and progress monitoring.

This is something that we’re all in Flashlight 360. We’re all in about this and I would love Bethany to turn to you and hear a little bit about your mtss system I know that you are the ELD coordinator, but also the coordinator for mtss I would love for you to unpack. What does progress monitoring look like in your system?

systems. What is it like to bring that real deep knowledge of ELD into your MTSS systems? Schools nationally are using systems, but I like, like MTSS, but I’d love to hear you unpack what does that look like for you with all of your years experience in ELD and with an eye to the progress monitoring informative assessment.

Bethany Gale: So I want to be transparent and say that this is the, what we’re bringing into MTSS now into our system. I’m not going to. Pretend like we have everything perfect in our systems. This is definitely a work in progress, but work that I’m loud and [00:29:00] proud to be a part of. We’ve always heard progress monitoring in a general lens, right?

We’ve always talked about, we have these programs that are in the progress monitor, these interventions for students. Then on the flip side, we have our L’s who oftentimes. Aren’t necessarily quote unquote allowed to be a part of that MTS system because in a lot of places We don’t recognize that ELD is not an intervention.

It’s core for the kids that need it So there’s been a little thankfully our pathways are finally converging and we’re recognizing no English learners deserve Interventions just like every other student right with that in mind We have your generalized progress monitoring that you would use for any kids but I would say more recently because I remember years ago this being a little bit of a debate as to whether or not you could progress monitor language growth.

And there was a time where people were like, no, you can’t. If you [00:30:00] learn language, it’s not completely systematic. Some kids might know in speaking first and then writing, and it’s not the same for all kids. And you’re absolutely right. It isn’t the same for all kids. But I do think that we missed the boat for a long time thinking that we couldn’t do that.

And now we recognize, oh my goodness, we can. And there’s different platforms out there. And one of the reasons I think Flashlight is so great is that, A, it doesn’t take a whole lot of time, right? Because we don’t have a whole lot of time with our Ls to actually give to language instruction, right?

Specific language instruction. And B, it doesn’t have to be done every week. You can do it twice a month and get what you need, but you can also use flashlight in as formative assessment, which we should be doing with all kids all the time. So I think that in terms of ELs in the MTSS systems with progress monitoring, I think it’s a combination of [00:31:00] both.

It’s a combination of looking at their language development and progress monitoring that in one way, and then progress monitoring academic skills. As well as social emotional needs and then combining them all together for the whole child. I do think it’s something that, is talked out or talked about much more in the last year than it ever has been, which is fantastic.

I think it’s something we’re going to continue our learning from. And I think as long as we’re all flexible and looking at the data. Looking at student success, keeping our eye on the prize of that, and then of course revamping whatever needs to be revamped to make that happen. Our kids as successful as they can be.

Justin Hewett: I love that. I think being able to build a system around your students is exactly what we’ve been talking about this whole time is starting with the people first. Right. And if we can start with that and think, Oh, of course we’re trying to build language, maybe we should progress [00:32:00] monitor it. Maybe we should figure out a way to do this so that we can understand if we’re moving in the right direction or if what we are doing is actually working and moving the needle.

It just really resonates with me, Bethany, as you talk about how, as you’re working with these students that yes, it comes down to their language, but also it comes down to SEL, for example, and it takes that this whole student perspective and something you were saying earlier, Meg, it’s just, it’s all coming, connecting with me right now.

Mandi and I have a good friend, David Gomez, who was on the podcast recently and Dave’s whole. Like, his biggest idea that he just has been talking about for years is what’s your story, what’s our connection. And I think it’s amazing that if you start there, if you start with people, you start with their story, where are they coming from, where are they trying to go?

It’s just amazing how we can now connect the dots. Where if we’re starting with policy It’s not taking into [00:33:00] account the needs of the individual, of the individuals involved. And so it just really resonates with me hearing you talk about this MTSS program that you’re working to implement and put in place, Bethany, and especially in regards to ELB.

I love hearing that. Thanks for unpacking that for us. 

Mandi Morris: So, when you think about going to WIDA and the snowball, as we call it, that just continues to grow, what’s next? What’s on the horizon for you two? And with this big vision that you’re working in, you’re smashing silos, you’re collecting and collaborating with people.

What’s next for you in this work? What’s the vision? 

Bethany Gale: I know we want to get out there and see. programming across the country now. We’ve seen lots of our area. We’ve seen and talked to lots of people in Pennsylvania. I know that one of our goals is to make further connections on the other side of the country, in the middle of the country, and to really see And hopefully [00:34:00] expand so that we can again learn from one another.

If somebody’s doing something and it’s working and it’s great, let’s share that. Share the wealth. Because in the end, we’re all here for these kids. And if somebody has something figured out that is really going to work for a certain subpopulation of our populations, please share it with us so we can Copy, implement, learn 

Meg Burke: more, and share back with y’all.

To echo Bethany, growing, a constant growing and learning and testing, we like to think we’re living in beta constantly, trying these new things and ideas and My charge has always been about families and kids and community and when we talk about the MTSS framework, when we talk about progress monitoring, when we talk about what does success look like, my, my next step in this work is how does that look, sound, and feel to families so they become part of these systems and frameworks as well to sustain them and how do we connect more families together through this work and make them more vibrant and a [00:35:00] part of our PLN, our Professional Learning Network.

And so Bethany and I are really excited. to smash out of Pennsylvania and then get to bigger places and see more things and really telling more stories. That’s a large part of our presentation at WETA. We’re actually going to let you hear from kids. That had the courage to talk to us about themselves and their lives and their families.

And for some of them, it was the first time they were ever asked to be part of any kind of story. And so when you ask about WIDA for us, we’re bringing with us the voices that didn’t really ever feel like they had one. And when you hear that, we give these little nuggets of, it was that easy. It was a five minute conversation that changed someone’s life.

And that’s the power of appeal. And that’s the power of today. We feel inspired by the two of you just being here and talking and sharing. And so we really appreciate this opportunity. 

Justin Hewett: Yes, this has been so fun for us. And as you’re talking about students telling their stories, this really resonates with me [00:36:00] because like when we’re asking students to speak and to talk in flashlight, a lot of times we don’t know exactly what we’re going to get and sometimes gets put in some things that we weren’t expecting.

And one of the things that has been really fun is to have these pathways that we’ve built for some school districts where it allows students to tell their story. Tell about their journey that they’ve been on, and for that to be recorded in a place that it can be shared in a PLC or a PLN. It can be brought to a board meeting, potentially, that some of these things can be shared out in a way that You know, frankly, that student’s voice isn’t going to carry without having a tool that does that, right?

And so to be able to capture that and capture those stories and share them out, I think it’s a very worthwhile effort. And I think it’s going to make a lot of, a big difference in the world and for those students. We’re so excited for you to go to Ouida and present this. I think having this approach, this lens of a [00:37:00] PLN, a Professional Learning Network, and building your own, I is really going to resonate and I’m excited to see where this movement goes.

I think it is a movement and I’m excited for you. We’d love to transition to our lightning round. Our lightning round is a number of questions we ask our guests as they’re on the ML chat podcast. And what we’ll do is we’ll just keep it our answer short and sweet. That way we can get to all of them, especially since we’ve got both of you here today.

We want both of you to answer. And so I’ll ask the first one, which is. I’m going to adjust it a little bit. The question is, what is one piece of advice you would give a multilingual teacher? But I’m going to change it to what is one piece of advice you would give to a multilingual teacher who wants to start building their own PLN?

Meg Burke: Find the one person. Find the one person that is like minded. Find the one person that, you know what, I heard that person speak at a conference or a professional development session, or I overheard this conversation. Find that one person and send that email. And that’s where we started [00:38:00] and don’t be afraid to do it.

Just send it. 

Justin Hewett: I love that. That’s fantastic. Meg, what would you say, Bethany? 

Bethany Gale: I would piggyback on that and say, don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. It’s okay if you don’t have all the pieces in place because I can’t tell you one district or a system that has it all right. Cause if they did, we’d all be copying it.

So don’t be afraid to be vulnerable, ask questions and keep the kids and families at the heart of the matter because they’re why we do the work. 

Mandi Morris: That’s so good. It’s a good reminder. When you do work that has meaning, you’ve got to be vulnerable. And that’s really hard for us to do as professionals. And that, thank you for calling that out, Bethany.

Okay, Bethany, we’ll start with you at the second one. What is one practice that you would like to see more of that you’d like to see implemented more in school districts? And maybe this is related to your PLNs. Maybe it’s related to the MTSS system that we touched on earlier. I’m going 

Bethany Gale: to say conversations.

based on [00:39:00] data that include all the pieces, right? Not just looking at your PSSA scores, your Keystone scores, not just looking at benchmark scores, looking at the whole child and the qualitative and the quantitative data about that child, taking into account The social emotional pieces and how can you capture that data so that you can incorporate it into those conversations about kids.

Recognizing that, especially with ELs, we have to look at the whole child. And also when we’re looking and we’re, when you look at your data driven, you’re always comparing recognizing that when you’re talking about English learners, you need to compare them. to similar peers. You can’t compare a native English speaker who’s been here their whole entire lives to someone that just moved here a year ago.

That’s just not fair. 

Meg Burke: Meg, what do you think? I piggyback off of Bethany as well. Looking at the data, I look at disproportionality [00:40:00] data and the big thing I ask often, is, is What does success look like? Before we measure success, what does success look like? And how do we measure progress within that success framework?

And that’s a classic UDL when we think about the components of universal design for learning. How are we designing with all in mind? How are we using that data and what we’re seeing to measure the growth of all students, but also students who face challenges and obstacles that aren’t like native speakers?

Justin Hewett: I love that. It reminds me of a good friend of Mandi’s and mine, Tim Blackburn. He loves talking about backwards design thinking and working through that. And I think you’re right. We have to really begin with that end in mind and what we’re building towards, which is why it’s so important to think about the people that we’re building around and trying to build for.

There’s a phrase I learned in my early 20s about how every success and every failure can tie back to one decision. And, it’s an interesting thought. For each of you, is there a moment in your career of serving [00:41:00] multilingual students where you had a light bulb moment where it was an inflection point for you?

Where after that, everything changed. And, Your approach change your thinking about serving students changed whatever it might have been. And what was that moment that inflection point and make will start with you 

Meg Burke: know the exact moment I caught it on film. I was in a classroom and they were that they had the highest population.

Of our Ukrainian refugees under the age of 10, kindergarten, filled room, one amazing teacher asking the kids all kinds of questions to get them engaged. Second day of school and I’m watching her and she’s smiling and holding up pictures and I stop her and I just say to the kids, I mouth to the kids who wants to be like her one day.

And I kept pointing to her and every single hand in that room went up. And I took a picture in that moment and I thought we are doing things and we are impacting lives of kids by [00:42:00] telling their stories and understanding what they face. In that moment, this concept of what we’re facing really struck me, and I immediately took to social media.

I took to my cousin, who is a painter, and I said, Michael, I have a story, and I need your help telling it, and it’s going to be called the What We Face Project. And he is a portrait artist in Philadelphia. at Studio Incominati. And he said, Meg, bring me four families and I will bring you peoners from all over the world to capture their portraits.

And we will use every ounce of those proceeds to buy them the things families need, which is transportation, housing, and education. And in that one moment in time, and two months later, we didn’t have four families, we had 50. And what we did, for a family within a small community, is still growing and glowing.

And it’s amazing, and we all get filled up from it. And you ask impact, that’s impact. It’s one question, in one classroom, in one moment of time, that not only affected my life, [00:43:00] But affected so many others across boundaries and borders. With that one moment in time, the, what we face project continues, and it took us three years to build, but we’re now working with a local church.

I call him magic pastor, Matt, who built an entire task force from that one moment in time where his own kids went to school and he’s now offering free adult night classes for our families. And they have 71 families registered. And you think about that, that one moment in time that was free. And what it did and what it continues to do.

And so that was my moment. And you’ll see, and you’ll see the kids in the pictures at Ouida. 

Justin Hewett: I love it. Magic Pastor Matt. Let’s go. 

Meg Burke: He’s the best. 

Justin Hewett: That is so cool. What a fun shout out Meg. That is so cool. Thanks for sharing that moment. I like can picture it in my mind that like that teacher. With her big smile and just so engaged in the kids and so invested in them.

And I love that. Thanks so much for sharing that. What about you, Bethany? Is there a moment in [00:44:00] time that you reflect back on that was a turning point for you? 

Bethany Gale: Yes. So I will be a little bit vulnerable here in sharing this story. So when I became, or when I took the job at middle school to start an ELD program, I was petrified because I was quite young.

I never in a million years thought I would end up in a middle school. I thought I wanted to teach first grade for my entire career, but that’s what life had handed me, and I was going to take the challenge even though I was. So, it was the first, now, this was the first year English learners were ever in this building.

They had never been in this building before. I was brand new. It was actually coming, the seeing time as a restructuring of only having 7th and 8th graders in a building, which drastically changed the staffing, so you had new and new all together. And it was [00:45:00] the second student day, and I had my class with me, and I got a phone call from the office, and it said, we need you to come to the office right now.

And so I got someone to watch my class, and I run down, and there’s a student sitting in a chair, and he has a sign, and that someone must have written for him that says, I don’t speak English. And no one knew what to do. So I said, okay, come with me. And we went and we did the things and we eventually screamed and since they were only with the for seventh and eighth grade, he was only there for two years.

And we went from that moment to fast forward two years later. He was exiting the program because he was proficient in english on top of the russian that he came with And because he was friends with so many spanish speakers. He was actually quite fluid in spanish at that point as well So that was my like aha moment to say I think I picked the right job and I will continue to be with this [00:46:00] population for the rest of my career.

So that was my moment. 

Mandi Morris: Oh, that’s so awesome. Those stories are really lovely. Thank you both for being willing to share those with us and anyone listening. That’s just so compelling. You both bring such a joy and passion to the work that you’re doing all of these years later. And just on behalf of all educators everywhere, thank you for the work that you’re doing.

Thank you for bringing people together and helping us not be on silos for creating a space for people to try things that are hard to mess up and not feel judged that it’s okay. And to reiterate and to try again, that’s a really unique work that you’re doing. So thank you. Thank 

Bethany Gale: you so much for having us.

And I feel like now you’re part of our PLN as well. And any listeners that want to join. 

Justin Hewett: We would love to be we talked a little and we learned a lot. I think that’s right. We had a little bit of ELD recess here on the ML chat podcast, Megan, [00:47:00] Bethany. Thank you. What a pleasure to have you here. I, I, I second, what Mandi said, as far as honoring the work that you’re doing.

It’s fun to shine a light on this. We think a lot about at Flashlight of shining a light on students. on best practices, on innovative ideas. And I think this is an innovative idea. It’s not a new idea, but it’s not one that everybody is doing. And I think it’s something that can really have a huge impact and just a rippling effect across the nation if we were doing this more and connecting more.

Thank you for your leadership. Thanks for all the work you’re doing. And, uh, we can’t wait to see at WIDA. So thanks everybody for being here. Thanks. Thanks for listening. All of our friends and we’ll, we’ll put some notes in the show notes where you can go in and learn more and connect with Meg and, and, uh, Bethany here.

But thanks again for being here on the ML chat [00:48:00] podcast.