Chapter 2 focuses on the role of instructional teams in the development of consistent school-wide practices to serve multilingual learners, and how leaders can put the right conditions in place to develop teacher teams and facilitate professional learning, organized around the needs of multilingual learners. Based on yearlong field research, the chapter describes in detail the collaboration of a teacher team at one school and how they set up group learning routines and meeting agendas with a focus on linguistically responsive instruction. The chapter includes key actions and planning checklists for leaders to use to support their own teacher teams, provides planning tools to support team development with a focus on language development, and provides examples of the impact of teacher collaboration on student learning.

In Chapter 3, the focus is on school-wide collaborative practices that bring together counseling and instructional staff to serve the unique needs of multilingual learners, resulting in integrated practices that support students’ social-emotional learning both in and outside of the classroom. The chapter shows how leaders in different contexts create organizational structures to intentionally combine the counselor’s holistic perspective and practices with the instructional expertise of teachers, resulting in a holistic approach to student learning. Through structured collaboration, school staff can improve how they identify students’ social-emotional needs as well as concrete and culturally responsive strategies to address those needs. The chapter features stories from individual practitioners and cross-functional teams, examples of resources utilized within the school community as well as tools that practitioners can use in school-wide structures for social-emotional learning.

Chapter 4 showcases how schools can coordinate the use of culturally and linguistically responsive data practices that integrate instructional and social-emotional support to help multilingual learners thrive in school. We present a multilingual learner data framework that brings together language and literacy assessment data with cross-cultural and social-emotional learning data, and explain how a tiered assessment system solves for the limitations of existing assessments and centers the assets and needs of multilingual learners. We provide examples and tools that show how schools implement a multilingual learner data framework, as well as examples of classroom progress monitoring strategies for reading, writing, and social-emotional learning to inform decision-making in classroom instruction for multilingual learners. We end with an action planning tool that schools can use to implement culturally and linguistically responsive data practices in their own contexts.

Description goes hereIn Chapter 5, we focus on the role of school leaders in promoting organizational improvement and leading system-wide professiohal learning in service of multilingual learner success. We present four extended vignettes of real leaders who have made changes in their schools or districts based on a systems thinking approach. Each vignette highlights an aspect of leadership practice related to serving multilingual learners. We present their experiences, challenges, leadership interventions and use their stories in our discussion of what it takes for leaders to lead school improvement. We include discussion questions for each vignette that can be used by school leaders and administrators to promote the analysis of leadership practice. We then outline key actions for leaders to lead adult development and professional learning that builds practitioner expertise to serve culturally and linguistically diverse students. We end with a set of tools that leaders can use to assess and reflect on their strengths and areas of leadership expertise.