Early Career Teaching Institute

Flores (2017) mentions the idea of semilingualism being "not fully proficient in either English or Spanish" (p. 77) among Latino students in the United States as an ongoing issue. Today, many Latinx students are being surrounded by the phrase "no sabo" (a non-standard use of the first person, present tense conjugation of the verb saber/to know) as a label for being Latinx but not knowing Spanish. I would like to present the dilemma but offer opportunities for linguistic empowerment for bilingual students. As a former English learner and now teacher educator, Carlos Orozco hopes to allow for space for teachers to reflect on their actions as a teacher for dynamic bi/multilingualism and how teachers can help create a classroom that empowers and affirms bi/multilingual students without centering "academic" language proficiency.

Learning Goals

• Identify the linguistic oppression that Latinx students are facing in-and-out school contexts
• Reflect and identify ways to foster a classroom environment that affirms and empowers bi/multilingualism without thinking of language proficiencies.

Learn more about Indigenous cultures, in Wisconsin and beyond, with PBS multimedia collections like Molly of Denali and Wisconsin First Nations. These free, standards-aligned resources span all grade levels and readily work to fulfill Act 31, which requires all Wisconsin public schools to teach the history, cultures, and tribal sovereignties of its First Peoples. These resources provide the means to teach culturally rather than teach about culture. Each collection includes authentic perspectives regarding historical and contemporary Indigenous peoples and their ways of life by examining various forms of informational texts including videos, maps, games, learning apps, and historical documents.

Learning Goals

• Learn about the wide variety, spanning grade levels, of Indigenous-focused multimedia educational resources from PBS
• Consider new ways to integrate Indigenous-focused resources into your existing curricula and/or to build personal background knowledge
• Connect Indigenous-focused resources and lesson-planning ideas to the mandates of Act 31 to ensure culturally responsible, complaint teaching in your learning space

How do we build strong, resilient communities that foster learning and a deep sense of belonging? In this workshop, led by veteran MMSD educators, participants will reflect on the ways in which our identities and values shape the learning spaces we create. We'll work together to identify elements of communities that have made our own past learning experiences especially positive and meaningful. The tools we need to transform our classrooms and other learning environments can always be found within us and between us, thus our time together will center on making connections with other educators and expressing joy as we explore valuable examples of ways to nurture thriving communities.

Learning Goals

• Participants will reflect on concrete ways to honor and nurture core values in service of building community in learning spaces. 
• Participants will explore strategies for strengthening community by keeping identity expression, relationship-building, and joy at the center of the work.

During this session, teachers will hear about different categories for designing a classroom and guidance around intentional classroom setup with specific attention to daily routines and structures to support students. There will also be time for teachers to brainstorm their ideal classroom design and problem-solve with other educators about barriers to setting up their classroom.

Learning Goals

• New teachers will learn different ways to design their classrooms with intentionality around daily routines and student support.
• New teachers will begin to design the layout of their ideal classroom to best suit their needs and the needs of their students.

This session is a celebration and exploration of children’s literature. Participants will have an opportunity to share one of their favorite texts with others. Then, we’ll highlight a subsection of picks from the Children’s Collaborative Book Center Choices 2024 list. Participants will have time to explore some of the best new children’s literature from the last year, and collaborate with peers on ways they could incorporate new texts into their classrooms. We view children's literature broadly and texts may include anything written by children’s authors specifically for children, tweens, teens, and young adults, including picture books, graphic novels, young adult fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Learning Goals

• Participants will share one of their favorite texts with others, and learn about their colleagues’ favorite texts.
• Participants will review a subsection of selections from the Children’s Collaborative Book Center Choices 2024 list
• Participants will collaborate with others to brainstorm ways they might incorporate new texts into their classrooms

This session will support educators in teaching difficult histories of mass violence and/or genocide in ways that are accessible for their students. With the Holocaust as a case study, we will use innovative reflective questions and guidelines written by two teacher-scholars, intentionally scaffolded images, and short, primary source texts to explore what is possible and meaningful for students’ historical learning. This session aims to not only deepen content knowledge of one historical instance of genocide teachers will likely encounter teaching about (especially per Wisconsin’s Act 30 mandate), but it aims to empower teachers in their capacity to facilitate the learning of complex and emotionally-provocative histories more broadly.

Learning Goals

• Teachers will reflect on, discuss, and identify what age-accessible learning looks like in their classrooms.
• Teachers will analyze resources for age-accessibility.
• Teachers will modify or draft learning opportunities about/through difficult histories that are age-accessible for their students.