Relationships
Relationships are connections, collaborations, partnerships, and social networks; all the ways we come together collectively as alliances of educators, students, families, and communities with the aim to dialogue, rethink, design and plan education for multilingual students. It captures the way we relate with each other with purpose.
Equity
Equity is our commitment to creating opportunities for historically marginalized groups, like our multilingual students, to claim their spot in the educational process and thrive. It means building an education that is asset- and strengths- based and culturally relevant; an education that caters to diverse students building on their cultural and linguistic backgrounds; an education that develops and amplifies their schooling experience in rich, intellectually stimulating, and equitable learning environments.
Access
Access comprises pathways that provide equal opportunity to multilingual students to develop language, literacy, and knowledge, enabling them to fulfill their academic and life goals. It also means providing knowledge, support and resources to educators working with multilingual students thus, reworking systems of learning that exist on both the school and district levels.
CENTERING
RELATIONSHIPS
EQUITY AND
ACCESS FOR
TEACHERS OF
ENGLISH LEARNERS
Relationships
Our vision
UMASS CREATE project centers educator voices from classrooms with multilingual learners, engages with multilingual students’ families and communities, provides professional development and builds teacher leadership in the collaborating districts. It is designed to address an urgent need for thoughtful, committed, highly skilled and equity-oriented educators of English Learners/multilingual students. It aims to increase individual, educator, and district capacity to support multilingual students in eight high-needs school districts in the Boston metro area. CREATE builds on asset- and strengths- based approaches that bring together educators, families and communities to identify optimal ways to support the linguistic, academic, cultural and emotional needs of English Learners, while promoting social justice and inclusion. Coursework offered through the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Boston focuses on second language acquisition and literacy development, language teaching methodologies, assessment practices, and policy issues that impact instruction of and pedagogical choices for multilingual learners and their educators. At the same time, we are working with multilingual students’ families and communities as partners and interlocutors in rethinking these students’ schooling experience.
CREATE is housed in the Department of Applied Linguistics at UMass Boston.
Applied Linguistics Professors Awarded $2.9 M. for Development Program for Teachers of English Learners.