Abstract: Many teacher educators have redoubled efforts to be as precise and impactful as ever with instruction with the recent challenges of remote instruction and pandemic inequities. Preparing pre-service teachers to instruct emerging bilingual populations remains a critical undertaking as we identify high-leverage considerations that will yield the best results for our multilingual learners in general education settings. Among these considerations are acknowledging the legislative and theoretical precedents to centering the specific strengths and needs of these populations. For math educators in particular, practical considerations include valuing community, inquiry, and representation in the learning environment as well as discipline-specific language demands and scaffolding. In this session I will speak to the specific courses I teach in seven-week iterations which span the theoretical and practical steps for preparing pre-service math educators to teach emerging bilinguals.
Tasha Austin is a doctoral student and lecturer in Language Education at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and the Teacher Education Special Interest Group Representative for NJTESOL-NJBE. As founder of Premise LLC, she supports schools with innovative and humanizing pedagogies. Her research uses critical race theory and Black feminist epistemologies to qualitatively examine language, identity and power, and the ways in which anti-Blackness emerges in language education and language teacher preparation.
For Zoom info, please contact Alexi Block Gorman, atb2@illinois.edu