Paridad’s La Clave de Oaxaca Institute was recently documented as an example of deep professional learning in Chapter 8, p. 170, “From Monolingualism to Multilingualism” by Ivannia Soto & Margo Gottlieb in Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learners’ Success, 2019, Corwin Press:

OFFERING DEEP PROFESSIONAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

The following description of a three-module professional learning institute illustrates how the arts can transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries to become infused throughout school.

“Arts are the ideal medium for educators to explore the intersection of language, culture and content and is a panorama for understanding social justice issues that relate to curricular choices and instructional implementation. In the first module, teachers and district leaders were introduced to a multilingual curricular framework before engaging in the second module, a rich series of field experiences with artists and cultural experts in Oaxaca, Mexico. The third module focused on making district curriculum more culturally and linguistically appropriate. Data from post-institute surveys and evaluations confirmed the positive impact of this multidimensional approach to professional learning where participants see the value of sustaining and amplifying the home languages and cultures of their multilingual learners to use as learning tools to access complex content. (Hilliard & Gottlieb, 2018)”