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Upcoming Events
Multilingual Special Education Virtual Symposium:
Perspectives and Practices
to Transform Learning Landscapes
May 11 & 12, 2023
Save the date!
Symposium Description
This symposium is designed for educators and service providers who work at the complex and dynamic intersection of multilingual education and special education. It centers the experiences of multilingual learners with special educational needs. This symposium focuses on dynamic, strength-based, and culturally-sustaining practices. This is a virtual symposium featuring leading scholars and practitioners and provides multiple interactive formats, including presentations, discussion forums, and networking.
Senior Associate-Paridad
Symposium Co-Host
Cristina collaborates with educators in the US and Canada on developing culturally and linguistically sustaining multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS); mathematics; literacy across the content areas; multilingual education; engaging parents, Multilingual Learners with Special Educational Needs, and supporting Pre-K educators who serve Multilingual Learners. Cristina has taught at the elementary, middle school and university levels in the US and Mexico. At present, Cristina teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the areas of Biliteracy, Assessment, and Foundations of Language Minority Education. For more than18 years, Cristina and her colleague, Theresa Young (Speech-Language Pathologist, Ontario, Canada) have collaborated to support school problem-solving teams as they develop more culturally and linguistically sustaining learning environments. Cristina and her husband have raised their daughter bilingually.
Speech Language Pathologist-
Symposium Co-Host
Theresa began her career on the Pacific island of Saipan, in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands where she worked with multilingual students and families in home, school, and medical settings. She coordinated a team of speech-language pathologists to develop culturally and linguistically responsive assessment and intervention practices for Pacific Islanders. Upon returning to Canada, Theresa worked in schools in the highly diverse Toronto area, while providing professional development and writing collaboratively on multicultural, multilingual topics in education. She has been working with local First Nations to design and implement programs and services for children in preschools and schools in home communities.
Cristina's & Theresa's Work Together
Cristina and Theresa's collaborative work melds the fields of multilingual education and special education into a framework for culturally and linguistically responsive practice for educators and practitioners in schools. Their solution-seeking process is featured in Special Education Considerations for English Language Learners: Delivering a Continuum of Services (2013, 2021). They have most recently collaborated on a volume in the Oxford University Press Key Concept Series for Language Learners, Focus on Special Educational Needs (2018).