Sustaining Multilingual Learning through PBL

In the Winter of 2019, we asked a team of K-12 teachers and principals what they want the PBL experience to be like for SLUSD's multilingual learners.  This is what they said:

These statements represent a powerful vision of project based learning for multilingual learners in our district.  In an effort to make this vision come true, we needed to dig into these two questions:

How do we
effectively
​scaffold for
English Learners?

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What are the complexities that arise when supporting English Learners?
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The team of educators we invited to redesign PBL projects with English Learners in mind took up these questions at our PBL Redesign Bootcamp.  Below is a recap of their discussion.

Sometimes, more difficult questions emerge as part of thoughtful, academic discussion, questions such as:

• When do English Learners need scaffolding?
• How do you balance different needs in different content areas for each student?
• How do we, as educators, become intentional about removing scaffolding?
• What does a culture of support for linguistic acquisition look like, sound like, and feel like?
• How do we create classrooms that value student voice?
• How does authenticity in a project support language development?

Without missing a beat, our SLUSD educators leaned into these questions, and harnessed them to more thoughtfully and intentionally design projects that account for placement and removal of language scaffolds, that cultivate admiration for language acquisition, and that use best teaching practices to support language development in multiple disciplines.   

These questions, and our collective work focusing on our Multilingual learners, sustain San Leandro Unified's practice of honoring and supporting the unique assets each of our learners bring to our schools.