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Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learners’ Success
It was a dark and stormy night in Santa Barbara. January 19, 2017. The next day’s inauguration drumroll played on the evening news. Huddled around a table were nine Corwin authors and their publisher, who together have devoted their careers to equity in education. They couldn’t change the weather, they couldn’t heal a fractured country, but they did have the power to put their collective wisdom about EL education upon the page to ensure our multilingual learners reach their highest potential.
Proudly, we introduce you now to the fruit of that Breaking Down the Essential Shifts for English Learners’ Success.
In this first-of-a-kind collaboration, teachers and leaders, whether in small towns or large urban centers, finally have both the research and the practical strategies to take those first steps toward excellence in educating our culturally and linguistically diverse children. It’s a book to be celebrated because it means we can throw away the dark glasses of deficit-based approaches and see children who come to school speaking a different home language for what they really learners with tremendous assets.
The authors’ contributions are arranged in nine chapters that become nine tenets for teachers and administrators to use as calls to actions in their own efforts to realize our English learners’ 1. From Deficit-Based to Asset-Based 2. From Compliance to Excellence 3. From Watering Down to Challenging 4. From Isolation to Collaboration 5. From Silence to Conversation 6. From Language to Language, Literacy, and Content 7. From Assessment of Learning to Assessment for and as Learning 8. From Monolingualism to Multilingualism 9. From Nobody Cares to Everyone/Every Community Cares
Read this book; the chapters speak to one another, a melodic echo of expertise, classroom vignettes, and steps to take. To shift the status quo is neither fast nor easy, but there is a clear process, and it’s laid out here in Breaking Down the Wall. To distill it into a single line would go something like if we can assume mutual ownership, if we can connect instruction to all children’s personal, social, cultural, and linguistic identities, then all students will achieve.
Proudly, we introduce you now to the fruit of that Breaking Down the Essential Shifts for English Learners’ Success.
In this first-of-a-kind collaboration, teachers and leaders, whether in small towns or large urban centers, finally have both the research and the practical strategies to take those first steps toward excellence in educating our culturally and linguistically diverse children. It’s a book to be celebrated because it means we can throw away the dark glasses of deficit-based approaches and see children who come to school speaking a different home language for what they really learners with tremendous assets.
The authors’ contributions are arranged in nine chapters that become nine tenets for teachers and administrators to use as calls to actions in their own efforts to realize our English learners’ 1. From Deficit-Based to Asset-Based 2. From Compliance to Excellence 3. From Watering Down to Challenging 4. From Isolation to Collaboration 5. From Silence to Conversation 6. From Language to Language, Literacy, and Content 7. From Assessment of Learning to Assessment for and as Learning 8. From Monolingualism to Multilingualism 9. From Nobody Cares to Everyone/Every Community Cares
Read this book; the chapters speak to one another, a melodic echo of expertise, classroom vignettes, and steps to take. To shift the status quo is neither fast nor easy, but there is a clear process, and it’s laid out here in Breaking Down the Wall. To distill it into a single line would go something like if we can assume mutual ownership, if we can connect instruction to all children’s personal, social, cultural, and linguistic identities, then all students will achieve.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 11, 2019
21 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 26, 2021
Good book co-written by many experts in the field of English learner education. Much of this work has influenced CA's EL Policy. If a district team was wanting to read a book and have conversations about their EL program, this would be a good one.
January 5, 2020
So much goodness from ESL A-listers! So inspiring and a book I will reference all of the fime.
July 14, 2025
Essential book for all educators
July 5, 2020
Important read for any educator who works with Ls
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews