Collaboration for Multilingual Learners With Exceptionalities
We Share the Students
Illustrations by Carmen Nguyen and Colleen Wilcox
Discover models, strategies, and real-life stories to strengthen your collaborative practices.
Cooperation, coordination of services, and impactful collaboration are critical to the success of multilingual learners with exceptional needs. Written by experts in the fields of language and literacy development, equity, and special education, this practical guide emphasizes the power of partnership and inclusive pedagogy to transform educational practices for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Through six comprehensive chapters, the book offers strategies for effective co-planning, co-assessment, and co-teaching, while emphasizing the importance of cultural diversity and equitable classroom-based approaches for students with exceptionalities.
Each chapter includes opening sketch notes offering a visual representation of key ideas, anchor and reflection questions, and additional resources for extended professional learning.
Other unique features include:
- Real-life scenarios of successful collaborative practices and innovations developed by educators of dually identified multilingual learners
- Leadership-specific recommendations to support the success of initiatives for multilingual learners with exceptional needs
- Essential tools and protocols to implement equitable classroom-based approaches for creating inclusive, collaborative learning environments
Both a practical guide and an urgent call-to-action, this book supports educators, districts, and communities to embrace collaboration, combine their professional expertise, and use shared voices to advocate for multilingual learners with exceptionalities.
"An outstanding guide from the voices we most need collaborating in education now. Dr. Honigsfeld and Dr. Cohan offer the opportunity to make a better world in collaboration with our community, with the research-based premise that by centering students who need us most --multilingual learners with exceptions in this case--we will better serve all students. Dr. Honigsfeld and Dr. Cohan exemplify how collaboration creates avenues of support for the many differing learning needs on any team. We've all heard about asset-based philosophies, but putting them in to action can be a challenge. Here, a great set of questions, tools, examples, and testimonies from the field to start processing our teaching strategies with assets in mind and in unity: the only way to make success systemic. 'Many hands make light work' comes to life as we accomplish the goals that the treasures need us to accomplish now. An essential bit of wisdom in preparation for teachers wanting to succeed at more than a minimum requirements with culturally and linguistically diverse students across the country."
"I've found the perfect book! I'm thrilled about the potential for collaboration it brings as I introduce it to my team. With its insightful structure, practical tools, and meaningful content, it promises to enhance our support for multilingual learners. This book will enable us to share knowledge, expertise, and foster collective thinking. Huge thanks to Andrea Honigsfeld and Audrey Cohan for their timely contribution."
"Have you wondered how to best service your multilingual learners with exceptionalities? If you answered, yes, then this book is for you. It explores the different ways to collaborate with the special service team to meet the needs of these students. I love how the authors include voices from the field to show us the strategies being used in actual schools and to hear teacher perspectives. In addition, they provide reflection questions at the end of each chapter to discuss with colleagues or use for your own reflection of your practices and what is best to meet the needs of your multilingual students with exceptionalities."
It’s perfectly fitting that Andrea Honigsfeld and Audrey Cohan focus on language to dive deeply into Collaboration for Multilingual Learners with Exceptionalities: universally welcoming learners; rightful presence; educational dignity; expansive learning environments; multilingual consciousness; intersectional traps; asset-based lens. Afterall, language is definitional to culture and Honigsfeld and Cohan provide a much-needed dignified framework for collaborators to support multilingual learners with exceptionalities. This text is certainly needed in the increasingly diversifying field of education and I’m excited to use it to expand my graduate students’ knowledge in my course on co-teaching. The sketchnotes by Carmen Nguyen and the artwork by Coleen Wilcox give visual representation to the many complex concepts presented and add a great deal to the understanding of multilingual learners with exceptionalities. Well done!
