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 exceptionalities. 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 responsiveness and equitable classroom-based approaches for multilingual learners 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:
- Integration of Universal Design for Learning throughout the book with adaptations for multilingual learners
- 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 withexceptionalities
- 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!
"In their new book, Multilingual Learners with Exceptionalities: We Share the Students, Honigsfeld & Cohan thoughtfully and practically address the needs of students who are at the intersection of diversity and exceptionalities. They designed the book in an accessible and systematic manner that creates space for educators at any stage of their career (beginning through experienced) to engage with the content from multiple vantage points, making it a valuable resource for a wide range of stakeholders. While attending to the importance of addressing the needs of all students, they provide specific examples that educators can use to learn more about their students and create the most expansive learning environments to support student success."
"Working with multilingual learners with exceptionalities can seem like a steep hill to climb, but Multilingual Learners with Exceptionalities: We Share the Students is well organized, and each chapter breaks down various challenges and opportunities in a clear, concise, and straightforward manner. The graphic 'sketch notes' provide a visual overview of each set of topics, and features like 'reflections' and 'collaborations' contribute to parent partnerships and ongoing professional learning, bringing a strong real-world component to the text. I cannot wait to share this book with the graduate students in English as a new language at our school of Education!"
"At last, a practical and informative resource that breaks down so many of the siloes between the fields of general education, bilingual/ESOL education, and special education! Grounded in universal design for learning (UDL), this book offers ideas and real applications that show what inclusive, integrated, multimodal classrooms designed with the learner in mind can and should look like.
With realistic vignettes and stories from real practitioners in classrooms and positions of school and district leadership, this book not only answers the “what” and the “why” of true collaboration at many levels, but also the “how”. Offering an approach that highlights the strengths of learners and the educators who serve them, the book illustrates the notion of a “multilingual consciousness” that centers language, culture and ability in new and innovative ways. Each chapter provides thoughtful questions for reflection and connection to the realities of today’s schools that take the reader “beyond the chapter”, offering a world of possibilities. The many resources included, from helpful checklists and protocols to suggested websites and research literature make this a complete guide for educators and school and district leaders wishing to implement new collaborative practices or hone their current practices in forward-thinking ways. All of this is greatly enhanced by the cleverly designed sketchnotes that introduce each chapter.
Collaboration for Multilingual Learners with Exceptionalities: We Share the Students is a book that will open up new pathways to collaboration within classrooms, across school and district hallways, and across fields. It is a resource no district should be without."
"My deepest gratitude to the authors for this wonderfully positive and forward-looking volume! This engaging book will serve as an excellent guide to organize systemwide collaborative practices in support of Multilingual Neurodiverse Learners and indeed all students. The authors provide authentic resources, frameworks and voices from the field that will help schools and school districts develop universally welcoming environments. The very strengths-based, student-centered voice in this volume will inspire readers to realize that collectively they can make changes that will optimize learning and wellbeing for the students they serve."
