There have been so many values to my partnership with Confianza, working with Sarah. So it’s been three years and the partnership has really evolved. I first contacted Confianza and contacted Sarah when I started my role as ELL director.

There was an interim director and there previously wasn’t a director for 8 years. It was my first role in district leadership and so I really needed some help navigating what is this role and what is this impact.

I felt confident in what my role was in the classroom and what my role was as a school-based administrator, but district-wise not super clear. And our kids as English learners need so much.’

Sarah first started by coming on and coaching me as an ELL director. There aren’t very many people who understand ELL as a field as well as leadership. I think I can get leadership coaching from anyone but what Sarah offers is a deep understanding of who English learners are, what their needs are, and what are some real challenges in the system.

That’s how it started, and I quickly expanded the partnership with Confianza, and Sarah started to coach the ELL coaches. And part of my role in the beginning of working as director in Salem was to build up a coaching program.How are we supporting teachers who are serving English learners? We can have an expert math teacher or a seasoned ELA teacher. And yet, to serve the diverse language proficiency levels in each classroom across Salem is its own deeply important skillset. So, Sarah started to coach the coaches and coach me in how my leadership had an impact through the coaches. And that was great, and that was year two.

And now that we’re in year three of our partnership, we started to expand beyond ELL – English Language Development, the ELD pullout – to how are all of our teachers across all of our general education SCI classes supporting English learners. That’s really been part of my partnership with Sarah has been to deepen my impact outside of the ELL department to teaching and learning and curriculum and instruction.

Some of the major contributions have been for me to be able to widen my own impact. To see what’s in my locus of control -- Sarah would always bring me back to: “What’s in your locus of control? what’s in your locus of concern?” -- and to widen that. To feel confident in the systems and structures I have for students and families in the ELL department, but also to know that it’s beyond what the ESL teacher can do. And it’s what the math teacher and the ELA instructional coach and the director of curriculum can do. And what’s my role in navigating those relationships that we have with kids?

Sarah has kind of started and met me where I was – where I am – as a learner in my own leadership journey and then helped kind of elevate my understanding of how the system works. And always student-centered and always on behalf of the kids.

I’m going to tell you two anecdotes of how we’ve been able to see success together. The first is around designing a newcomer program at Salem high school.

Part of my role in coming in and serving English learners is to look at what are our systems and structures or instructional approaches for English learners and what was working and what wasn’t.

Sarah led me through a needs assessment. And we zeroed in on the high school and looked at: When should our newcomers be sheltered? When should they be in separate settings that are really geared towards their language profiency? And when is it appropriate for students to be with language models and peers and with SCI-endorsed teachers?

Part of my partnership and a real success was re-imaging the high school newcoming program. And then Sarah was able to connect me with colleagues across Massachusetts who are doing the same work with students who are very similar to the students in Salem.

Part of working with Confianza is being part of this greater network of who are the other EL educators who are doing cool stuff. And I’ve been able to see that. From my visit, Sarah organized a visit to go to Lawrence High School to see the ENLACE program. She connected me with the ELL and bilingual Director at Framingham, so I got to go do a site visit in Framingham. And those opportunities really helped me deepen my practice and my understanding of the landscape. And that really has helped our high school English learners.

And then the other success story that I can share is we have instructional approaches in Salem in ELA, math, and science. And now in ESL and special education. But oftentimes, instructional coaches feel really grounded in their own content, in their own discipline. “Oh, I know math, I might not know English learners, but I know math.”

And what Sarah’s really been able to do in a welcoming and safe way is build the capacity of each of our instructional coaches in every discipline to be experts in English learners. They don’t feel that they’re experts, what they’re doing is coaching through the lens of accessibility.

And so, no one is a math coach just for content alone. All of our math coaches are now equity coaches through the math content. And Sarah has really set that tone for our instructional coaches in that’s translated into so many more opportunities for English learners to access content.

And I have stolen so many of her adult facilitation techniques in terms of how she structures adult learning. And different opportunities to really allow teachers the time to make choices of what they’re doing with their time. Giving them tools and then time to explore and play with those tools. Open-ended things that I wasn’t really expecting. But then when I turn around to do a PD for teachers, I’m thinking what am I going to steal? What was I just doing as a participant that I want to take?

I think Confianza is billed as, is kind of advertised as, English learner-center and we’ve really been able to take Sarah’s wisdom and her coaching and her tools to think about all learners. We think about – and Sarah has pushed us to think about – academic language learners: ALL. That everyone is an academic language learner, and we have ELLs for English-language learners.

I think by partnering with Confianza, by bringing Sarah into the work, you’re bringing in this social justice lens and this equity grounding that is important for all learners and essential for English Learners.