7 Ideas for Sing Along: Language Through Lyrics

By Lora Beth Escalante

My personal connection to music and language learning goes back to high school. My Spanish teacher would play Shakira and encourage us to listen and move. I had no idea what she was singing, but her ballads were beautiful and evoked emotion even without comprehension. Possibly more powerful was the motivation it gave me to learn a second language. I wanted to understand. This was back in the day when CDs came with little booklets to follow along with the lyrics. I can sing every song from my very first CD, the Forrest Gump soundtrack.

I started purchasing CDs and listening in the car and in my bedroom. My parents endured many drives around town as I attempted to croon to Ana Gabriel and Juan Gabriel.

What songs do you play the most? Do you have a favorite genre of music for exercising, gardening, cleaning, or taking a relaxing bath? Do you sing along, dance, nod your head gently, or tap your foot to the beat? As a world language, bilingual education or content teacher, have you considered integrating more music into your life, your classroom, and your campus? What musical benefits can you envision your students enjoying?

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Holiday Traditions in a Diverse Classroom

By Dr. Carol Salva

The holiday season is quickly approaching, and it’s an exciting time for those who celebrate all kinds of holidays. Many schools will buzz with excitement as teachers, students, and families celebrate holiday traditions that are important to them. Holiday parties in elementary schools are not unusual, and secondary teachers might display decorations or deck the halls around their classrooms. It is a significant time of year for many. It is also a great opportunity to bring your classroom together in a way that helps students learn a bit more about the world around them, sharpen critical thinking skills, and feel as if each one of them matters in the classroom.

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Why Multilingual Leadership Is So Hard to Explain

by Dr. Marie Heath

“I’m going to print this out and tape it to my back so everyone will understand what it is I do!”

She wasn’t joking.

Everyone in the room laughed, but underneath the laughter was something deeper. She was trying to describe what so many multilingual leaders feel every day. People see how busy multilingual leaders are, but they rarely see the complexity behind the work. They see pieces of the work, but not the whole picture.

When a participant said that to me after attending a Strategic by Design training, that comment stayed with me long after the training ended. I had to stop and think about why this work feels so difficult to explain.

Her comment helped me realize that the challenge isn’t simply the amount of work multilingual leaders do. It’s that much of their work is invisible to everyone else. The work isn’t difficult because there is too much of it. It’s difficult because it is spread across so many departments that no one person sees the entire system.

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Another Look at Gradual Release: What Does “I Do” Really Mean?

by Michelle Yzquierdo

A seventh-grade teacher is solving a two-step equation at the board. “What do we do first?”
A few students shout out, “Subtract four!”
The teacher writes it down. “Now what?”
Another student shouts out: “Divide by two!”
The teacher finishes the problem and moves to the next one.

This looks like direct instruction. The teacher modeled a problem at the board. But look closer at who did the thinking. It was not the teacher, nor was it most of the class. Rather, three or four students carried the cognitive work for the whole class, and everyone else watched.

This is a math example, but the subject doesn’t matter. The same thing happens when an ELA teacher annotates a paragraph while students call out the theme, or when a social studies teacher pulls up a primary source document and asks, “What do you notice?” I see this pattern frequently when I visit classrooms, across all grade levels and all content areas. It seems to be the norm, and not an outlier.

This is the most common way the “I Do” phase of gradual release breaks down. When P. David Pearson and Margaret Gallagher first defined gradual release of responsibility in their original 1983 research, the modeling phase (“I Do”) was built on one simple premise: the teacher holds all of the responsibility for the work, and the student holds none of it yet (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; full text via ERIC). “I Do” works when the teacher carries 100% of the thinking out loud, without student input. The moment a student supplies a step, the model stops being a model.

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Low Stress Does Not Mean Low Rigor

by Isaac Márquez

“Well, Isaac. We can’t just make the work easier for them. We’re told there still has to be rigor.”

This is a comment I’ve heard from teachers a few times over the last couple of years that I’ve been at Seidlitz Education. During several of my sessions, I describe the ideas of Comprehensible Input and Low-Stress output. This brilliant concept of how students acquire language from Dr. Stephen Krashen and Dr. Merrill Swain is essential and foundational to successfully implementing strategies such as The 7 Steps to a Language-Rich, Interactive Classroom.

However, I’ve found that there is sometimes a misconception about what “low-stress” means.

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From Cold Call to Choice: Trauma-Informed Shifts in a Randomization System

by Elise White Diaz

“My mom was supposed to arrive this year, but there is no chance she will be let into the country now.”

“I’m a U.S. citizen, but I’m afraid of being targeted.”

“I’m scared to go to school and be deported.”

These statements were either overheard or relayed to me last year. Worries affecting students’ families and communities don’t disappear when they enter school; they shape how safe—or unsafe—their nervous systems feel in the school environment. And highly evaluative classrooms can unintentionally amplify that sense of threat.

According to Stephen W. Porges, learning environments that rely heavily on evaluation and judgment can cue danger for nervous systems. When this happens, the body shifts toward protection rather than connection, making learning and engagement more difficult. Fortunately, small shifts in the classroom can increase students’ sense of safety by reducing the pressure to perform—something educators can control even in uncertain times.

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A Guatemalan Journey with CHILD AID: Commitment, Passion, and Hope

by Mónica Lara

Have you ever been genuinely moved by an experience?

Several months ago, Pete Noll, Child Aid’s Chief Development Officer, invited me on a week-long trip to visit schools in rural, indigenous communities in Guatemala. Child Aid (child-aid.org) is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing child literacy through teacher training, classroom resources, and reading programs.

Having previously visited schools in Mexico and Honduras, I anticipated finding passionate teachers, eager students, adherence to school guidelines, and limited resources. While these assumptions were correct—I certainly saw passionate teachers and students who welcomed us with inquisitive attitudes and love—my week in Guatemala proved to be much more profound.

As I reflect on the experience, three powerful words capture the essence of what I witnessed: Commitment, Passion, and Hope.

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Texas’s New ELPS and PLDs: Math Strategies for Emergent Bilinguals in Any Classroom

by Jim Ewing

For many Texas educators, the rollout of the updated English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) and Proficiency Level Descriptors (PLDs) scheduled for Fall 2026 may feel like “one more thing” on an already full plate. However, these standards are not an add-on—they are a roadmap for intentional instruction.

The updated ELPS now include content-specific PLD examples for math, science, and social studies content-areas, offering teachers clearer guidance than ever before. Instead of relying solely on broad descriptors, educators now have a structured way to support students across five proficiency levels while maintaining rigorous academic expectations.

While these are required in Texas, educators across the country can also use this framework to better support Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) in math classrooms.

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1% Better, Every Day

by Nancy Motley

March is usually when I start my countdowns… 57 days left of school, 11 more Fridays, 5 more staff meetings, etc. I find myself focused on finishing, likely as a way to lower the stress that I feel during this time of year. In the midst of state testing, end-of-year meetings, and finalizing grades, professional growth gets lost. Unlike at the beginning of the school year, when I am energized to try new strategies and reflective about my practice, I am currently in survival mode.

Here is the good news: Improvement can still happen during the countdown days! In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear writes that all it takes is focusing on getting 1% better each day (2018). Generally speaking, we might think 1% is insignificant. A 1% increase in a test score, for example, doesn’t seem like much. If we remain focused on small and consistent improvements over time, however, the results can be staggering. Clear explains: “If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.” (Clear, 2018, p.15). This sounds very appealing to me! Almost forty percent growth just by focusing on a teeny tiny change. Even in March countdown mode, this feels doable.

So what does 1% look like for us? While the ideas are endless, I’d like to offer a few concrete, small moves that are quick and low-to-no prep. Any one of them could be the 1% adjustment that, when implemented with consistency, can have a significant and positive impact on both you and your students. Most of these ideas come from my book, Small Moves, Big Gains.

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The Vocabulary Hack That Changes Everything: Why Morpheme Instruction Works

by Michelle Yzquierdo

Picture this: Your tenth grade student is reading her biology textbook. She’s navigating dense paragraphs about cellular processes when she hits the word “photosynthesis” and stops cold. “I don’t know this word,” she mutters, and skips ahead. You’ve seen this pattern many times: students shutting down the moment they encounter unfamiliar academic vocabulary.

So what do you do? Spend the necessary instructional time pre-teaching all the academic vocabulary words? Have students dutifully copy definitions? Maybe even make flashcards? Furthermore, you have 150 students across five classes, reading anywhere from third-grade to college level, and the gaps in academic language and vocabulary are as diverse as your students. How do you differentiate vocabulary instruction for that range?

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