Breaking Down the Wall Essenti Al Shifts for English Learners

It was a dark and stormy night in Santa Barbara. January 18, 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 hey 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 the fruit of that effort: Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learner's 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 hey reall are: 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' potential:

From Deficit-Based to Asset-Based

From Compliance to Excellence

From Watering Down to Challenging

From Isolation to Collaboration

From Silence to Conversation

From Language to Language, Literacy, and Content

From Assessment of Learning to Assessment for and as Learning

From Monolingualism to Multilingualism

From Nobody Cares to Everyone/Every Community Cares