What Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan Taught Us About Structured Literacy for Multilingual Learners

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan—renowned author, educator, and advocate for multilingual learners—to explore how Structured Literacy can empower every student. From bridging language and culture to practical classroom strategies, Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan shares inspiring insights and actionable tools for supporting English learners in meaningful, evidence-based ways. She dives into the importance of oral language, cross-linguistic connections, and how all teachers—regardless of background—can feel confident supporting linguistically diverse students.

Note: The article starts on page 86 of the online version of IDA's 75th anniversary edition of "Perspectives on Language and Literacy".

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Transcript

Narrator: 0:03

Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere, brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Donell Pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. Now let's talk literacy.

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 0:46

Welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks. And if you've been joining us this season, you know we are focusing on the perspectives on language and literacy. 75th anniversary issue from Ida, and it's titled, structured literacy, grounded in the science of reading. And today we are so excited because we have yet another author of an article from that issue, one that we have been really looking forward to talking to, and that is Dr Elsa Cardenas Hagan. So thank you for joining us today. Delighted to be here, and I have to, I'll mention, we'll, we'll plug your book right out of the gate, but that it's been around for a while, and it's titled literacy foundations for English learners, a comprehensive guide to evidence based instruction. And I have to thank you for that, because it has made a big difference in my coursework with my pre service teachers, wonderful to know, and Lindsay and Donell, of course, are joining us today as well, and we've all equally been looking forward to this conversation. So thank you again. I can assume that most of our listeners know that you are a leader in literacy and the field of bilingual education. But how did you get to this point? What's your story? What led you to this work? So initially, I, you know, in undergraduate and graduate school, my focus was in Speech and Language Pathology and Audiology. And what ended up happening is I wanted to know more about myself and my identity, and I went to study at the better americano University in Mexico City, and studied linguistics there. And then I also went to the University of Salamanca, and it was all for myself and for really understanding you know who you are, more about your language and culture. My mother is Spanish, and my father's from Mexico, and so so in doing that work, I never realized how important that work was going to be for later in my career, and when I moved back to my home, found that there were many, many students that had these issues with language, but I found out that they had issues with literacy, and so really making that connection, and always thinking about BI literacy, it's such an asset. And I just, you know, see that only about 20% of our citizens the United States speak more than one language, and you look at other countries, and it's like more like 40% and I wish that we could really do a great job in this, because it's such an asset to have another language. I worked in head trauma rehabilitation for many years, and when our patients would come out of coma, it was those multilingual patients that we could get in that recovery. And you know, we see the delay of things like dementia and Alzheimer's by about five years delay when you're multilingual. So what I say is, as an adult, we can still learn another language, but these children are young, and their brains are sponges, and they can learn other languages. And also, as a little girl, you know, our language wasn't really celebrated, nor, and we're taught in English only and actually punished for speaking our home language and and that we don't want that for any child. We want every child to know you're an asset. We honor you. We honor your language and your culture, and we see you as such an asset, and to bring this wonderful contribution to our classroom. Well, I love that, and your story has definitely impacted many people. So thank you. It's also what you just shared is motivating to me. I'm going to bring my knowledge of the Spanish language beyond the present tense. I'm going to commit to that. I'm going to work on I can only speak in the present tense. It's been very limiting, and those verb tenses are quite complicated, like different verb tenses there. Okay, I'll work on it. So as you kind of mentioned too, you've spent much of your career advocating for English learners and. Students from diverse linguistic backgrounds, what are some of the most common like misconceptions that you encounter about bilingual literacy development? I think one of the things is starting with our educators and professionals in our schools, thinking, I don't really have this expertise. I don't know their language, so I, you know, really can't help them. I only know how to teach English. And what I want to say is, you don't have to know their language, you have to know something about the structure of their language, and then you need to be thinking about, how can I make the help them make those connections, and that takes a little bit of work, but we can do it. And so some teachers are fearful to work with this population students. And it is true, we only have 3% of teachers that are certified to do this kind of work, but even those teachers, they have great knowledge about language and language acquisition, but what I'm finding is they didn't have the opportunity to know about deep reading and how reading develops, and how you make those connections between language and literacy very systematically and explicitly. And so for me, it's all not only, you know, working with teachers who say, I'm not certified to work with you know students who are English learners or multilingual, but also even those who are certified, they need this extra work because they did not have it in their university to teach them. Well, how does reading work for them? What extra features can I add that will really are evidence based and will get me some great outcomes. I love that, and your article does such a good job. I recommend it's on page 86 of the issue we're talking about in the physical copy. It does such a good job of breaking down each aspect of literacy and how we can support multilingual learners in those spaces. And as someone who I do have my el endorsement, and there are some things that we didn't learn about and and you had to be teaching already before you got that endorsement. So it's a good idea that we're sharing these things with our pre service teachers too, so they can be prepared,

Unknown: 7:19

you know. And Elsa, I loved how you bridged the gap for a lot of us. Because there, there are many of us who might be interested in helping students who have dyslexia. That's like my background and the thing that that I have done, but it was really I thought you did a really good job of helping people understand for the same reasons that you were drawn to structured literacy, you understood how helpful and useful it was. The Science made sense to you for a lot of those same reasons. It makes sense for multi language learners. I thought that was such a nice draw for people who maybe don't see that or haven't seen that.

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 7:50

I guess it's also that we get in our little world, because I, you know, also specialists with, you know, dyslexia, but these kinds of you know what we know about learning to read, you know, came from a lot of the research on dyslexia, but it, in fact, benefits all children. So what I want to say about multilingual students is, here's some extra features, but guess what? It's just good teaching. It's just good teaching, and you're adding an extra, extra features that will help differentiate that instruction for our students. And what are you doing when you teach them this, you are teaching the students that are in front of you to be metalinguistic, to start themselves. Oh, my teacher did this as routine. Now I'm going to start to do it as routine. So I'm going to start thinking about, hmm, is this something I know in my language? What do I know about the sounds, the words, the syntax? What do I know about the use? What do I know about the morphology or the orthography? When we do this kind of work, we're teaching our students to do this and to realize that that they can be their own resource as well. And when you start seeing them do this, wow, you know the vocabulary source. And I give an example. I never knew about morphology. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, and I took this course. It was going to be like, help that GPA, Greek and Latin. Roots for medical terminology. Professor daily. He was awesome. I think he's still there today all the after all these years. But anyway, he comes in, and I start to go, Oh my gosh. I never realized I knew these words. And he, you know, Greek and Latin. Yeah, that's 75% of the English language right there. But 60% of it comes from Latin. So after that, course, you know, you have to take the GRE to get into graduate school. My vocabulary, of just the verbal score. It's sort of like, you mean, I'm just everybody else, you know, and I just now the math score didn't improve that much. I just have to say the difference between the st the GRE. I'm like, Oh, my God, everyone needs to know this. And that's how I really started working with young. Children bringing them this knowledge. And some people said I was a junior researcher at the time. They go, Elsa, that is not developmentally appropriate. I go, well, we should try it. I bet you the kids can do it. And then after they saw they go, oops, okay, sorry, you were right as a recording, no, at least you got to take that all in one class. I took medical terminology in high school and Latin for a similar reason as you did in college. It's the only C on my transcript. But I also did learn the importance of oral language because I couldn't connect it to speech, and so all of my learning of Latin is visual, essentially and you have to use, and that was the fun part. It's all about the use and our students, you know, many, many opportunities for the use of their language, and what happens when these students get in the classroom. I'm glad you started Stacy with language. I mean, I just got off the phone with the school right now talking to them like tomorrow, we're going to be doing all these samplings of oral language and written language. And I was explaining to them the missing piece of what we're finding out that they get in the classroom. And everyone gives them these sentence stems. You see that in all the classrooms? I know you do. And it's like, okay, we're going to give you the sentence stem students. And I'm like, But why do they need a sentence stem. Can we get to the root? It's almost like, oh, you know, they're not doing well, and they're reading fluency. But why? Let's go take a few steps back. Is it that they don't have, you know, that knowledge of the letters and sounds? Are they missing phonological there? What is it that's causing their fluency issue? I want to know. Why do you have to give them a sentence stem? So when we start with language and start figuring out what do they have, and how can I systematically and explicitly build upon that we go from our oracy to that beautiful, highest level of written language. And so we've got to start with that. And so you're a language teacher, you're a literacy teacher, and you're a content expert, right? So everything that you do must be related to language. And really, when we look at our population today, all students need further work on their oral language skills. Why technology has taken us away from from really having deep discussions and no conversations and we, you know, we text. We don't even spell that well anymore. So the bottom line is taking it from and teaching teachers. You know what, you can do this, and you're gonna know your student better. And guess what happens? The teachers take off with this, and then I start to see this language explode. And then what happens? They they say, Oh, right. Then they start doing their writing samples without me telling them how to do it. They go, Oh, well, we wanted to see how this affected written language. The connection from oracy to that highest form of that written language so important, but it's all on the foundations of the domains of language. And I know you've been talking about this Ida, beautiful, structured literacy, and you've talked about the infographic, and one of the things that I didn't get through was I wanted the domains of language to be really bolded and highlighted further. And we're still working on that. There's going to be some changes, because you can't do your work without language. Oh, you're going to be happy with the future episode we have all about those domains, yay. I love it, but very clearly. And you know, before people thought, well, the teachers can't do that, absolutely they can, and they learn more about their students. And every day that a child speaks to you, that's your data, that's data, and I need to capitalize upon that data, and I need to respond to it, and I need to give lots of practice. I love that. Lindsay, I know you have had students who are learning English as not their first language. What kind of things have you implemented in your classroom?

Lindsay Kemeny: 14:03

Well, you know, I think we've mentioned before, picture support is helpful, especially when you know we're decoding these, you know, decoding these words, they're all they could be all nonsense words to them, right? So attaching it with meaning is huge. I had a question for you, Elsa, I was wondering, because, as a teacher, if I'm not familiar with my students language, and I know sometimes there's teachers and they have students with there's like so many different languages in the classroom. I love how in the section of the article, you're talking about phonological awareness and how important it is to think about how we can connect their home language with English. Is there a resource you would suggest, like, is there a website that helps that has those lined up or something, if you know, if I'm not that familiar with Spanish or whatever the language is, right, right? And so I

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 14:57

like to talk about a. Um, it's called mylanguages.org and I think that's a really good place to start, because it has, you know, lots of different languages. And if we could just start with the sounds that transfer. Because when we look at phonological awareness and you look across languages like I can look at Russian and English and Spanish and English, and what you find is this strong correlation. And what's really problematic is that we take treat the students as if they don't know anything, and bring nothing to the table, when, in fact, you know, I talk about this, you know the Spanish language, my home language, that there's 19 sounds of exactly the same between those languages. Imagine that in a language of English, that is about 44 sounds, some might say 46 sounds. But the bottom line is, there's connections, but it's like you say Lindsay. What's really important is, when I am working on blending those sounds together, you know, to form words, if I don't know the meaning of them, it just seems like those are all nonsense words. And so I really ask that you make a connection to, you know, a simple definition. It doesn't take that much extra time. And then, you know, is this a word, you know, in your language? And can you use our new word in a targeted sentence that gets to language? So what did I get to? I got to the sounds, I got to the words, I got to the meaning, I got to the use. That didn't take me that much longer, and it really helped the students to make those connections. And it really saw and highlighted the assets that they bring, like I just began this talk today about those assets and so, but first we have to know. And so I think a website like that would be really helpful. And, you know, it does. It takes some background work. But, you know, so many and I've done, I've done that kind of work in Arabic and in Vietnamese and Punjabi and Ukrainian, I mean, just amazing. And you'll just see, oh my god, a lot of the bilabial sounds. They're the same in these languages. Miss, Arabic doesn't have one of the bilabial sounds. But, you know, I talk about how you can get to that bi label sounds, because a lot of times they're partner sounds. We call them the minimal pairs of sounds, so that, you know, that's, that's how I teach it. And it's just very helpful. Like, go from what they know, and then we get to a sound approximation, and it's teaching the teachers about those sound approximations. And the teachers are like, I wish I had known that you know before, but very clearly we can do this. And the correlation across the language is, it's very high in this area of phonological awareness.

Donell Pons: 17:44

Yeah, Elsa, I'm going to give you another plug for your book, the literacy foundations for English learners. I never dreamt so I picked it up for myself. Had it for a few years. It's fantastic, phenomenal. A lot of what you're recommending is in there. It's, again, very approachable. Gives you very good ideas, and you go through all the steps. One person I did not think would be an audience for your book, but I have a son who has dyslexia. He's in his 20s. He's been interested in language, and he's had a lot of remediation, and so structured literacy and the approach of breaking it down makes a lot of sense to him. I said, you might, I don't know, pick up this book. It might be. He loved it, and I was kind of blown away. Read the whole thing. And he said, It makes such sense to me, because this is how I picked up English. He said, I'm this is fantastic. He's working on three languages. He has dyslexia. I never dreamt so you never know who your audience is, either. Elsa, oh, I

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 18:36

know until here's the other thing. I have to fess up that back in the day, like in the 90s, I was one of those persons out there promoting and working towards legislation that students who had dyslexia didn't have to take the foreign language right, and that we they should not have be forced to do that, etc. But now, after doing this work, and after working with many bilingual students with dyslexia, they're all biliterate, but it's using these approaches and knowing what to do, when to do, how to do, and making those connections. And very clearly, there are some people that are doing this in colleges, using the same kind of procedures, but the opposite way, you know, from English to another language. And so it really goes bi directionally. So I'm so glad that you mentioned that, because it's not just going from a home language of Arabic to English or Spanish to English, or Vietnamese to English. It's really English to the other languages as well. The relationship is bi directional, yeah. Yeah. And I think as students engage in that kind of instruction, we learn more about all languages, but I think it refines our knowledge of English as well. One thing you mentioned in the book that I had never considered. I'm almost embarrassed to say that, but the fact that syllable types are. Learn something we need to teach in Spanish, because the vowels are consistent, right? Of course, I know the purpose that we learn syllable types, but just understanding that would help me with any student who speaks Spanish as a first language, and learning some things about other languages too and how they relate to English is very beneficial, I think, and you'll see that in chapter four, you know, some of those looking at the different languages, and in chapter five, but I want to tell you something. I never knew that English had syllables and syllable types. And so what you do when you don't know that information, you really are guessing and kind of, you know, it's trial and error. Which vowel is going to be long which one is short, but had someone taught me that I wouldn't have had all these error patterns in my speech and in my writing? Had I known about that, why the vowels change and I've had I known about the structure of the language that would have been made it so easy, so exactly what you were saying. Even if there's an adult learning, you know, English as in another language, or you're learning another foreign language, you know, take a look and see, are there syllable patterns, and are there syllable types? And you know, that really explains better the structure of the language. And a lot of times in the Spanish language, people say, Oh no, no, it's syllabic, and you only work on syllables. And I'm this is what I say in response to that syllables. I mean, sounds form syllables, syllables form words. Words form sentences, and sentences form paragraphs. So that's really having deep knowledge about that system, and in our studies with when we were developing assessments and screeners in Spanish and in English, we, you know, for face validity, we kept the Spanish like having syllables, but for content validity, we asked about the sounds. And the students with dyslexia, they could all do the syllables in their home language of Spanish. It's when we tried to get to the sounds right and and because also the language is so transparent, you know, if you want to find dyslexia, sometimes they break the code because it's easier to break. And so you got to look at other things like fluency and spelling. You know, that's where you'll find that. But what I want to say is, you know that importance of really understanding, you know, the sounds, those syllables and and realizing, oh, you know what the patterns look the same, but the way we produce them are different. And so just highlighting that,

Narrator: 22:33

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Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 23:11

And you know you, you brought up dyslexia, and I, in my experience, and you probably have more updated information on this. But what is it like for students who are learning English and are at risk for dyslexia? It doesn't seem like they're identified as early sometimes, right? And what we find is really under identification in those early years and over identification in the secondary years, and I was not aware, and I'm not going to mention the state or where I was recently in talking about assessment and screening and assessment, and I could not believe that there are Some places that will identify a student based only on their English scores and never take into consideration whether they have that issue or not in their home language. And what I'm going to say about that is, you get an incomplete picture. You're only looking at one part of the student. But what you know, was this ever a problem in their home language? Do they have any kind of instruction in their home language? And I write, I have a fact sheet on the main page of dyslexia ida.org and it talks about screening and identification for English learners, and what you need to be thinking about. But today in this country, we are still using those old formulas for the screening and identification. And of course, what they were experiencing was over identification. I'm like, yes, because you didn't really look at the whole child, if you only looked at one language, and you found this problem. But did they have any instruction in their home language? Did they have home language literacy? If they did, did you. Explore that a bit to make sure that this problem is in two languages. Did you look at the language of instruction models? Because that also context matters, and so it's not only depending on test scores. It's knowing the student and knowing the student and their environment and their opportunity very well. That's essential, which makes so much sense, and you're bringing to mind of an experience one of my students had a couple years ago. We have a course where they tutor throughout the semester, and one student had a an English language learner as a student, and her she we use the core phonics survey and the core funny mcgorn Is tests, and she had only given them in English. And of course, she was saying, Oh, she just didn't do very well. And I said, Did you give them in Spanish? They're in the manual. And when she did, she said, whoo, she did amazing. And I said, So what do you think the issue is? She said, maybe she doesn't know the sounds. I'm thinking, yes, maybe she doesn't, and that's a really good resource. What if there aren't? And we keep talking about Spanish, because that is the most common language in the United States, correct, other than English,

Unknown: 26:15

right? It's close to 80%

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 26:18

so what can we do about other resources like that to get a sense for how students are doing in their first language, right? So I you know, first of all, there's a lot that we can do, and I've been trying to get this idea kind of promoted. So like, let's say you're doing a phonological awareness test on the student, and you were doing in in the English language, and what I was saying is, like, in our I'm a speech and language person, so we have what's called conceptual scoring, and consider a way to look at things conceptually. So why? This is hilarious, but I'm going to give you an example. So it was working with the group and and, and they were working on a preschool screener, and I said, Well, why can't we just do a bilingual assessment and bring in, you know, the sounds that exist in all these languages and somehow use them to form a word for the student that doesn't speak the language. It would be kind of like a nonsense word, but they would be very familiar with the sound. And then you move into the sounds that aren't familiar, and that way, you know, the ones that transfer, look, they got it. The ones that don't transfer, they don't. So, you know, it's not because they can't, it's because they haven't been exposed. And they go, Well, give us an example, Elsa. And I go, very simply. They go, what is it? And I go, Well, you could say taco. And they all died laughing. I go, but just think about it.

Lindsay Kemeny: 27:41

Holy apples and all these languages, right? And

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 27:45

they were laughing, and they started putting in the chat box pictures with taco and I go, but I'm serious. I'm not kidding around. This is what needs to happen. And so like my idea of the testing, and I'm glad that people, as for my advice would be, you know, have one section of it being looking at all these languages and having building words from the sounds that exist in all the languages. And then have those that are partially so I have what's called a partial transfer, and then the ones that have no transfer. And that just really gives you an idea, is it the student and their processing of the sounds, or is it because they're these new, you know sounds in this new language? Great. And do you know it forever from this moment on, in my brain, that type of testing is going to be called taco testing.

Unknown: 28:31

I love it. There

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 28:33

you go. Unofficially I named it. And when you're talking about this, I'm thinking too how much obviously language and culture are connected, so what can we do as teachers to elevate and celebrate both of those things? Right? And one of the things I want to tell you, even within languages, for example, it's a war between, you know, like how my mother learned Spanish, how my father learned it. And the dialects of, you know Castilian, and you know Mexican. And I mean, I'm so embarrassed to tell you, when I do trainings in Spain, I go ethical when I stick out my tongue for the letter S, right? And then I come back and I'm a different person in Mexico, right? But what I want to just tell you is, even within languages, and you we know this in the English language as well, there are dialects. So the other thing that we have to be very mindful of is, like, there's different words for fruits and vegetables, and so it's very hard to get you have to really do your homework to say, what is it in this culture and this you know, because right again, it's the same language, but different cultures using that language, and so they have different terminology. Same thing happens in the English language, right with our dialect and the way we pronounce the sounds, or don't pronounce the sounds, and like that. Professor daily, I said, Sir, are you from the northeast? He goes, No, my speech therapist, she was from the northeast. I'm from. Midwest trouble understanding him, you know, like, Here I am, you know, English. Could you say that again? He was saying, Yeah, I had a speech problem, but my therapist was from the northeast, explains it, right? So that's the thing I told teachers, you have to watch yourself as well. And one of the things you must do in your classroom is, right now I'm going to model it for you. You must slow the speaking rate so I know where your word begins and where the word ends, because if I'm speaking like this, I don't know where the word begins and ends, right? So that speaking rate and really enunciating all the sounds and not eating our final sounds or some of the medial sounds, so that, you know, really, truly makes a huge difference. And so we've got to watch our own language, and we have to be the models of this language, and making sure that we're using the academic registers of the language, and I never discount a student for having the social registers. I'm like, that's one. And when you're learning another language, like how your son was learning, you know, three different languages, he probably learned some of the slang words too. And that's why we say that's one way, and this is an academic way. But we have such a resource with all of that morphology that I've speaking to you about, those are excellent word learning strategies for all children, but essential for students who are multilingual learners. And when we learn about these words and learn and get the opportunity to use them and to build other words, that's fantastic. And one of the schools that we're in, it was just amazing to see, you know, they really took this to heart. And the principal put, you know, like this out of the Kate paper, made a made a tree at the entrance, and challenged the students, okay, our route for this week. Everybody is this, and here are your leaves and the classroom that comes up with the most words when words wins a pizza party. Those students were all just really trying to listen and speak and learn, you know, the this word part and how to build in and who could come up with the most words. And it was like fun and interesting, but wow, their vocabulary was soaring, right? And so that is something beautiful. And when I work, you know, with students, you know, we find that their vocabulary it it's well above average. You know, sometimes the stem scores are up to 120 we're like, wow. And but why? Because we gave them these opportunities early, and we didn't say, Oh no, we're going to wait and see. No, we're going to give them these opportunities early, and we're going to teach them about these words and how to build other words. And also, that's when you think about this. I'm a little Spelling Bee and Spelling Bee kind of freaky person anyway, so, like I watched the spelling bee, we're

Stacy Hurst: 32:56

all word nerds here. Oh, what's

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 32:58

really interesting about that? Think about what those incredible spellers with this wonderful orthographic memory, do they say? Can you say the word? So they're listening to the sounds. Can you tell me the part of speech, right? They're looking at that grammatical component, the syntax, right? Can you use it in a sentence, right? Can you tell me the word origin that's telling you already about the spelling. So really, what they've done is they've gone through, they've gone through language and those components of language, and they've gone through the spelling development process. And so these wonderful spellers, you know, really get into the highest level. Is that more morphology and that knowledge, and so they can do it. And then I watch, you know, Jimmy Kimmel. And I watch him. He comes out there, you know, dressed like a bumble bee, and they try and mess up the words to the spellers. But after the spellers ask the questions, they get to the right spelling no matter what. But it's so funny to watch Jimmy Kimmel bring on the spelling bee champs. But really, all children can be experts. And I, and I talk about my little grandsons. He was four, and he he told me, Oh, look, I have a visor, and I'm going, do you know why it's called visor? And he goes, No, why? And I go, because it has V I S, and we now are pronouncing it vise and buys her, but it's the thing that helps you to sing with her son. And I go, Look, ALMA has classes, and he says, to help your vision, I go, right this to see and then I said, you were a visitor to your great grandpa when he was in the hospital. You paid him a visit. You went to see him. And then the little four year old says, Harry Potter. Harry Potter. He where he has an invisible cloak. When he wears it, you cannot see Him, unable to see that's a four year old, and the principal the school says he's amazing with this language. I go. He's not any smarter. He has opportunity, and that's what we want to give all students, but especially. Our multilingual learners this opportunity to really understand Guess what? You have this word, and I'm going to tell you something about the Spanish language. We have the fanciest words, and our words are usually four or five syllables long, and so those kinds of words in English are typically Latin based. But you know, you might say teacher, and we say professor. We say professor. So we have this beautiful language that has these long syllables and and we use very high academic words. And I like to give the example of, you know, my son came to me when he was in high school. It's like, Mom, what is the word play, Kate mean? And I turned to him on the money today, and he's like, oh so easy. Calm down. You use it every day. We say Kate. You say calm, you know. And then we don't use the word easy. I get faci. We use fastball, right? So, right there. I'm just showing you how we use these academic words that are super fancy and lengthy, but give us credit for what we know. Yeah, I love that. How exciting to hear all these things. I love these stories you're sharing too. How old is your grandson still for? Is he older now? Oh, so then the other one, he's no longer for. But I had the other one yesterday, I guess it was, and he was talking about a bicycle. And go, oh, did you know why it was called BI. And then we got into the bicycle, and I go, you know, you're bilingual. How many languages can you speak, right? And then maybe you'll be trilingual. Think about the tricycle and trying all my sons, like, going, Really, mom,

Unknown: 36:39

yes, really, really,

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 36:42

opportunities, and we need to work with our families too. We need to work with our families so that they can be, you know, really promoting the or see and the knowledge of words and the love of words while we're promoting all about reading and writing, because all of this contributes, and I love when I get those opportunities. Even in a college class, just today, this happened, we were talking about morphemes, and I just casually pointed out the relationship between heal and health and healthy. And this is a college class, as you should have seen. There were probably about six students that went like, oh, I never thought of that, right? They're pronounced differently, but they love to become aware of those things, yes, yes. Oh, I'm just excited for the future that we'll have a lot more teachers focusing on those kind of morphemes. I wanted to ask you, because you've been involved in shaping policy and the state and the national levels, what changes would you like to see us make as a country to help support our multilingual learners? Oh, I think the challenges and really meeting this challenge, as I mentioned to you at the very beginning of this podcast about how dismal it is that only 20% of our population speaks more than one language, and that how other countries, you know, it's 40% some of them 50% and not only two, sometimes three and four. And so what I would like to see is that we really do promote that we're just as smart as anybody else. Our children are just as smart as anybody else. But we don't really start that and that we, I would like to see that we change our foreign language instruction. We do that way too late. We wait until middle school and high school, right? And we don't really bridge that in in those early years when you speak. And I was talking about my grandchildren. So some of them have are in English and Spanish and Mandarin. And so you think about, you know, they're going to be able to speak to about 80% of the, you know, people in the world. And we have a global economy here, and we need to be able to converse. And I know English is, you know, the language of commerce, but it's just so beneficial when you really understand, you know, a person's language and culture, when you do business, when you're doing anything about that. So I would like to see that we start these opportunities earlier. I would like to see that when we're teaching language and literacy, that we really do very explicitly focus on language to build the literacy and literacy to build the language. A lot of times, what you find in multilingual classrooms or dual language classrooms, or English immersion, or English as a second language, is that we take this approach of, I'm going to do this first, and then we're going to do that. We never think about doing things simultaneously right, as if we're full, that the children can't handle it right, and so really taking into consideration that when we start earlier, there's been some studies showing, you know, kind of the differences in the brains versus, you know, early, it gets harder, as we're adults, to learn other languages. That doesn't mean we can't. We should, because that keeps our minds sharp. But I would like to see those opportunities come earlier. I would like to see that we really do prepare our teachers to look at this cross linguistic approach and how we can really get to buy literacy or multi literacy early in life. Because what happens is sometimes we just like I was on a phone call this morning with another group, and they were telling me that the children only get, you know, one language all these years, and then all of a sudden they're supposed to magically transfer to the English language. Well, that's not going to happen. You know, we need to be starting from the beginnings on that aura scene, build it literacy and that we can do two things simultaneously, and one builds upon the other. And so I'd really like to see that change in our country, and that change and that we change in our preparation of the teachers, and really do, and we have to infiltrate. We need better in our schools, interdisciplinary work. And so, you know, in, you know, when I got to work in head trauma rehabilitation. We all worked with all the disciplines, and I learned from all of them. And so how well are we collaborating with those specialists? And you know, you're a dyslexia specialist, how well are we collaborating with a special ed teacher? How we're always collaborating collaborating with the English as a Second Language person? How well do they collaborate with the classroom teacher? When we take the time for collaboration and building together, that's great, and what we know is the better aligned we are. So this idea, we pull them out and then push them back in, but when we don't have any kind of connection, and when everything's being learned in isolation, no, no, we need to go into, you know, Lindsay's classroom and see what's Lindsay working on. What are the goals? How can we support those goals? Lindsay, how can you support our goals? And it's bi directional and collaborative, and then that way, the students get lots and lots of practice and opportunity, and what you're going to find is they get it at a much faster rate. But we've got to collaborate and see ourselves as really, this interdisciplinary team, all working for that same student, and to get the impact and the outcome that we're looking for, and these students can achieve it. Yeah, it's very inspiring to hear you talk about that we were we've mentioned throughout this series too, that in the issue, probably the word integrate is if we had to choose one word that repeats itself over and over. And as you were talking, I was thinking about that as well. And the point you make in the article that the way that we approach our multilingual learners is also beneficial if we're using that structured literacy framework for all learners. So it doesn't, we don't need to do something differently or separately, right? And what you'll see is, you know, we make sure in the infographic that we worked on for you know, so many that we we said that, you know, planned and purposeful instructional but we know that integrated, you know, is so very important that it's not in isolation. And so, you know, we do want to promote that. We do want to make sure that it happens. And if you notice on the infographic, it doesn't only have tier three, it's tier one, tier two and three. And so this applies to our multilingual students with some adjustments, and some of those adjustments I've discussed today really about bringing in their language, their culture, the linguistic components, those cross linguistic components, and really capitalizing and using those as strategies for learning and and not thinking about only looking at it one way in one language, but thinking more broadly across languages. And guess what? Teachers learn a little bit more too. And I The kids love it when you go, can you tell me that in your own language? Oh, you just taught me something. So it also shows that bi directional approach. And it really, you know, makes the students so happy. Oh, they're teaching you something, just like they are learning from you, you, you know you are learning from them as well. So it's just that mutual respect, and, you know, that ability to see them as assets. But every day we're in the classrooms, and that is data data and language data and the components of literacy, and really getting to those domains of language, and I wanted those domains of language on the infographic really highlighted in a better way, and so we're, I'm kind of still pushing for that. And so one day they will be there, I'm sure. But really looking at the phonology, the sounds, the semantics and morphology, you know, those words, word meanings, and the syntax, the pragmatics, you know, all very, very important. And because that's important for the spoken language, it's important for reading and especially for writing. And in, you know, I'm sure you'll do next, the idea. Perspectives. It'll be, there's two Arctic one of them just already released on syntax. And Dr Julie Van Dyke will say, and Kelly Powell, syntax is everything. And I go, Well, syntax is almost everything. There's going to be another volume of that coming out. And it's just so important, like how we need to go in that direction of syntax. And really, when our syntax began, it begins with or see, and it moves us into and you know, the better we know our syntax and how words work and function. We're going to read more fluently, understand more, understand more and write even better. So yes, syntax matters, and so be on the lookout for those articles as well, and I have one, and I think the second edition, when that comes out, and I hate that they only give you, like, 500

Stacy Hurst: 45:47

words, yeah, that's like, I'm like, That's all you're gonna give me

Lindsay Kemeny: 45:54

put that like, put it in a chart. Put it in a chart. I'm like, Darn, I want more.

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 46:00

But this is very, very important. But when you teach me those domains of language, you're covering the phonology, the morphology, cement semantic, syntax and the use the pragmatics, and you're really taking advantage of the student and what they've had. And hopefully, you know, every teacher will see themselves as a language teacher, a literacy teacher and a content expert. And we need this throughout, not only in the early years, we've been doing the work in adolescent too. In those middle school years and high school years, you're teaching language and literacy as you teach science and mathematics and history, so and much more efficiently if you're teaching it through that lens, right? That's right, there's lots of cognates and morphemes. And, you know, think about it, the Greeks, what did they give us? They gave us science. They gave us, you know, a lot of mathematics. They gave us the Olympics. They gave us sports. They gave us so many things. But us Latinas, we gave we kept Latin had a foundation too. We have fancy words and just a reminder that domains of language. It is one page. Elsa, to your point, it could be, right. I was just looking to see, I know that we put it in there. Was put in there, but yes, what page was that? And I just saw it, 4545 please look at that. And please, you know, we Asha gave permission to use those, but yeah, American Speech and Hearing Association. So there they are, the domains of language. But I really want them, you know, bolded in on the infographic. And we even had an early conversation about those domains in one of our episodes. And I think even learning terms like the difference between discourse and pragmatics and we can always refine our knowledge I know I have as a result of this issue. Absolutely. Thank you so much for really highlighting the importance for caring about these students, for really helping these students who are so linguistically diverse, but they all bring such wonderful contributions to our classrooms and very clearly, to our nation and to the future. They are our future, and we've got to meet them at their point of you know, where are they today, and how will I help them to really and guess what? You'll be the teacher that they'll remember when they graduate, they come back and you're like, yes, you know that you made a difference in their lives, and they never forget you for doing your good work. So thank you, you know, for inviting me, and thank you for caring about these students and making sure that we teach all learners using the scientific base that we have well, and thank you so much for being willing to join us in the conversation we've had today. And I think you just alluded to this a little bit, but as you look to the future of literacy instruction for multilingual learners, what gives you hope? So I'm very hopeful that this is a national conversation that, you know, I've had discussions like with Emily Hanford about, hey, you got to dig into this looking the multilinguist, because I don't know anything about it ago, this is your next big thing. And I'm really pushing but the great hope that I have, and the great pleasure that I have is that I see many states across our nation taking this so seriously and really wanting to do a better job. And everyone you know, when you go in the teaching profession, you have a good heart, you have great intentions, but we have to make sure that it's not only having a great heart and great intentions, it's having the science of reading behind you, and how that applies to a multilingual learners. And what I'm very hopeful of, like you just told me today, you're using it in a course, you know, the book, and what I've written that this can be available to all universities, and that all teachers will have even if you're not going to get certification and specialization, but that all. Teachers have this knowledge, so we empower them, because it won't be will I teach a multilingual learner? How many will I teach? That's our future, yeah. Well, thank you so much. Donell Lindsay, any any ending thoughts you'd like to share?

Lindsay Kemeny: 50:17

So great to have Elsa here. So thank you so much for the time to talk with us. Thank you guys, thank you for the invitation. Tell your son hello for me, and I'm very proud of

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan: 50:29

him. So great. And you know, I will say, Elsa, we attend many of your conference presentations. I'm always looking forward to learning from you, and today I've even learned a few things that I'm gonna I'm glad. I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over, but sometimes you gotta hear it more than once, especially to learn those nuanced things, right? That will end up making a very large difference. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for those of you who are listening in. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode and this series, and we hope to see you next time on the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator: 51:12

Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading. You.