Coaching for Multilingual Excellence: Strategies for Vocabulary, Reading, and Writing Across Disciplines
About this ebook
As the population of multilingual learners (MLs) in K–12 schools continues to grow, instructional coaches must support content teachers to recognize these students’ assets and address their linguistic, cultural, academic, and social-emotional needs. Leveraging her decades of facilitating and coaching experience in the fields of language, literacy, and professional learning, Margarita Calderón meets this urgent need with practical, evidence-based strategies to leverage the power of coaching in support of ML excellence.
Through the individual chapters dedicated to academic language, reading, and writing instruction and strategies to promote student discourse and social-emotional learning embedded throughout, this book will give coaches what they need to guide all teachers toward ML excellence. Additional features include
- A step-by-step framework designed to help coaches promote teacher efficacy with MLs regardless of program setting or instructional approach
- Clear guidance for how to structure coaching sessions with teachers, driven by research-based approaches and observation and feedback protocols for accelerating student comprehension
- Myth-busting facts about the do’s and don′ts of effective coaching for ML success
- Spotlights on the experiences of veteran coaches focusing on successes, challenges, and tips to remain resilient
- Individual and group reflection questions and tools at the close of each chapter
Offering solutions to the challenges faced by MLs that content area teachers must be prepared to address, this book is a powerful tool coaches can use to move multilingual instruction beyond compliance to excellence.
About the author
Dr. Margarita Espino Calderón, born and raised in Juárez, is a Professor Emerita/Senior Research Scientist at Johns Hopkins University. Her research and development projects have been funded by the US Department of Education, National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Labor, The Carnegie Corporation of New York, and various State Offices of Education. One of her empirical studies “The Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (BCIRC)” is featured in the What Works Clearinghouse. The Carnegie Corporation of New York funded her five-year study to develop Expediting Comprehension for English Language Learners (ExC-ELL) to train math, science, social studies, language arts, and ESL teachers on integrating language, reading, and content in core content middle and high school classrooms. With a Title III National Professional Development grant, she implemented “A Whole-School Approach to Professional Development with ExC-ELL” in Loudoun County, VA. She replicated this approach in 29 schools in TX and NC. She served on the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth, the Carnegie Corporation of New York Panel on English Language Adolescent Literacy Panel, among other panels and national committees. She has over 100 publications on language, literacy, and professional development. In 2025, Margarita was inducted into the Multilingual Education Hall of Fame.
