About Us
We have dedicated our professional lives to advocating for equity for culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Actively engaging in our community is one of our core values. Professionally, this means that we have involved ourselves in advocacy at the national, state, and local levels. Most of these activities have focused on creating more inclusive and equitable schools and communities for culturally and linguistically diverse students.
The diversity in our classrooms and communities is a personal and community asset. We learn more when we have differences to explore with and within ourselves and each other. In Willing to Be Disturbed, Margaret Wheatley wrote,
As the world grows more strange and puzzling and difficult, I don’t believe most of us want to keep struggling through it alone, I can’t know what to do from my own narrow perspective. I know I need a better understanding of what’s going on. I want to sit down with you and talk about all the frightening and hopeful things I observe, and listen to what frightens you and gives you hope. I need new ideas and solutions for the problems I care about. I know I need to talk to you to discover those. I need to learn to value your perspective, and I want you to value mine. I expect to be disturbed by what I hear from you. I know we don’t have to agree with each other in order to think well together. There is no need for us to be joined at the head. We are joined by our human hearts.
To this end, we have created this educational advocacy website to come together as a community to learn from and with each other so that we can grow in our teaching and advocacy practices.
We invite you to join us in this conversation. You can read and share what you are learning and/or you can apply to be a contributor. If you are interested in writing with us and sharing your own practices, insights, and ideas, you can contact us at multilinguallearneradvocacy@gmail.com. All contributions will go through a peer review process and the editorial panel will make the final decisions regarding the publication decision.
Our Mission
Editors & Contributors
Editor
Katie Brooks is a professor in the College of Education at Butler University. She specializes in teaching multilingual learners, collaborative family engagement, and critical participatory action research.
Co-Editor
Cathy Bhathena is a grant manager and instructor in the College of Education at Butler University.
Co-Editor
Christine Rembert is married to Maurice, who also works for Indianapolis Public Schools, and they have three teenage young adults (JT, David, and Aaron). She loves to cook and read, but spends most of her time at Francis W. Parker Montessori School 56 where she is principal. She is a consummate storyteller who can make you laugh and cry – almost at the same time.