Unlocking Multilingual Learners Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible

About Diane Staehr FennerMeghan Gregoire-SmithSydney Cail Snyder

Diane Staehr Fenner PhD is the president of SupportEd (SupportEd.com) a woman-owned small business located in the Washington DC metro area that she founded in 2011. SupportEd is dedicated to empowering multilingual learners and their educators. Dr. Staehr Fenner leads her team to provide ML professional development coaching technical assistance and curriculum and assessment support to school districts states organizations and the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to forming SupportEd Dr. Staehr Fenner was an English language development (ELD) teacher dual language assessment teacher and ELD assessment specialist in Fairfax County Public Schools VA. She speaks German and Spanish and has taught in Berlin Germany and Veracruz Mexico. Dr. Staehr Fenner grew up on a dairy farm in central New York and is a proud first- generation college graduate. She has written eight books on ML education (and counting) including coauthoring Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity and authoring Advocating for English Learners: A Guide for Educators. She is a frequent keynote speaker on ML education at conferences across North America. She earned her PhD in Multilingual/Multicultural Education at George Mason University and her MAT in TESOL at the School for International Training. You can connect with her by email at Diane@SupportEd.com or on Twitter at @DStaehrFenner. Sydney Snyder PhD is a principal associate at SupportEd. In this role Dr. Snyder coaches ML educators and develops and facilitates interactive professional development for teachers of MLs. She also works with the SupportEd team to offer technical assistance to school districts and educational organizations. Dr. Snyder has extensive instructional experience and has worked in the field of English language development for over 25 years. She started her teaching career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guinea West Africa. This experience ignited her passion for language teaching culturally responsive instruction and ML advocacy. Dr. Snyder is coauthor of Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity and contributing author to Breaking Down the Monolingual Wall. She served as an English Teaching Fellow at Gadja Mada University in Yogyakarta Indonesia. She earned her PhD in Multilingual/ Multicultural Education at George Mason University and her MAT in TESOL at the School for International Training. You can connect with her by email at Sydney@SupportEd.com or on Twitter at @SydneySupportEd. Meghan Gregoire-Smith MA is a multilingual learner (ML) coach at SupportEd. In this role Ms. Gregoire-Smith coaches ML educators and develops and facilitates interactive professional development for teachers of MLs. Ms. Gregoire-Smith began her career teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) to young adults in Guayaquil Ecuador. Her time in Ecuador sparked her love of language teaching. She then spent over a decade supporting MLs in Anne Arundel County Public Schools Maryland first as an elementary English language development teacher and then as an ELD Teacher Specialist. As an ELD Teacher Specialist Ms. Gregoire-Smith wrote the K12 ELD curricula planned and delivered professional development around best practices for working with MLs and provided coaching for ELD teachers new to the profession. Ms. Gregoire-Smiths experiences as an ELD teacher and teacher specialist led to a passion for supporting educators of MLs through high-quality professional development and coaching. She earned her Masters in TESOL from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. You can connect with her by email at Meghan@SupportEd.com or on Twitter at @MeghanGSmith.