Situated in Guatemala City, the American School of Guatemala (CAG) serves more than 1,700 pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students representing 24 nationalities. Their mission is to empower their students to achieve their full potential and to inspire them to lead meaningful lives, both holistically and linguistically. The diverse linguistic backgrounds of both students and faculty are highly valued. All students are considered multilingual learners and all teachers are considered language teachers that support rich content development through their specified program language.
Within its Spanish-English dual language program, CAG faculty, both local and international, are tasked with facilitating robust, language rich instruction. Core and applied content areas are taught in either, or at times in both, program languages depending on the subject and the grade. This dynamic bilingual approach creates a unique experience for CAG students that is distinct from English as an additional or home language programs. CAG faculty focus on understanding and knowing their learners’ language development of both Spanish and English across all academic disciplines.
With a school comprised entirely of multilingual learners, CAG decided to join the MLRC School Network because of its focus on impactful and innovative research and practices to support multilingual learners. Through this partnership, CAG hopes to explore how to improve instruction, assessment, curriculum, and program design to best serve their unique student population. They also want to examine how to better support students’ language development in English and Spanish, who enter their program in later elementary, middle school, or high school, recognizing all students do not follow this same path in their language development. Additionally, as part of their commitment to prepare all teachers to support multilingual students, a new cohort of CAG faculty will participate in the WIDA Virtual Institute, available exclusively through the MLRC School Network Hub.
Through partnership with the MLRC, CAG faculty are growing as researchers, while contributing to the MLRC research agenda. Currently, Dr. Samantha Olson-Wyman, CAG Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Specialist, is collaborating with Dr. Esther Bettney Heidt, MLRC School Network Researcher, to write a journal article about the language ideologies of educators at international schools. While international schools are often rich with linguistic diversity, they can position English proficiency as more valuable than students’, families’ and teachers’ home languages. The multimethod article brings together two empirical studies conducted independently by Dr. Olson-Wyman and Dr. Bettney Heidt to explore how educators might shift toward more inclusive beliefs about language which support multilingual students, their families and their communities.
The American School of Guatemala (CAG) will host a MLRC Research Symposium on January 27-28, 2024. The MLRC Research Symposium is a unique two-day opportunity for international educators – teachers and leaders – to engage deeply in existing research about multilingual learners, connect with global education scholars, inquire together about shared problems of practice and discuss innovative strategies for serving multilingual learners. The MLRC Research Symposium provides an opportunity for participants to develop a research-informed approach to improving school-wide systems by identifying strengths and goals for improvement. Throughout the two days together, participants will engage in disciplined inquiry with other participants with similar interests and questions, as well as spend focused time with their own school-based team to identify important problems of practice.
We are excited to welcome the American School of Guatemala (CAG) as one of the inaugural members of the MLRC School Member Network! We look forward to learning and growing together, in support of multilingual students.