The Santa Maria Joint Union High School District (SMJUHSD) recently hosted its third Annual Multilingual Leadership Academy (MLA), bringing educators from across disciplines together for three days of professional learning focused on strengthening instruction for multilingual learners.

Teachers attending the Multilingual Leadership Academy get together outdoors for a group photo. (Courtesy photo)
Teachers in a variety of disciplines from math, science and English to ethnic and gender studies attended the Multilingual Leadership Academy. (Courtesy photo)

This year’s academy was attended by educators from math, science, English language arts, English language development, ethnic and gender studies, American Sign Language, photography, and Bilingual Instructional Assistants (BIA).

The academy focused on multilingual learner data, effective ELD strategies, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), collaboration, and intentionally integrating language development into content-area instruction.

SMJUHSD’s Multilingual Education Instructional Coaches (ML IC) led sessions on using data and targeted strategies to support both content learning and academic language development for multilingual learners.

The impact of the academy was reflected in feedback from participating educators.

“I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend the last few days of my summer break in a training session, but I found this one to be well-planned, useful, engaging and even fun,” said John Root, English/ELD teacher at Santa Maria High School.

“In the end, I’m glad I went because it turned out to be one of the best trainings I have attended as an educator,” he said.

A key feature of this year’s academy was the opportunity to learn from guest presenters with specialized expertise:

Salustia Avila Meza, Mixteco interpreter, offered insights on supporting Mixteco-speaking students and honoring students’ linguistic and cultural assets.

Juan Vergara, ELD teacher, shared classroom-based strategies for supporting language development.

Leila Ricci, UDL presenter, explored ways to design instruction that increases access and engagement for diverse learners.

The learning will continue beyond the academy. Participating educators will complete classroom observations; pre- and post-observation coaching sessions; and a professional portfolio documenting their implementation of ELD standards and multilingual learner strategies within their content-area lessons.