Early Edge Blog

Early Edge California Launches P-3 Practitioner Workgroup for the Multilingual Learning Toolkit

July 21, 2022

Early Edge California hosted 3 virtual meetings during the months of April, May, and June to convene a workgroup of 22 practitioners to provide feedback on improvements and additional resources for the Multilingual Learning Toolkit.

The Multilingual Learning Toolkit (MLT) workgroup consisted of administrators, educators, and higher education faculty. Practitioners ranged from across the State of California and various settings within the Early Childhood Education (ECE) space.

During the first session, the MLT team provided an overview and demonstration of the MLT website to ensure practitioners were familiar with the Toolkit and its features. In addition, practitioners completed a survey ahead of the session to share what they liked about the website as well as suggested improvements that would help better meet their needs.

During the second session, the MLT team provided an update on new website features, including the Standards Alignment being included in the menu, the new Spanish Resource page, and additional updates to the blog page called News and Insights. The workgroup also continued to provide feedback on new resources and features they would like to see. 

During our final session, the MLT practitioner workgroup convened to prioritize the resources from the feedback they provided in the initial sessions. The MLT team provided the practitioners with the top 10 categories they had mentioned in the previous sessions. The practitioners voted on the resources they believed were the most important to include in the next MLT update phase.

The Multilingual Learning Toolkit workgroup prioritized the following categories to further expand  in the MLT:

• Videos: Short videos of teachers in action and the MLT strategies in action.
• Family engagement: They would like to see resources to help them better engage families and learn more about children’s language and cultural backgrounds.
• Empowering families: They would like to see the inclusion of more resources that support families in engaging in leadership and advocating on behalf of their children.
• Culturally responsive materials: They would like to see more resources that help make the school environment inclusive for families, as well as more resources with an equity, inclusion, and social justice lens for Multilingual Learners (MLs).

The Early Edge California team is grateful for the Workgroup members’ input and overall commitment to supporting MLs. Early Edge is convening internally to discuss the practitioner feedback and will be developing several of the suggested new resources by the end of the year in collaboration with our project partners. We look forward to sharing practitioner-informed updates to the MLT by the end of the year. In the meantime, join the MLT mailing list to receive email notifications about the latest content, resources, and events.