Saturday, March 7
9:00 am – 12:30 pm CT
UW-Milwaukee Welcome Center, room 107
2100 E. Kenwood Blvd., Milwaukee WI 53211

Note the building entrance is on N. Maryland Ave.
Hourly paid parking is available in the UWM Lubar Business garage, also on Maryland Ave.

In-person workshop: register here

• February 6: UWM priority deadline (free – UWM faculty, students, staff)
• February 20: all educators registration deadline ($10 for non-UWM)
• Registration is capped at 30 educators 

 

Teaching Heritage Language Learners: Practical Strategies for Spanish Language Instructors

In this interactive workshop, teachers of Spanish who have Heritage Language Learners (HLLs) in their classes will explore practical, research-informed strategies for navigating the language classroom and supporting their students across a variety of classroom contexts. Participants will learn how to get to know their students more deeply by identifying students’ previous language experience and proficiency levels. We will also discuss multiculturalism, and how teachers can learn about, validate, and appropriately inquire about students’ traditions and experiences. Additionally, we will reflect on how teacher biases and personal experiences can shape classroom expectations and interactions. Finally, attendees will apply these ideas to hands-on examples and case studies from real classroom scenarios.

Instructors of Spanish from all levels are welcome, and we look forward to hearing about your thoughts and experiences and working collectively to improve the classroom for our students.

This event is presented by the UW-Milwaukee Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies; Language Resource Center; and Department of World Languages and Cultures; and UW-Madison’s Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies (LACIS).

Please contact Monica VanBladel (414-251-5216; vanblade@uwm.edu) with any questions.

About our facilitators

Dr. Diego Román is an Associate Professor of Bilingual/Bicultural Education at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Román holds a B.S. degree in Agronomy from Zamorano University in Honduras and a M.S. degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He also earned a M.S. degree in Biology, a M.A. in Linguistics, and a Ph.D. degree in Educational Linguistics, all from Stanford University. At the K-12 level, Dr. Román taught middle school science to Emergent Bilinguals for seven years, first in rural Wisconsin and then in San Francisco, California. Dr. Román’s research interests are located at the intersection of applied linguistics, bilingual education, and science education. Specifically, he investigates the implicit and explicit ideologies reflected in the design and implementation of bilingual and science education programs, particularly on how environmental topics are taught to multilingual students.

Kiley Specht is a Ph.D. Candidate in Spanish Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She holds an M.A. in Spanish Linguistics from UW–Madison and a B.A. in Spanish Education with a French minor from Illinois State University. Her research interests include second language acquisition, dialectal variation, Caribbean Spanish, heritage language learners, bilingualism, and phonology. Her experience teaching Spanish at the high school and post-secondary levels shapes her commitment to researching approaches to improving language education for both teachers and students.