With so many schools closed across the country and students engaged in distance learning, let’s take a moment to think about the role of family engagement in...

This past Tuesday night (February 25, 2020), I went to see a live recording of the Kojo Nnamdi show at the Columbia Heights Educational Campus in Washington ...

In our last blog post, we talked about Student-Teacher Ratios for English Learners. In many of the states listed there, their student-teacher ratios came abo...

There are many Facebook groups out there for those working with English Learners (ELs) and there are often posts about how to best advocate for ELs and what ...

Many of our English Learner students and their families – particularly those who are refugees – have undoubtedly been through situations that many of us educ...

Introducing the new look, new name, and new future of Immigrant Connections! In 2017, Gardner & Associates was created to improve the lives of immigrant chil...

While the federal government outlines Schools' Civil Rights Obligations to English Learner Students and Limited English Proficient Parents, much of the time ...

Many schools across the U.S. host international or multicultural nights each year. At these events, students and/or their families typically set up tables t...

In most Back-to-School Nights* around the country, parents walk around their child’s school and visit with their teachers. In middle and high school, parents...

Happy Back to School! This blog post is for all the school-based family engagement staff out there who specifically focus on immigrants, refugees, and Englis...

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the 2019 National Family and Community Engagement Conference in Reno, Nevada. This annual conference is put on by the Insti...

As I look at pictures of immigrant children in cages and read stories about children not having access to safe and sanitary conditions, there’s one thing tha...

I recently attended the Multilingual Learner Conference put on by the Washington DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). My favorite prese...

Today I was fortunate to be able to help the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) facilitate a roundtable discussion w...

I had worked in the refugee resettlement field for over ten years when I decided I wanted to work in schools. I had worked at the local and national levels. ...

Lately I’ve been watching "Tidying Up with Marie Kondo." I find this show quite enjoyable and it isn’t because everything ends up nice and tidy. I love watch...

There are a number of school districts throughout the United States that call immigrant students “international” students. For example, a quick search pulls ...

One of the most common questions that comes up in the world of immigrant/English Learner (EL) family engagement is whether one should have separate events fo...

Welcome to my new blog! If you’ve poked around my website or ever seen me present, you know that my #1 area of expertise is English Learner/immigrant family ...