APLING Professors Avary Carhill-Poza and Panayota Gounari (co-Directors) led a Summer Institute this past June for educators in CREATE–Centering Relationships, Equity, and Access for Teachers of English Learners–a project funded by the Office of English Language Acquisition at the U.S. Department of Education. Public school teachers and EL Directors from the Medford, Everett, Chelsea, and Cambridge public schools joined the CREATE team at the UMass Boston oceanfront campus to engage in productive discussions, about the first year of the program and plan for the next. CREATE engages cohorts of educators from across the curriculum in advocacy for multilingual learners by learning together with multilingual students’ families and communities, collaborating on professional development and teacher leadership in their district, and investing in praxis. More updates to come on this 5-year project that spans 8 public school districts. The CREATE team includes, Avary Carhill-Poza (Co-director), Panayota Gounari (Co-director), Chris Leider (ESL Teacher Specialist), Deborah Sercombe (Project Coordinator), Vannessa Quintana Sarria (Graduate Assistant).
