2025 ACSA Equity Institute

ABOUT OUR SESSION:
Historically, MVHS had a small population of multilingual students, but like many schools across California, we are experiencing an increase in those numbers. This presents both challenges and opportunities, as we work to serve all students who have a wide range of learning needs within systems and processes that were established long ago. In contrast to their primary focus on becoming fluent in English, many of our newcomer families bring an extensive educational experience from their home countries and deeply value schooling. This nuance requires that we are even more thoughtful about designing an individualized instructional program for some of our ELs.

This session will start with an overview about our journey, wins, and obstacles as we are building an ELD program mostly from scratch. In the second part, we wil facilitate interactive discussions where participants can have an opportunity to learn in community about what they are most interested in, from the experiences and expertise of others in the room. We will provide scaffolds to help attendees gather, organize and reflect on different aspects of this work, which they can take back to their own schools. Our goal is to resource everyone in the room to help guide all of our schools’ journeys. We are all developing, promoting, and sustaining effective supports for each of our unique populations of multilingual students and their families, so we want to learn from other people.

MONTE VISTA HIGH SCHOOL’S BACKGROUND AND VALUES:
The Monte Vista High School community demographics have changed significantly over the past five years. Our student and caregiver populations are becoming more racially diverse, and we are seeing an increase in enrollment of English Language Learners and newly immigrated students. As a predominantly White (but shifting) staff, all of whom are native English speakers minus a few, we have made it a priority to closely examine at all of our practices through an inclusive lens. This includes being more intentional with instructional and social-emotional strategies, to re-assessing our definitions of what a “positive campus culture” and “school spirit“ mean, to deepening awareness throughout our athletics programs, and to dismantling and rebuilding various systems that have become embedded in our school over the years. We have a long way to go, but our conversations are more transparent and courageous than ever. We are proud to be doing work that can sometimes feel uncomfortable… which is how we know we are doing the right work.