Lori Menning
Lori Menning is principally an EL, Bilingual-Bicultural, World Languages Consultant at CESA-6, but also an educator and board member of Wisconsin TESOL and WIABE. She explains what a CESA is, what services and programs they offer, and how they have modified their operations in response to Covid. She shares ways that teachers can support students that speak languages that the teacher does not and details her work with WITESOL/WIABE.
Lori Menning principalmente es consultora de idiomas del mundo, estudiantes EL y programas bilingües-biculturales en CESA-6, pero también es educadora y miembro de la junta de Wisconsin TESOL y WIABE. Explica qué es una CESA, qué servicios y programas ofrece y cómo ha modificado sus operaciones en respuesta a Covid. Comparte formas en las que los maestros pueden apoyar a los estudiantes que hablan idiomas que el maestro no habla y detalla su trabajo con WITESOL / WIABE.
“Across the state, we’re having many SLIF students, students with interrupted formal schooling, that are coming to us and have really unique language backgrounds, sometimes speaking three, four different languages [...] The new buzzword that everybody’s talking about in language acquisition is translanguaging. So we want to be able to build off of what the students have in their first language, building off of that language repertoire, and to be able to honor their first language and culture and support them.”
Claire Darmstadter
Hey everybody, I am so lucky to be joined today by Lori Menning, principally an ESL/bilingual-bicultural/world language consultant at CESA-6, but also an educator and board member at Wisconsin TESOL and WIABE. Thank you so much for taking a couple minutes to chat with me!
Lori Menning
Thank you. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Claire Darmstadter
Yeah, so there's a lot of ground we can cover, but could you first just give us a really general overview of your educational and linguistic background and how you arrived at your current position?
Lori Menning
Awesome. Yes, thank you. I am licensed in ESL, bilingual, and world language. And I have over 20 years of experience in education. I worked as a secondary ESL/bilingual teacher and coordinator for 16 years before coming to CESA-6. This is my third year as consultant at CESA-6 and we're located in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I service school districts, teachers, and administrators working with multilingual learners, supporting all language backgrounds.
Claire Darmstadter
So can we first start by talking about what is a CESA? So who do they serve? Why are there more than one of them? What are the goals? How does it relate with the DPI? What is a CESA?
Lori Menning
So CESA stands for Cooperative Education Services Agency, and we are CESA-6, housed in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and we have 39 school districts in our territory. So we branch serving many, many districts, both rural and urban districts throughout our region. In the state of Wisconsin, we actually have 12 CESAs. So everybody in the state of Wisconsin, all school districts, have a CESA that is their home, but our services always, like all CESAs, are open to anybody. So we have a lot of things through our Language and Culture Center that we continue to offer to meet all of the diverse interests and backgrounds in our state.
Claire Darmstadter
So what you're saying is that different CESAs offer different services? And if so, what are some ones that you offer that are unique that maybe others might not have?
Lori Menning
One of the services that I'm really excited about, actually, we just finished up our last meeting yesterday ,is for EL leaders. So it's a connection series. And that's one of the things that we're really known for at CESA-6, is our connection series opportunities. And they are networks to bring together people with similar backgrounds to be able to learn together, support each other, resource share, connect. This year, during the pandemic, unfortunately, we had to meet online via Zoom. But we were still able to, you know, through breakout sessions and being online together, we also have an online platform, we were able to continue to collaborate and be in touch. The EL leadership series, like I mentioned, is open for all districts to be able to help lead their programming for multilingual learners in the state. So that's one that I'm very passionate about. I have my administrative certification, and I've always appreciated being able to support and lead districts with their missions. We also have similar connection series opportunities for EL teachers, for world language teachers, and even for interpreters/translators working in school districts.
Claire Darmstadter
And if I understand correctly, I believe that CESAs offers some alternative forms of certification. Can you walk us through what someone could expect? How the cost, the time, the modality, how it all compares to a more typical program?
Lori Menning
Thanks for asking Claire. Yes. And actually, I love this question because I am the EL instructor in our program. It is called RITE. So another acronym, RITE stands for Residency in Teacher Education. And through our program at CESA-6, we offer ESL certification. So there are several different paths that somebody could take depending on their background if they have previous licensure or not. But the really cool thing about CESA-6 being a licensure program is that we are able to certify teachers when they're currently in the classroom. So instead of having to have a student teaching position, where you're not paid and you're leaving your current job or field of study to focus on that, it is actually on the job student teaching, which is really beneficial. It's efficient and effective for our school districts. So we start off every year with our RITE boot camp in the middle of August, we get all the teachers together, and then they meet once a month, Friday evening and all day Saturday to continue their learning.
Claire Darmstadter
Yeah, I'll leave a couple links to that in the transcript because it sounds like a great opportunity that I probably should have considered to pursue my certification because it's a very roundabout way that I'm going to be taking it. And so we're trying to expose people to different ways they can work in education. So of course, you can be a classroom teacher, you can go through a program like you talked about, but some people might want to work within the CESA. So are there opportunities if somebody wants to do that? Is it where you might want to have experience as a classroom teacher before working in a CESA position? Or what are some opportunities within your CESA or others where people could work?
Lori Menning
Yes, well, definitely. Really right now one of the things that we are looking to constantly expand is our interpreter translator offering, so I oversee those services for our agency. Currently, we serve seven different languages, but we're always looking to expand that. So anybody with other language backgrounds, I encourage them to get in touch so we can reach out and see if they would like to serve our school districts as interpreter-translators. A recent hire that we just added to our services, really offering the opportunity to even reach more students, is a bilingual speech and language pathologist, which is really cool to be able to meet those needs with kids. We also have consultants like myself that work in the Language and Culture Center, we go out and we provide professional development to districts, we do workshops, we also contract with districts for teaching. So I'm actually contracted in the Rosendale-Brandon School District once a week, where I go in and I'm their bilingual teacher. So I get to work with ESL and bilingual students, K-12, in five different buildings that we have in our district.
Claire Darmstadter
Wow, that sounds like a lot. It sounds super cool. And so when we're talking specifically about English Learner students, or whatever term you might want to use to describe that group of individuals, they often default to Spanish, right? So if I have a background in Spanish, I believe you do as well, it's really helpful because there's a large population of students who do speak Spanish, or have that as one of their languages. But when you're working with teachers who are going to be working with individuals who don't necessarily speak Spanish or English, perhaps a less-commonly-taught language, or one that might be from refugee populations, where they just don't have any basis in that language, how can you support those students?
Lori Menning
We have been offering a wide variety of resources and platforms for educational leaders to get that information. Actually, in the state of Wisconsin, our biggest population of multilingual learners, of course, is Spanish followed by Hmong. But we're finding out across the state, we're having many SLIF students, students with interrupted formal schooling, that are coming to us and have really unique language backgrounds, sometimes speaking three, four different languages. So we always want to make sure with language acquisition, that we're providing them that opportunity. The new buzzword that everybody's talking about in language acquisition is translanguaging. So we want to be able to build off of what the students have in their first language, building off of that language repertoire and to be able to honor their first language and culture and support them. So during the pandemic at CESA-6, we pushed out a bunch of webinars, and one that I recently did because of the interest was communicating with multilingual students and families if you don't speak their background language, so a lot of resources to be able to share with them, technology tips to be able to communicate with someone who has a first language that you don't speak.
Claire Darmstadter
Yeah, super helpful. And actually one of our other interviewees, Jenna Cushing-Leubner, actually just published a paper talking about how Zoom school and education all that has affected specifically multilingual and English language students. So I'll include that as well, because I think it's really relevant. Just before we close out today, can you just talk a little bit about your work with Wisconsin TESOL and WIABE? I know, there's a lot of different things we can cover, but just any general points of how you're involved with those two organizations?
Lori Menning
Yes, I have been involved in Wisconsin TESOL for many, many years along with WIABE just as a teacher and a leader in the state of Wisconsin. Right now, I'm very honored to be on both boards with our Wisconsin TESOL affiliate, which is an affiliate of TESOL International. And then WIABE which is an affiliate of NABE. I was told that I was the first teacher to actually be on both boards at the same time, and I'm really doing everything in my power to be able to leverage that opportunity to move forward multilingual education in our state. One of my areas of focus in my passions is advocacy. So I've been working as the advocacy chair for Wisconsin TESOL for numerous years. So two of the things that I have done recently that are of interest in the state of Wisconsin, is I was able to collaborate at the state level and have Wisconsin TESOL and WIABE come together and put a letter of support to the state asking for a waiver for the ACCESS testing. So we had both organizations sign on for that. And then most recently accepting the new WIDA 2020 Framework Standards, which is now in the current stages of final approval by our state superintendent. So we'll have those WIDA standards officially adopted very soon. So advocacy work that I'm very proud of on behalf of both of those organizations and multilingual teachers across our state.
Claire Darmstadter
Yes, you have so much incredible work going on. Just before we close, we tell little kids and adults all the time that it's a superpower to speak more than one language so can you give me one reason why it's a superpower to be multilingual?
Lori Menning
It is. And I have a four and a half year old daughter at home, and I'm teaching her to be bilingual and wow, it definitely you know, I always say vale por dos, right? It's worth two, right. To be able to have two languages and even today, multiple languages. And not only to be bilingual or multilingual, but to be biliterate or multilierate is what we're working towards, you know, being able to have that ability to read, write and speak in those languages, so many opportunities.
Claire Darmstadter
Well, thank you so much. You had so many resources and different information that I think people didn't know about. I learned a lot about CESAs. So I hope other people did as well and I hope you have a great rest of your school year!
Lori Menning
Thank you. I appreciate your work Claire. Thank you!
