Sociocultural Context of Starbucks

by Ruslana Westerlund There are many different types of genre in literature that we are familiar with.   My favorite is folktales.   I think it is because of  my rich oral tradition I grew up with.  My grandfather told me many stories from different cultures.  One of my favorite stories was – what I later

What’s In a Name?

by Ruslana Westerlund Children who speak different languages at home in the United States have been called many things.   Some terms are more descriptive than others.  Here is the list that I have heard in the 18 years of my educational career: “Those kids”,  “those Muslim kids”, “those Mexicans”, “those refugees”,  “those immigrants”, “those kids whose

Infusing Meaning and Rigor Into Language Instruction

By: Dr. Anne Dahlman In this blog entry, I will attempt to explore strategies that will enable us to provide high levels of cognitive content to our language learners who might be lower in language ability.  This is especially important for older learners who might be just learning the language but who are cognitively more

We Must Define Ourselves

Poem by Ruslana Westerlund Originally posted around 2008… I definitely remember it was a Saturday, but I forgot the year…. Today, I was inspired. I was inspired by the dedicated ESL Teachers who chose to spend their Saturday together with other ESL teachers. ESL Teachers are a very closely-knit group of advocates who work tirelessly

Reclaiming My Students’ Home Languages Between The Slices of The Dubai Sky

This is a true story from my teaching experience in 2007-08 school year. Not a very long time ago, I was an ESL teacher. I wanted to teach my students how to create a dialog by using call outs/cut outs or so called dialog bubbles. I gave them different magazines of people talking and asked