Episode 1: Take Me Home - Unmasking the Fear of Communicating with EL Families

In this episode, we get to hear from Andrea Bitner who is an is an educator, author, and speaker.  She lives in Philadelphia, PA. She has worked with students in grades K-12 throughout her twenty-two years in public education from all around the world.   Her first book, “Take Me Home,” was published by Austin Macauley in July of 2021. "Take Me Home" is the true story of 11 of her former EL students who give a first-hand account of what it's really like to become bilingual in America.  She is also a co-author of Chip Baker’s “The Impact of Influence-Volume 3 and Dr. Rick Jetter’s 100 No-Nonsense Things ALL School Leaders Shout STOP Doing.”  She travels the country speaking and teaching educators how to teach and reach EL students, and effectively communicate with EL families! 

The Five Strategies:

1.  All EL students are not the same

2. Lack of language never equals lack of intelligence

3. There are 10 essential questions you should ask when you receive an English language learner in your class

4. There are many resources out there that you can use to immediately communicate with your EL families.

5. It takes a village to raise a student and there are many ways that we can be connecting EL students building-wide, district-wide, and county-wide.

You can find Andrea at www.andreabitnerbooks.com, or on social media @andreabitnerbooks.

You can purchase her book "Take Me Home" here: https://www.amazon.com/Take-Me-Home-Andrea-Bitner/dp/1398418919/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GH8CMOEEWKL&keywords=take+me+home+andrea+bitner&qid=1668188541&sprefix=take+me+home+andrea+bitner%2Caps%2C151&sr=8-1