Working with Peabody students – those who are the educational leaders of tomorrow – is a joy. The classes I regularly teach include Scholarly Writing and Thinking, Language Curriculum Design, Foundations of Multilingual Education, and Capstone seminars. Classes I’ve taught previously include Methods of Multilingual Learner Education, Practicum in Multilingual Learner Education, and Principles of Multilingual Learner Education.
Since joining VU in 2012, much of my work has been with in-service elementary teachers who are earning their endorsements to educate multilingual students. The students, teachers, families, and administrators in Nashville work so hard to ensure multilingual children are developing their social, language, literacy, and disciplinary skills. These awesome efforts strike me every time I’m in teachers’ classrooms. Through this 2012-2017 project, I visited 5-6 teachers each week, as one-on-one mentoring was the heart of our in-service endorsement program. I am delighted to have had this opportunity to develop partnerships with local teachers. Currently, our program partners with stellar teachers throughout Nashville as we prepare new teachers in our M.Ed. and undergraduate programs.
The students in my classes and I collaborate to develop diverse, creative perspectives on effective instruction for multilingual learners. In the past years, students in my classes have come from diverse regions including the US (NJ, MD, MI, MN, OH, CA, GA, TN, etc.), China, Iran, Myanmar, El Salvador, the Republic of Korea, Turkey, and Pakistan, and more. Each day, I learn with my students who work diligently to develop their instructional and analytical skills. Students from our M.Ed. MLE program go on to become lead teachers in local and international schools, join doctoral programs, and engage in a range of work in the field of applied educational linguistics (ranging from researchers to translators to language program administrators).
Other efforts that inform my instruction have included my prior participation in the Peabody Curriculum Committee and the Academic Standards Committee, and my current membership on the Equity, Justice, and Inclusion Committee within the Department of Teaching and Learning.
If these courses are of interest, I’d be delighted to connect with you (shannon.m.daniel@vanderbilt.edu).