Considering Culture and Equity in Teaching and Learning

Considering Culture and Equity in Teaching and Learning

Deborah Mazzeo: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this webinar on Considering Culture and Equity in Teaching and Learning. You may have been hearing a lot of conversations recently about different types of equity: health equity, gender equity, et cetera. Today, our focus is on educational equity in early childhood education.

My name is Deborah Mazzeo, and I'm accompanied by my two colleagues here, Karen Nemeth and Jan Greenberg, and you'll be hearing their voices here shortly.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over some information regarding the webinar. We will be using some of the features of this webinar platform to help us interact. At the bottom of your screen, you'll notice these widgets. If you have any questions during the webcast, you can submit them through the purple Q&A widget. We will try to answer these during the webcast, and please know we do capture all questions. If you have any tech questions, please enter them here as well. And in that Q&A widget, we might ask you to respond to questions that we ask of youת as well.

A copy of today's slide deck, and additional resources, are available in the resource list, which is the green widget. We encourage you to download any resources or links that you may find useful. In just a moment, we'll be using that yellow idea widget to engage. You can find additional answers to some common technical issues located in the yellow help widget at the bottom of your screen. You can also find the closed captioning widget in both English and Spanish. Each of these widgets are re-sizeable and movable for a customized experience. You simply click on the widget and move it by dragging and dropping and re-sizing using the arrows at the top corner.

Finally, if you have any trouble, just try refreshing your browser by pressing F5. Be sure to log off your VPN and exit out of any other browsers. So to get us started with thinking about the topic, we have this opening activity, so find that yellow ideas widget and respond to a question you see on the slide. What does equity mean to you in teaching and learning in your early learning environments? You'll be able to see responses from your colleagues here, but we can't see them. As you see the replies coming in, it might help in expanding or refining your definition of equity. You should be able to like and reply to the postings of other participants. So I'm going to continue on, but you all feel free to keep typing, and together over the course of the hour, we're going to continue to unpack it.

So here is what we're covering today: What does educational equity mean in our work and implementing a Planned Language Approach, or we say PLA for short, and what does it mean with young children and their families? What practices can be effective in supporting educational equity? What are the resources that help us support equity in early childhood education, and then lastly, we hope to help you think about what your next steps are towards ensuring equity in your programs.

So here you see our session objectives, but I want to stress that the importance of this presentation is about not only defining but developing and implementing teaching strategies that leads to individual learning needs of children. Really recognizing that every child does not start at the same place or does not have the same developmental learning needs and that by implementing individual teaching practices, teachers and caregivers are actually supporting equity.

So Head Start really is leading the way here, and on this slide, you see a direct quote from the Education and Child Development Program Services of the Head Start Program Performance Standards—that's what the HSPPS stands for—and all programs are required to follow ... All Head Start and Early Head Start programs are required to follow the Head Start Program Performance Standards, and as you can see, it reads, "A program must deliver developmentally, culturally, and linguistically appropriate learning experiences in language, literacy, mathematics, social, and emotional functioning, approaches to learning, science, physical skills, and creative arts," and today, we are going to be talking about how important the cultural component of this statement is. I believe this is the best way to support equity assets to learning for all young children.

So in the previous slide, we just read the Head Start Program Performance Standards regarding culturally and linguistically appropriate learning experiences in the central domains of the Early Learning Outcomes Framework, or ELOF for short, and you can see the image of the ELOF on the screen. In a moment, I'm going to advance the slide so you can respond to this poll question. We know that culture plays a critical role in how children learn across all of these domains, and we're curious. When planning interventions and learning experiences that promote children's development, in which domain is it hardest to infuse cultural support? So I'm going to go ahead, and now you'll be able to click on one of those radio buttons to be able to respond to the question at hand and push this out to the audience so that everyone is able to see our results here.

So not surprising, language and literacy turned out to be the highest at 30.6% then followed by cognition, and then I guess the least challenging would be the perceptual, motor, and physical development. Thank you so much for all of your responses. You know it's, of course, very interesting, and that's why, you know, today we will be focusing on the Planned Language Approach. So I think what's most important is for education staff to learn from the parents and the families of the children that they serve and use culture as a strength for children to experience success in our program.

Some of you may be familiar with the Multicultural Principles for Early Childhood Leaders, and principle one in those multicultural principles is that every individual is rooted in culture, and in the resources list, you'll see that principle one there is a handout that you can use as a resource for you. There are many different definitions of culture in the multicultural principles, and in that book that you'll see later on in the PowerPoint presentation, it really encourages you to think about your own definition within the programs that you're working with. I'm going to turn it over to Karen now to share a new way of defining culture. And so, Karen, take it away, and remember to come off of mute.

Karen Nemeth: Thank you, Deb. Oh, yes, I'm off of mute, and thank you, and, you know what, it was interesting because this quote appeared in Young Children magazine just around the time that we were working on the content for this presentation, and it really made an impression on us because as we were addressing Culture for the Planned Language Approach, it was more than just respecting each child's culture. It was about what does the role of culture play in a practical way in terms of the ways we teach children and how well they learn, and then I saw this appear in the November magazine, and it says, "Culture influences not only children's personal preferences and behaviors but also how they think and feel and learn.

Instead of seeing culture as an external influence on children, it is viewed as a process in which children use cultural tools or artifacts, such as values, symbols, objects, technologies, words, norms, traditions, schemas, scripts, and practices to make meaning of their daily experiences." In other words, it's not just something that we put in the environment, but it actually is an experience for the children through which all the things they learn go through, and so we really wanted to start with that and then talk a little bit about what are the practical things that we've learned from science that help us use our understanding of culture and equity in supporting learning for young children, right?

So this is a very familiar image by now, and it's so familiar because it's so powerful, right, and this shows what can happen if first you build a fence, and then you realize, well, that fence is OK for some kids, but it's not OK for other kids, but if we give everybody the same equal treatment, some people will have their needs met and some people will not.

So then after the fence is already built, you're going to have to adapt what you provide so that each person gets exactly what that individual needs so they can benefit from the learning, but really the third image is saying to us, "Wouldn't it be better if we just didn't build a fence in the first place and we really just proactively addressed equitable access so that our environments, our practices, our awareness of the role of culture are already in place to make sure there are fewer barriers and more equitable access to learning.

So in order to talk a little bit more about this, we actually have a video clip, and when you view this video clip, we want you to think about the experience of what it would be like to be a child in a room where learning experiences are happening but they're happening in a language you don't understand, and so the children that do understand the language have access to the learning. Children that don't understand the language have a different kind of access. So let's take a look at that, and then we'll talk about it in a second. The video is called "What Did You Say?" And it's from the Teaching at the Beginning collection of videos.

[Video begins]

Educator: [Speaking native language]

Narrator: Imagine that it is your first day of school with new surroundings, new people, and a new language.

Educator: [Speaking native language] Cut. [Laughter]

[Video ends]

Karen: OK. So those were some grown-ups pretending to be children to demonstrate what the experience of equitable access to language and learning is like for children. So as you're thinking about that, you might type into the question and answer box what are some of the things you observed in that video. What are some things that you saw happening, and what are some things that you saw that could be improved, and that way, you can sort of see from each other what kind of ideas this video makes you think about, but basically what we really want to look at is that when children don't understand, when the environment is not familiar to them, not only do they have trouble understanding the content but also the way they feel is different.

The way those children feel is about being less empowered to learn, feeling less competent and able in that circumstance when we provide a environment that is not responsive to their culture, right, and to their language, and so we want to always remember by supporting the full and effective participation of children who are dual language learners and their families, that's how we promote equity to meet the specific needs of this population, and by implementing teaching and learning practices that meet their needs, everyone in the program benefits from this approach that supports your overall program quality and a quality experience for each individual child.

OK? So I hope you're typing in the question and answer box about your responses because now we have something else to share with you. National Association for the Education of Young Children just released recently their new position statement, "Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education," and they have key recommendations that we can all learn from, and you'll have this in your, you know, in the links that you get from this webinar, and you can see, "Consider developmental, cultural and linguistic appropriateness." Consider your own biases. Take more time to really be aware of those things. Involve children, families, and the community in understanding the roles of culture and the aspects of culture that you can use to help children learn.

Use languages that the children understand so they can comprehend content. That's critical for the Planned Language Approach, and then communicate the value of multilingualism to everybody, to all staff, to all children, and to all families, and use authentic assessments that are really going to help you learn what you need to learn to support children's learning, and then lastly, focus on everybody's strengths, the assets they bring, the cultural knowledge and traditions that really enrich everyone's experience.

So that's helpful from NAEYC, and now with our shared understanding of the roles of culture and equity, what do we do now? What's next in our work, and we really think that understanding the why is important in really changing the way we use culture to support learning, and a planned language approach is a comprehensive, systemic, research-based way for Head Start and Early Head Start and Child Peer programs to ensure that language and literacy services for children who speak English and for those who are dual language learners are all supported.

So the Planned Language Approach section of the ECLKC website provides a framework of coordinated approaches that support very intentional planning and implementation and makes it possible for individual staff and for whole programs to support equitable access to learning for all children, and that's why this kind of planning is so important, and these resources are there to help. And we say that culture plays many roles in early education, and these are the four key areas that we're going to talk about today. Equitable implementation of the Planned

Language Approach depends on understanding the why for each element of your plan. These four components appear as focus areas in your plan, and the ways you choose to infuse culture into the early learning experiences must take all four of these into account, so that's what we're working on today, cognitive aspects, learning components, social-emotional development and the global experience, right?

So we'll start first with looking at the cognitive component. Research actually supports the value of growing up bilingual as a cognitive asset, so that's a plus. We have research that has been summarized in the National Academies of the Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report that's called the Promising Futures report, and we also linked to that in your resources, and they summarized the research showing that supporting a child's first language, while adding English, can promote higher levels of achievement in English. So supporting their home language, plus English, helps them do better in English, OK?

And so we want to consider the way language and culture are chosen and used, at what time and what materials and what activities in the classroom because equitable implementation depends on understanding why it's important. Just throwing in some activities that support a home language, reading a story or singing a song, is not necessarily going to get you that intentional planning and effective result that you're looking for. We also know that growing up bilingual depends on having high-quality language input in both languages, and that means really paying attention to the kinds of language that each adult is using around the children and making sure you have good models for both languages. Also in terms of learning, the research tells us that the cultural backgrounds actually play a role in how children learn and express learning, so really getting to know each individual child and what really works for them is part of this understanding.

You may not necessarily have a guide, you know, that gives you paragraphs about a child's culture and how they learn. You learn that from getting to know each individual child as a person, right? We also know that familiar items support comprehension in both languages. Things that children already know about that they've already used that make sense to them are more helpful in their learning than brand-new items or, you know, plastic items that we don't know what they are or what they mean, right?

Familiar items help children connect to their prior learning, and we know that children learn best from models that they find relatable, so all these things help us to pay attention to the child's learning experience and infusing culture as a support for the actual learning activities that are happening and the choices we make, but we also know that supporting culture is important for the social and emotional life of the child, right? That infusing a child's language and culture in the environment helps them feel safe, respected, and welcome, and are those things important for learning?

Oh, yes, indeed. Not only because feeling good and feeling good about yourself helps you be a good learner but also because when children feel safe and respected and welcome, they are more likely to interact with each other and with the adults in the room, they actually might have more language experiences because of the support we provide for their social-emotional development. OK, and so supporting the social and emotional aspect of a child's development by creating a culturally responsive and relatable environment is an example of why—that we infuse culture into the learning environment so that we actually make things happen, and we also have this component of a global why.

Helping children become global citizens. Helping children really understand similarities and differences as they grow and learn about, you know, navigating and being citizens of the world. Equitable implementation depends on how some of your planned language approach plans may affect not only learning today but the broader preparation that we give children to accept differences and to be aware of things beyond their own neighborhood, et cetera, so these are important aspects of why we support the cultural components that make a difference in learning, and language and literacy learning in particular, but learning across all domains.

So equitable teaching practices support home languages, as well as English. Equitable teaching practices can be supported at home, as well as at school by supporting those home languages, and how you do that can be ... Well, you can get support for how to do that by using this section of the Planned Language Approach pie where we see the Importance of Home Language Series is a set of resources that's available in English and Spanish, and that these are designed to share with families so that families and education staff can work together to really understand the importance of bringing that home culture and home language in intentional and specific ways so that families can understand why you're asking them to share information about their family, to share things from home that can help their children learn.

That helps families understand that they are such important teachers of their children, and their home language and their culture and their traditions and their passions and their interests are really vital to supporting their child's language, and we need them to keep doing those wonderful things, and so we have these resources as part of the Planned Language Approach, and it reminds you that Planned Language Approach is not just about a teacher or a classroom or a home visitor or a family child care provider. That Planned Language Approach is about a coordinated effort that involves all of the partners that support children who are learning in one language or two languages or more.

And now, I'm going to turn it over to Jan Greenberg who's going to give you some specific examples about effective practices, and this is where we'll really see where the why meets the how.

So thank you, Jan.

Jan Greenberg: All righty. Thanks, Karen. So as we said earlier, the ways you choose to infuse culture into the early learning experience must take all four of the roads that Karen talked about in consideration, so here's some examples of how this might play out as it relates to supporting the use of home language words. So for social and emotional development and learning, you might post welcome words in the home languages of children and families to build a sense of safety and comfort, and words with more depth and meaning will be needed to support cognitive development and learning, so when we look at the cognitive aspect, you can provide story and nonfiction books with two languages in book or sets of the same book in various languages. You can read each language separately and choose when to introduce books to small groups or individual children in their home language and other times to bring out the books in individually or in small groups in English so that all children can learn the words and concepts in both or more languages.

Related to learning, you might choose books that contain home language words and culturally appropriate images on topics that are being explored as part of your curriculum. So for example, if exploring balls and ramps is the topic, you might put away previously planned stories, and instead, you might bring out stories about ball games in different countries. If that's not available in home languages, you might add sticky notes with some key words to the books. You can also encourage peer groups or small groups to talk about and act out the ball play using their home language.

And then finally, related to global learning and perspectives, you might post home language phrases and sentences that the staff and children can learn and use. So we're going to move from this introduction of using resources to support equitable teaching practices into this next section on Strategies for Using Cultural Connections to Enhance Language and Learning Outcomes for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, and I want to thank Deb and Karen for providing the context for talking about this section, and I'm going to be sharing some more resources that may be familiar to you, but we're going to be looking at them through this lens of educational equity, so as we do that, keep in mind all of the great information that Karen just shared, and also keep in mind that different cultures may be from other countries or from your own neighborhood.

Also, considerations about infusing cultural and language refer to respecting local cultures, local dialects, including dialects of English and language usage differences, as well as learning and interaction styles. OK. So we're going to start with these tip sheets, one on including children's home languages and cultures, and another on creating environments that include children's home languages and cultures, and you may be familiar with these tips sheets, and you can find them in the strategies that support dual language learner's section of the Planned Language Approach, and so these tip sheets are arranged in a helpful format, and you can add your own tips and practices to them. So the information is organized in three columns. What can I do? That's the practice.

What are some examples, and then the important question of why should I do it, and, well, how can I use these resources isn't a column in these resources. We're going to be thinking about how these resources can be used to support equitable practices, and remember that equitable teaching practices include ways of communicating, ways of setting up the environment, and ways of supporting children's different styles of learning and expressing their learning. And this is more than just, you know, putting a poster on a wall or using these resources and talking about them in, you know, in one professional development event, and so in thinking about these resources, the why is a very, very good place to start, and it's important to consider children of all ages from birth to 5, and in all kinds of settings, and so to that end, group care staff and home visitors can use these tip sheets when they don't speak the languages of the children they're working with and to create welcoming environments where children's cultures are represented and where children feel like they belong.

OK. So we're going to delve into an example of a practice, and the practice here is using photos, and you can find that practice in the Creating Environments That Include Children's Home

Languages and Culture tip sheet that I just shared. We know that photos provide visual support to allow children and families to understand and participate when they don't speak or read the language, and so we're going to ...

Here, we're going to be thinking about how asking the why we do this helps determine how the strategy can be implemented for a specific purpose, for a specific age-group, and here, our why has to do with the areas that Karen talked about.

So for example, for social and emotional learning for infants and toddlers, we might share with them photos of family and friends, people who are familiar to infants and toddlers, and that might provide richer opportunities for children to react to, and for you to communicate with them about. For concept learning, you might use photos of items that they recognize from their home, from their family and that they can react to and communicate about, along with familiar physical props, and Karen talked a bit about that in her section.

And related to global perspectives, you might share with them photos of diverse people, and these can be people that they know. It could be people who are in the learning setting that they're familiar with. And again, we're thinking about using photos of people that children— that infants and toddlers are familiar with because we're likely to get a much richer response and interaction with them around that versus, like, using a purchased poster of faces of people who aren't necessarily familiar to the infants and toddlers.

So, that's infant and toddler. In the same table, we show how this strategy can be implemented with preschoolers and, again, when we're intentional about the purpose, so kind of building upon what we might do with infants and toddlers for social and emotional learning, we might use photos of family and friends in sacred activities. For concept learning, we might use photos of items that children recognize, along with props to identify authentic patterns, and I want to just deconstruct for a moment what I mean by authentic patterns. If you're teaching or trying to help a child who's a dual language learner who doesn't necessarily understand the language that you're using to talk about a concept like patterns, if you use materials that are familiar and meaningful to children, that might help them understand the concept that you're trying to talk about and explain.

So for example, you might use photos of the child as a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, or you might use photos of a sibling as a baby, toddler, and preschooler, and if you're adding props to support learning about patterns, you might use familiar musical instruments to identify patterns in familiar songs, so it's using what's familiar to children to teach concepts like patterns and other types of concepts that you're trying to get across. And then finally for global perspectives, you might use photos of diverse people, along with songs of hello in the languages that children are learning and speaking at home. So that's one example. Another example, a strategy example, is language and literacy activities, and you can find this strategy in the including language and literacy activities ....

Sorry, in the Including Home Languages and Cultures tip sheet, and so we've already talked a little bit about using home language words, and here we're talking more broadly about implementing language and literacy concepts, and, again, our why is centered around areas of social and emotional learning and concept learning and global perspective. And, again, you can see the various strategies for infants and toddlers and preschoolers, and, you know, one of the whys that we speak in children's home languages, that we engage in many one-on-one conversations with multiple back-and-forth exchanges and that we involve families in helping us with these language and literacy strategies is because, for one thing, in the Head Start Program Performance Standards, there is this standard where programs are recognizing bilingualism and biliteracy as strengths and implementing research-based practices that support their development and learning, and there's a standard related to supporting infants and toddlers who are dual language learners, so we're including teaching practices that focus on developing the home language when there's an adult with appropriate language competency, and we're exposing infants and toddlers to English, and for preschoolers, we are including teaching practices that focus on both English-language acquisition and continuing to support their development in their home language.

And another why that we're doing all of this and using the home language in language and literacy practices is because it demonstrate respect for children's and families' cultures and traditions. It helps children who are learning more than one language feel more included in the learning setting, and it supports their understanding of what's happening in that learning setting. It exposes children who don't speak the home language to a new language and culture, and that's part of global perspectives, and it also supports language and literacy learning by building on children's background and funds of knowledge. So lots to delve into with these two tip sheets. OK. So some additional resources that you can also find in the Planned Language Approach resources are organizing learning experiences.

That's the tip sheet on the left, and on the right is selecting and using culturally responsive children's books. And in selecting and using culturally responsive books, you can find steps for checking books for stereotypes and bias. There are questions in that resource that you can use to examine the content such as illustrations, messages, and words used in children's books, and these questions help you expand beyond the stereotypes and be able to ask critical questions and engage in critical thinking about the books that you provide for young children. In the organizing learning experiences resource, you can use the guiding questions in there to plan successful themes, projects, and studies within the curriculum that you're using.

So for example, looking at a curriculum's cultural responsiveness includes making sure that each child's lifestyle and experiences from home are connected to the learning experiences and activities suggested in the curriculum, and that resource really helps you dive into that. So Deb earlier mentioned the Multicultural Principles, and we bring that back here because one of the wonderful features about the Multicultural Principles is that there are questions at the end of each principle that you can use to spark conversations.

So for example, principle nine is culturally relevant and diverse programming examines and challenges institutional and personal biases, and so one of the questions that you can ask to spark a deep, thoughtful conversation about that is, "How do the preservice and in-service trainings in your program address and provide opportunities to examine and challenge institutional and personal biases?" So lots of good questions for rich and thoughtful conversations about how to provide equitable teaching practices. Another set of resources that have been available for a number of years, but we highlight them here, again, within the context of equitable practices, these are Cultural Backgrounder Resources, and there's an example on the slide of Bhutanese refugee families, another example for Mixtec, Zapotec, and Triqui indigenous peoples of Mexico.

There are also Cultural Backgrounder Resources for refugee families from Burma, families from Iraq, and families from Somalia, and there's also a wonderfully useful resources called Ways to Use the Cultural Backgrounders which offers strategies for staff self-reflection, and team planning, and there are handouts to aid staff in doing that work. And so actually going to now turn this over to Deb, and she's going to talk about Connections to the Dual Language Learners Program Assessment. Deb, take it away.

Deborah: All right. Thank you, Jan. Just want to sure you can hear me. I have some questions that have come in about where to find all these wonderful resources, Jan, that you were just sharing, and so just encouraging folks to look in the resource list, one of the widgets on the platform, and you can find these resources. So just continuing on Jan, so the Dual Language Learner Program Assessment, we call it the DLLPA for short, it's a fairly new tool that came out about a year and a half ago, and the DLLPA is found in the policies, practices, and systems piece of that PLA pie which you kind of see raised there in the little diagram on the side because it's meant to address the whole program's systems and services for children who are DLL. Just know that this is a free tool, and it's not only for Head Start, but also for child care programs. But individual users can also benefit from this tool by looking at the items and doing a self- assessment or a reflection.

You can use this resource here on the screen with the DLLPA when you're looking at the Family and Community Engagement Program Services section of the DLLPA. These little scenarios show the use of relationship-based practices and interactions with families. They can be used for small-group work or large-group professional development training to improve your approaches to engaging families of children who are dual language learners. These were developed by the National Center on Parent and Family Engagement.

And next, we have the Ready DLL app which is available for free on the Apple and Android stores, and we invite you to download, share, and rate it, and you can use the app to learn key words and phrases in four different languages. It offers Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, and Haitian Creole, and, you know, I'll just throw in a word about this because we had a question that came in about, you know, the use of phrases like those key survival phrases for staff who may not speak the language that that is actually a really good thing to learn because it helps children to feel comfortable hearing their home language, and, you know, going back to that social and emotional development, when they're comfortable and at ease, they're able to learn, but there is a distinction that we want to make when it comes to, for example, dual language programs that have specific goals around language and literacy in the target languages.

Staff should be fluent in the languages that they're teaching, so I just want to make that distinction there because it did come up as a question. But continuing on with features of the app, so besides key words and phrases in those various languages, you can access resources from the app. You can see short video clips of practices in action, and there is a fun little game feature for building a culturally diverse classroom, so we encourage you to check that app out. Next here, we have the icon for the CLRP community on MyPeers. CLRP, of course, is Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Practices, and this is another free social platform for folks in the early education field. I think we have a flyer up in the resource list, and so we encourage you to join this community and, you know, keep the conversations going from any questions that come up here in the platform. It's a great place to share ideas, questions, resources, and, you know, we encourage you to post and contribute to the platform.

We'll plan to include the link to today's webinar on the CLRP MyPeers community so you can listen to the recording, you know, until it gets posted on the ECLKC, or the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, and we ask that you mark your calendars for some of our upcoming events. Feb. 18 through the 21 is DLL Celebration Week, and I'll be showing another slide just momentarily saying more about what that's about. But, you know, this is the second in a webinar series of slides for PLA, but March 19 will be the third in this PLA series, and that's going to be really exciting.

We'll be hearing from two leading research experts, so I encourage you to join for that one. May 21, we'll be talking about implementing responsive care, effective teaching and an organized learning environment. I'm going to continue on here with the PLA Big 5 webinar series. That was the first series around the PLA approach that was delivered last year, and this is where you can find the five webinars where each one covered a key literacy skill, and those are what we call the big five, and it's alphabet knowledge and early writing, chronological awareness, and so on and so forth.

So if you missed that series, we encourage you to go ahead and review that. You can see Practices in Action for Infants and Toddlers Through Preschoolers, and it's a great PD or coaching tool. There's videos for each age-groups that are included. And so what I'm really excited to talk about next is the Dual Language Learner Celebration Week that was the first on our upcoming events, and so this year, we are really excited to be launching a new dual language learner course on the iPD, the Individualized Professional Development Portfolio. You'll be able to register for the course through a link on ECLKC for the iPD, and you'll see that there is a module that is going to be released every day that week for the course, so the course includes four modules, and you'll see the different topics for each module, and the fourth module is actually a summary of the prior three, and it's really exciting that we'll be offering 0.2 CEUs for free for those who complete the course, so that is the primary activity that is going to be happening during DLL celebration week.

The other activity that is also mentioned on the slide is, again, going back to the CLRP MyPeers community, that social platform for early education folks. We encourage you all to post on that platform, and we're going to be coordinating our efforts with several different administers from the various communities. There's an AIAN Language and Culture community, the PFCE, which is the Parent, Family, and Community Engagement community, Health and Wellness.

So we're all going to be posting and sharing resources during DLL Celebration Week on the MyPeers platform. Finally, you'll see on the slide the #BrilliantDualLanguageLearners. We used that last year to spread the word about dual language learners and the benefits of bilingualism and biliteracy. And so we encourage you to use the hashtag on your social media platforms— whether it's Twitter or Facebook. We encourage you to, you know, share out all the wonderful things that are happening in your programs and how you're supporting dual language learners.

So finally, getting to the end here, we have some additional resources that are internal on the ECLKC, the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, and some external resources. These have all been placed in a Word document that is downloadable from the resources widget.

And with that, I want to thank you all for joining us.