I had a fabulous time 9/18 exploring neurodivergent students in language education with the Council on Language Instruction at Northwestern University! At the beginning of our workshop per an informal poll, most folks were feeling uncertain about how to address the needs of neurodivergent students in their language classrooms (4-point Likert scale, biggest bucket by …
International Conference on Inclusive Foreign Language Education
1 down, 6 more to go! My first talk of Fall 2026 is in the books. Today, I presented virtually at an international conference organized by the Nataliia Gach Education Centre in Switzerland. My presentation was a quick snapshot about applying a trifecta of support for disabled students in world language classrooms: employing early design …
Continue reading "International Conference on Inclusive Foreign Language Education"
Too Much, Not Enough
This is probably the most vulnerable public-facing thing I've ever written. (And that's saying something when you've written a dissertation). I recently wrote a narrative essay for "Positionality Stories", a Medium .com series, about how my early family experience with disability shaped my scholarly curiosities, and how my research in turn led me, through disabled …
I was asked to help WIDA
In Spring 2026, I consulted with WIDA's education team to develop content for a professional learning course for teachers centered on supporting disabled multilinguals. During my time assisting WIDA, I led a lunch-and-learn to guide the team's development of learning resources, provided expert interviews as learning content in new modules, reviewed professional learning modules WIDA …
DISALLI: a self-assessment tool
I have published an open access self-assessment tool for language educators! “The goal of this self-assessment tool is to guide instructors of additional languages in higher education who want to make more inclusive pedagogical choices for disabled students. This document includes a brief introduction to disability and additional language learning and teaching (the "why"), a …
Keynote: 8th Second Language Learning & Disabilities conference
In many ways, the Second Language Learning & Disabilities conference raised me to be the scholar I am today. I’m so pleased to be welcomed into this space again, this time as their keynote speaker. Please join us for Disability Inclusion: Finding Community at the Eye of the Storm in Language Education.
SSLA special issue: Disability and L2 learning
I'm thrilled to announce that Disability and Second Language Learning, the 2025* special issue of Studies in Second Language Acquisition, is complete and remaining articles will be released soon! *We delayed several of the articles to align publishing with the journal’s decision to go fully Open Access beginning January 2026 - congrats, SSLA! My deepest …
Continue reading "SSLA special issue: Disability and L2 learning "
My opening pitch for the 2026 IALLT webinar series
The International Association of Language Learning Technology chose disability and language teaching as their theme for their 2026 webinar series. Their webinar team asked for my help, not only to invite speakers from my network of scholars and teachers who work at the intersection of disability and language education, but also to open the series …
Continue reading "My opening pitch for the 2026 IALLT webinar series"
What is my procedure for devising and planning a workshop?
Beginning in 2024 and continuing into 2025, I conducted an informal needs analysis to craft a workshop for Refugee Development Center (RDC) English Language instructors on the topic of disability inclusion for additional language learning and teaching. Wanting to make my workshop as useful as possible to RDC teachers, I engaged in an almost year-long …
Continue reading "What is my procedure for devising and planning a workshop?"
What would you do? Adapting listening assessment for hard of hearing students
Here’s another what-would-you-do scenario. I got this question from an in-service K-12 language teacher recently. She explained: I have a student who has a hearing aid and lip reads to make sure he's understanding his teachers. His 504 says to use captions/subtitles with videos during instruction, but nothing about during assessments. My group might also …
Continue reading "What would you do? Adapting listening assessment for hard of hearing students"
