Volunteer Work Put ESL Symposium Speaker on Education Path

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Amy Hewett-Olatunde

Last year, Amy Hewett-Olatunde was named the Minnesota Teacher of the Year at the high school where she began her teaching career 18 years ago.

She did her student teaching at LEAP High School in St. Paul and never left, although she also now teaches at the university level, helping prepare teachers in two graduate education programs. LEAP High School enrolls English language learners up to age 21 and groups students by English-proficiency level, not grade level.

Hewett-Olatunde is one of two featured speakers with KimOanh Nguyen-Lam, a U.S. Department of Education official, who will address the ninth annual University of Arkansas ESL Symposium set for Friday, Feb. 24.

The symposium will take place at the Hilton Garden Inn, 1325 N. Palak Drive in Fayetteville. The College of Education and Health Professions sponsors the symposium, and educators can earn six hours of professional development credit for attending.

Online registration ends Feb. 10. The cost is $60 for full-time students and $140 for professional educators.

Hewett-Olatunde decided to become a teacher of English language learners just three weeks into a volunteer experience at an organization that taught English to elementary-age children after school. Before that, she didn't know what to do with her undergraduate degrees in German and Scandinavian languages and was working as a heating and air conditioning technician.

"One day, I went outside," she recalled. "It was a beautiful spring day and the clouds had parted after a heavy rain. I looked up at the lavender sky and I had an epiphany. I knew what I wanted to do. It was a calling."

Other influences on her included growing up in a multicultural society in Canada, where she saw emphasis placed on representing everyone's culture, not the melting pot concept more common to the United States, and living with international exchange students as a child.

Hewett-Olatunde has witnessed some changes toward English language learners and how to teach them since she started. More curriculum is available now, although she believes designing her own curriculum when she started was a good thing.

"That benefited me," she said. "I don't use textbooks as the authority. I use them as supplements for what I create."

Services for English as a second language programs have also improved, although what is available varies by region, Hewett-Olatunde said. The populations that need services also vary depending on region and change based on world events, she said.

"Some of the regions in U.S. have some of same populations arriving all the time," she said. "In Minnesota, we have a large segment of students designated SLIFE, or students with limited or interrupted formal education. There is a misperception we don't have a lot of refugees in Minnesota, but we have actually seen a 300 percent increase over the past five years. We have the highest per capita in the nation, and we need to serve these kids well. That also means serving other kids who need extra support.

"There is more awareness of the need to serve these children and young people in different ways, not in a way that dumbs down learning, but by using scaffolds," she continued, referring to additional instructional techniques and support that may be needed. "These students are intelligent amazing gifts coming into our classrooms. We need to meet them with what they need to do to survive and thrive in the United States."

Hewett-Olatunde's presentation is titled "Teaching English Learners Through the Lens of Constructivism, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, and Community Building." She will use video to show her students' work through their journals and poetry.

"I'll use stories of individuals and try to connect to people in the audience," she said. "I know they don't want to be told what they already know, they want to learn how to build from what they know. What can I do better, what can I do more of, how do I look at teaching through a different lens? Teachers want to walk away and use this in their classrooms the next day. We will do activities they can use in their classrooms."

KimOanh Nguyen-Lam, the other featured speaker, will present "LESS to MORE: The journey from Limited English Speaking Student (LESS) to Multicultural Program Director for the Office of English Language Acquisition, the story of a Refugee and Immigrant Educator (MORE)."