Dr. Katy Lichon: Education, Cultivated.

[music]

 

0:00:09.1 Audrey Scott: Welcome to this modern education podcast that explores learning from the everyday exchange of thoughts and ideas to the theories and practices behind entire systems. Think education is cool? So do we. So we paired two conversations, learn about our guests, then learn from our guests. Share your takeaways and come back for more. You're listening to Think. Pair. Share., with me Audrey Scott.

 

[music]

 

0:00:41.7 AS: Dr. Katy Lichon is the director of Catholic School Advantage and The English As A New Language program, and is a faculty member for the Alliance for Catholic Education Teaching Fellows in the Institute for Educational Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame. Katy is passionate about the transformative power of the Latino community and ensuring that emergent bilinguals thrive in our Catholic schools. She believes that educators are pivotal in forming a school environment where all students and their families are honored as assets in the community, and we're all in luck because she's brought her kind and charming southern hospitality here to Indiana. And we're all the better for it. Today, it's my great pleasure to welcome her to Think, Pair, Share. Hi, Katy, it's so good to see you.

 

0:01:19.5 Katy Lichon: Hi, Audrey, wonderful to be with you today.

 

0:01:22.5 AS: Oh gosh, we're so glad to be chatting with you. How are you doing? How's the family? How are the kids? 

 

0:01:27.6 KL: That's a great question. [chuckle] For everything, there's a season, right? And spring in Indiana is just so special, Audrey. We can be out and they can get some of this energy out and there's screen and colors popping up and everything is hopeful and so as, Audrey, you know well, my kiddos are everything to me, so we are doing well, being a working mom is hard, but I love every bit of it. So thank you for asking.

 

0:01:53.8 AS: Absolutely, I love seeing them around the office, and now I know the pandemic has not allowed that as much as we might like, or at least I might like, 'cause I'd like to see everyone's little kids coming in. What are the age ranges again? 

 

0:02:03.1 KL: Mary is nine, Marky is three... No, Mark just turned four... Look at me. Just turned four. And Helen is 14 months.

 

0:02:11.0 AS: Oh my gosh. Keeps you and John Paul busy? 

 

0:02:12.9 KL: 100%. [chuckle] Wouldn't have it any other way.

 

0:02:16.1 AS: I'd say do you have big summer plans, but I think that's your busiest time of year.

 

0:02:20.1 KL: It is our busiest time that we always try to build in a few fun things, obviously for the kids and camps and those things, and so family time is very, very sacred to us. I don't know if it's my Southern roots or just... I've done a lot of reading on the domestic church lately, and so I just... I really honor dinner time is sacred at home, I love to cook and I love our gardening, and I love cleaning, Audrey, truly.

 

0:02:44.0 AS: And you come to my house.

 

0:02:46.9 KL: Yeah. Don't tempt me. It's a way to organize and I love it. I think it's more than that. Audrey, it's an interesting thing that I think about a lot is I really love this idea of flourishing and how to make sure that things are flourishing, people are flourishing, our house, our home, our yard... I know, it's just an interesting idea that I think about a lot, about how to make things better and bring them to life. And so, yes, busy season of summer, but every night is sacred at our dinner table.

 

0:03:12.5 AS: I love that the dinner time is sacred. Growing up, Sundays were family day, sometimes we were like, "Well, I guess we can't play that day with our friends," but you know what, it was so worth it, wouldn't trade this...

 

0:03:20.5 KL: Oh, I love that idea of sacred Sundays. Check back, I'll pitch that to my husband.

 

0:03:28.3 AS: Alright. I know you know, we start out with the fun questions, and since it is such a beautiful spring day and we are in Holy Week, our little theme today is going to be Easter, but certainly secular in nature or...

 

0:03:40.4 KL: No, we're few of the catechisms today, sounds great.

 

0:03:42.5 AS: A lot of candy questions coming your way. Okay. Jelly beans or jelly bellies? 

 

0:03:44.9 KL: Is there a difference? Let's just go with this. I don't like either of them. I truly have no real interest in sugary candy. Audrey, is there a difference? 

 

0:03:55.1 AS: I think there is, the jelly beans, I think, are a little bit bigger, I think jelly bellies are those really teeny ones that come in all those sort of really wacky flavors. I'm gonna miss-remember which President brought those to the fore, but I feel like somebody really liked Jelly bellies.

 

0:04:11.2 KL: Somebody really liked jelly belly. There you go, that's our fun fact for the day, we'll have to look that up, but... No, thanks for me. Happy to pass.

 

0:04:17.7 AS: Well then, I don't know if your gonna like the rest of my questions 'cause there's a lot of sweets in them, but we'll keep going. I think you can at least appreciate the sweet traditions of Easter, I guess... Milk chocolate, dark chocolate or white chocolate? 

 

0:04:29.6 KL: Okay, well, we talked about sugary candy, but to me, chocolate is its own category. This is fine, Audrey, keep going. Milk chocolate.

 

0:04:38.4 AS: And actually, I don't think white chocolate is technically chocolate. I don't think it actually has any of the cocoa particles in there, so I think it's sort of a misnomer, but that might just be me.

 

0:04:47.7 KL: That's the second thing we're gonna Google when we're off this podcast, in addition to which President made jelly bellies popular. I'll keep the list.

 

0:04:55.0 AS: I love it. I actually have a fun fact with one of the presidents coming up a teaser or spoiler alert. First on that score of chocolate, chocolate bunnies, do you eat the ears or tail first? 

 

0:05:06.1 KL: Let's just go with ears, absolutely ears. Maybe no rhyme or reason, but it'll give me pause, maybe on Sunday to rethink that happened.

 

0:05:13.4 AS: You know what, I did look up Easter fun facts, and most people do eat the ears first, so you are in the majority.

 

0:05:19.4 KL: In good company.

 

0:05:21.5 AS: Easter Egg hunts or Easter Egg rolls? 

 

0:05:23.2 KL: Apparently, I don't know much about Easter traditions here. What's an Easter Egg roll? 

 

0:05:27.9 AS: Like the White House Easter Egg Roll where they...

 

0:05:29.6 KL: Oh, I see, I see, I see...

 

0:05:32.6 AS: Would you rather hunt for your eggs or roll your eggs? I don't know.

 

0:05:34.7 KL: It's exactly right. With our own children, we do a nice Easter Egg hunt in the backyard, and so they have lots of little eggs and there's always one golden egg, and I come from a family of dermatologists, so this may not be surprising, but there's usually sunscreen in the eggs, but the golden egg has a $10 bill.

 

0:05:54.1 AS: I wanna come to your house.

 

0:05:55.5 KL: All the sunscreen and the $10 bills. You could maybe one, Audrey.

 

0:05:58.4 AS: Those are fun facts about you, I didn't realize you were from a family of dermatologists. Well, I have some questions for you later on.

 

[chuckle]

 

0:06:05.3 KL: I married into that, so there you go, I cannot answer any of them.

 

0:06:10.4 AS: Okay, fair enough. Okay, well, that's where my fun fact comes in. The first lady, Lucy Hayes, wife of Rutherford B. Hayes, our 19th President, was the first to institute the Easter Egg roll on the White House...

 

0:06:22.7 KL: Easter Egg roll.

 

0:06:25.4 AS: Apparently the kids would come out on Easter Monday and roll eggs down Capital Hill. And the people thought they were ruining the lawn, so she invited them right on over to the White House, and lawn instead.

 

0:06:35.1 KL: I love a woman that welcomes children onto their front lawn of the White House.

 

0:06:41.0 AS: Yeah, it's very interesting. Peeps chicks or peeps bunnies? 

 

0:06:43.8 KL: Truly neither. But is it true that they explode in the microwave? That's all I've ever heard. Not a big marshmallow-y fan, I guess I'm sounding not very fun today, Audrey.

 

0:06:56.9 AS: No, no, I think that you... I don't know how they got their popularity, I think they're just nostalgic at this point, 'cause I'm not certain...

 

0:07:01.8 KL: At this point, you know what I saw the other day on the Notre Dame website, campus ministry just sent this out yesterday, I guess to date me, sounds so old... The young kids, they'd make smores with peeps, I didn't real... So maybe it's something we should try.

 

0:07:13.6 AS: Hey, that might be your newest tradition, I like that a lot actually. That's one good use for 'em, I guess. We talk to teens about traditions. Do you guys have any... I like that with the sunscreen and the golden egg. Does your family have any other Easter traditions? 

 

0:07:25.5 KL: Absolutely. So my in-laws live very close by as well, so we're usually just together certainly on Easter, but just trying to make sure, especially with the young children, they understand the significance of all of the beautiful events of Holy Week. I know that's a lot of masses for some young people, but it's so important if they understand how all of these events come together. So certainly just the liturgical season for sure, and celebrating those pieces. As you may know, my husband John Paul owns a pilgrimage company, and so my Catholic pilgrimage company, a travel business, which, COVID aside, has been a little difficult, but just a beautiful, beautiful way.

 

0:08:05.3 KL: And so a couple of years ago, we had the privilege of traveling to Israel right around Easter and just truly incredible. I think it's one of those things that once you see it... It's what we say about teaching, context matters and experience matters, and so there's just such this depth of understanding. And my oldest has some good memory of understanding this is where Jesus died, and these were all of the last steps, and once you see the geography, then you feel it. And so I just encourage anyone, I know it's a tall order, but if you ever have the opportunity to visit some of these really beautiful kind of pilgrimage sites in our faith are a great way to encounter the life of the saints, and the life of Jesus.

 

0:08:47.7 AS: How interesting that would be to actually walk those steps. I can only imagine that that's gonna be so amazing for your kids.

 

0:08:54.9 KL: I do think that part of seeing the world to the extent that we can, and I realize there's a lot wrapped up in the privilege of being able to travel and see the world, but we believe as the family very much in giving our children really broad perspectives, and just really broad opportunities and diverse opportunities where we can.

 

0:09:15.2 AS: That's wonderful, thank you for sharing that. And you alluded to this a little bit, you're from Texas and you are now living here. Can you help us understand that transition maybe from Texas to here? How did you join us? 

 

0:09:27.4 KL: That's a great question, Audrey. Providence, right? In some ways, I always believe in, listening to that still small voice. It led us here. And I'll give you the short version. So when I was finishing... Newly married, and I was finishing up my PhD in Dallas, my husband was working in campus ministry, and the lovely Father, Joe Carey, who works with the [0:09:46.1] ____ called John Paul and said, "I have a great job for you. I know you were just married about a little more than a month ago, but would you come to South Bend?" And John Paul said... I mean, after a tiny, tiny bit of discernment, "Absolutely."

 

0:09:58.5 KL: And so first six, maybe eight months of our marriage John Paul lived here in South Bend, and I was still in Dallas finishing coursework and some exams and those kind of pieces. And so nonetheless, bought a house, wrote a dissertation, had a baby, all the things... All the beautiful things in life. I don't know if you say birth to dissertation along with a child, but that's how it feels at some point. But you know, Audrey, this work has always been close to my heart as a teacher. Audrey, I started off teaching fifth grade in Atlanta, Georgia, and I had 35 fifth graders, and as a first year teacher, honestly, I was just trying to get Mrs. Debbie the lunch attendance on time.

 

0:10:39.8 KL: I definitely didn't know how to make double-sided copies, and I was just woefully unprepared to welcome the most lovely and beautiful child into my classroom named Jesus. Jesus walked into my classroom, and it was his very first day of being in school in the United States, in school, in English. And oh my God, a child so full of grace, and thank God he was because he extended it to me on so many occasions. I just... I was not prepared, and this is just kind of the way of the field... Over time, no one had ever talked to me about English learners. No one talked to me about how to modify language. Field has shifted so much, we didn't even talk about the brilliance of multilingual learners then, but I just kept thinking, "I don't know enough. I don't know enough, I don't know how to honor this child in the way that he deserves."

 

0:11:25.6 KL: I didn't have the pedagogical skills, let alone a theory of language acquisition. And so we muddled through our fifth grade year together with so much grace on his side. It had me thinking, "How do I teach my science standards in fifth grade, which are important, but how do I deeply honor this child's home language, his development in English, how do I make content accessible, how do I hold this child to these incredible academic standards that he deserves, while honoring the fact that reading and writing is so challenging and it's a developmental process?" And so it just led me to all of these questions that I continue to seek out every day on behalf of children and on behalf of teachers.

 

0:12:08.3 AS: Well, Katy, he was so blessed to have you as that teacher. So, yes. So tell me, this is interesting, so you had done ACE...

 

0:12:16.1 KL: I majored in marketing and management and finance, and just really wasn't sure, was pretty set for law school. And dear friend of ours, who's a bishop, said, "There's this great program at Notre Dame. You should think about it." So I looked into ACE. It just seem... When you just, you have those feelings, you know. It's just the next right thing or providence, I guess, in terms of our faith. Or the prompting of the Holy Spirit. So I did ACE 12 in Atlanta when I taught fifth grade and so fourth grade math in there, and then I went on to do our program in Chile. So I lived in Santiago, Chile for almost two years, and same time as I'm working on my English as a new language endorsement and really understanding language and just... I have a distinct memory of trying to get on a bus and saying, "I'm smart, I'm funny, I can do this," and I literally can't get to the right bus stop, and just kind of understanding how important language is to who we are, and how difficult it can be when we don't have the voice to show all of these things.

 

0:13:16.8 KL: And so came back, taught in Chicago for several years, which I loved, moved to Dallas and then started my PhD. And so the story comes full circle, when you talk about John Paul working for Notre Dame, I came back and at first while I was still writing, had the privilege of supervising many of our ACE teachers, which I have done for many years and love deeply, helping first and second year teachers to hone their craft and to be the best versions of themselves for their students. At the same time, there was this really interesting shift, and I would say in the field in general, and even in our own understanding in ACE of kind of the growth of the number of English learners, multilingual students, emergent bilinguals, again, all these terms change and beautifully change to reflect our students.

 

0:14:02.4 KL: But there was this kind of increase in our recognition of our English learners, so some real opportunities there. And also at the same time, this real intersectionality of coming to understand the changing demographics of our Catholic Church to become largely Latinx and Hispanic and all of these things really merging into an opportunity to give voice to these children and their families in our communities. Literally providential, that what I love to do matches the world's great need.

 

0:14:35.6 AS: So grateful for what you're doing, and I kinda wanna anchor our listeners in some of... I hate to say the history, but there is a historical element that I think sort of fuels a lot of what the basis of this is. Is that the Catholic Church... Their tradition is of serving immigrant populations, correct? And if so, can you talk to me a little bit about that and where that sort of... Is the foundation of some of the work that you do? 

 

0:14:56.6 KL: I would start by saying, I believe that all of our schools, our Catholic schools, our public schools, our private schools... I think school is a sacred space for precisely the reasons that I just talked about sweet Jesus, the fact that we entrust... As a parent, my greatest treasure, I entrust them to someone else's care eight hours a day with their mind and their heart and their soul, and so I believe that all of our schools are sacred spaces. I would say though, our parish model here in the United States, this idea of a parish school is pretty unique to the United States. So when you look at the history of Catholic schools, yes, there were school founded in Florida, I think the data is like 1600 at some extent, we could say it's maybe the first Catholic school.

 

0:15:35.3 KL: I know the Oblate Sisters of Providence, they're black order of nuns, they formed the very first school to serve black children, Saint Francis Academy in Maryland, and that was like an 1830-ish. So there certainly had been this kind of pop-up model of school that inherently did what? What was the function of our Catholic schools? They served a largely immigrant and marginalized children in a gospel center environment, but an environment that really honored the gifts and the dignity and the culture of these children. In the late 1880s is when there is a bigger push from the bishops to create what is the parish model. So Catholic churches needed to create schools along with their parishes. This is really in response to the Protestant nature of Catholic schools. And we could go on forever.

 

0:16:24.9 KL: This is above my pay grade, to talk about school choice, I will say that. We clearly have experts that can talk about that in our building. But what I think about a lot is this magnificent history we have of honoring the language and culture that our children brought to school. So they always say in cities like Chicago, for example, you can see where St. Joseph's Parish was formed for Italians, and you can see where St. Patrick's was largely formed to serve Irish immigrants, and that's right next St. Adalbert's, that largely serve Polish immigrants, and so our church has this beautiful history. So when it comes to teachers, which is at the heart of what I do... Our teachers in the early stages of Catholic schools in this country, often they were nuns, they shared a common home language and culture with our students, was just meant that our students didn't need to check their culture or language at the door.

 

0:17:15.9 KL: Now, as everything goes and changes, demographics in this country have changed, these idea of cultural parishes just don't stand the way they used to, this idea of a parish school is not always still standing. But I think the common thread is that our Catholic schools have always done a beautiful job of serving immigrant, marginalized communities in a way that values the gifts that they bring. And so what we're looking at today is just an increasing number of Hispanic Catholics in the US Catholic Church. And so I really look at how our church is going to respond? How our schools are going to respond, and what does this renewal of our Catholic schools look like if we are to continue this incredible tradition of serving immigrant and marginalized communities in our presence, folding into what is the future... Our great legacy and our future of our Catholic schools.

 

0:18:11.4 AS: And that's an excellent point, and I think that you have spearheaded many of these programs, which honestly, there's almost too many for us to be able to talk about each one of them depth here in this conversation, but I would like to touch on some of those and how you see those as being sort of the legacy of what we do.

 

0:18:28.7 KL: And I was... Audrey, I think the line that my team here loves is I walk in and I often say, "You know, I've been thinking or I have an idea," and God bless them for going with me down these paths all the time.

 

0:18:44.2 AS: You have great ideas...

 

0:18:47.1 KL: I also think... Well, we've had some bad ideas. I've had some bad ideas, I'll take that.

 

0:18:49.7 AS: Very rarely, very rarely.

 

[chuckle]

 

0:18:52.0 KL: Thank you. But I see our work as being so interconnected. So I just gave this presentation the other day, the example of, if you give a mouse a cookie. If you give a mouse a cookie, then we need to think about this, and then he'll want milk, and then he'll wanna trim his whiskers and all the pieces. But our work here, it continues to multiply because there's a need, and because we're constantly... [0:19:11.9] ____, what keeps me up at night is thinking about how our schools are going to best serve our communities. And so what that leads me to is, if we do this program, so if we really work on Latino enrollment, through our Latino Enrollment Institute, that has led me to better believe that more and more of our principals and all of our teachers need information on how to serve culturally and linguistically diverse children.

 

0:19:36.1 KL: And if we start to do this, this has led me to believe, if the future of our Catholic schools and our Catholic Church is largely Latinx, then how are we forming the next generation of parents, leaders, teachers? How do we, through our Latino Educator and Administrator Development program, our LEAD program, how were we forming the future? How are we thinking about the retention and the formation of Latino educators? And so I would say Audrey, yes, and if anyone wants to chat, please do.

 

0:20:04.1 KL: I would love to show you a map in the web here of what we do. And I think there's 13 programs when we shake it all out, but at the heart is the fact that we're able to respond to a need, we're entrepreneurial in that and that we're just trying to do the best that we can to serve our communities.

 

0:20:24.7 AS: And I know that you believe in the transformative power of these communities, but I know the Catholic School Advantage, I think that's sort of the overarching... I wanna help our listeners sort of get a framework. I don't wanna leave anything out.

 

0:20:37.1 KL: Audrey, I would start with this. We deeply believe in... And we thought of re-branding this and we keep coming back to, we'll stick with it for now. So the Catholic School Advantage campaign was founded a little more than 10 years ago, and so keep posted, 'cause hopefully, sometime within the next calendar year we're gonna be releasing a big report on what we've learned in the last 10 years. So this idea started off as the Catholic School Advantage. We believed deeply, and we still believe deeply, that Catholic schools are advantageous for Latino children. And so this... For all children, but based on the demographics that we're looking at these days, we're largely focused on Latino children at this point.

 

0:21:16.0 KL: And not only are Catholic schools advantageous for Latino families, we believe deeply that it is advantageous to all Catholic schools to welcome and serve these children. So, Audrey, as we started this work a decade ago, there was just a good amount of talk around the fact that there are 62.1 million Latinos in our country, and yet only 4% of these beautiful children are enrolled in our Catholic schools. 35% of all practicing Catholics are Latino. One out of every two children in the US are Latino. There's some really strong numbers for us to pull from. 10 years ago, the conversation was more around kind of the filling the plane model. Our schools are declining in enrollment. Here's a real opportunity to fill the plane and expand the opportunities for thousands, if not millions of children.

 

0:22:05.7 KL: I will say our work has shifted and I'm so proud to say this, after doing this work for a decade, we are more and more convinced of what you just said. Yes, there's the open seat idea, but it's that our community stand to be deeply transformed in incredible ways by the growth of the Latino population in our US church and schools. And so we're really, really aware and we're seeing it being manifested, the gifts that are Latino families are bringing to our schools by ways of their families, their communities.

 

0:22:33.5 KL: So that is CSA. None of you can see my hands, but I'm gonna lay out three lines here. So the first line is, we do a lot of work with school pastors, and we've had over a thousand pastors come through. We're really interested in the role of the pastor in making schools accessible to all children, so not just Latino children but to all children. My second line here that I'm showing Audrey very visually is our efforts to increase Latino enrollment in Catholic schools. Our LEI, Latino Enrollment Institute, we've had about 450 schools come through. We know we've been able to help schools enroll a little more than 7,000 Latino children in Catholic schools, which is beautiful. We also have a conference in the summer. We... Again, we pull this string a little bit, if you give the mouse a cookie. They also realized that lots of people in our schools and diocesan level employees are interested in more marketing efforts to increase Latino enrollments. There's a great conference in the summer called Adelante. The next initiative there is our LEAD, our Latino Educator and Administrator Development program, and this comes out of this idea of really forming Latino educators to take on larger leadership roles and the idea that representation matters deeply.

 

0:23:44.0 KL: My third line here is our English as a new language program. And so under this, we kind of have five little buckets that I'd like to think about. The first one is our Hernandez Fellows Program. My dream here is that at least one teacher in every Catholic school in our country is deeply trained as an expert in serving English learners. My real dream is that every teacher learns to serve English learners. English learners are the fastest growing population in US schools. So I always tell teachers, "If you're not serving English learners now, you will be."

 

0:24:13.1 KL: So right now it's one out of 10, one out of four children, depending on your geographic area there. But that's our licensure program, so we have... We deeply train teachers through 18 credit hours. I'm faculty in that so I teach those courses in getting your ESL ENL endorsement, which is so much professional development. We would love to come to your school or your diocese. We've reached almost 9,000 teachers through our professional development outreach. Below that is resources. We believe deeply in being the hub of resources for Catholic schools in the country, serving English learners or emergent bilinguals. So we have these wonderful series of these two-minute tip videos that we make. We've authored four books since our team has been formed in the last 10 years. Underneath that is our program in Chile. Audrey, just stop me 'cause it's getting to be too much.

 

0:25:03.3 KL: There's no shortage of work to be done. And so I'd say the last two pieces there is I oversee our program in Santiago, Chile. So there's a beautiful congregational school in Santiago. And so we send, on average, four or five, six teachers a year to teach in Santiago, Chile. The last piece has maybe been my most recent work, it's our formation of dual-language Catholic schools. So again, if you pull this thread of Latino enrollment, serving English learners, the gifts the community bring, I come back to this model. And I know that you've interviewed Luis Fraga, before Dr. Luis Fraga and I were able to found the school here in South Bend, Holy Cross School, the dual language model that's there.

 

0:25:44.1 KL: And so what that means, Audrey, is we're using the linguistic gifts that many of our Spanish-speaking children are bringing to school and continue this great legacy of Catholic education. And our children in that particular program spent 90% of their day in Spanish, 10% in English at first. So our Spanish-speaking children are really becoming literate in their first language, not just bilingual but biliterate, they can read and write. Research is crystal clear. This holds true for our programs in Haiti, all over the world. It rings true that when children are literate in their first language, it's much easier and faster, efficacious, all those things to become literate and their second language which often for our children is English.

 

0:26:25.4 KL: And so this program is really helping our Spanish-speaking children to become literate in Spanish and then they're gonna bridge to English. And Audrey, I love the program so much, and our family does. We know it works, but I know I believe in it because I put my oldest child in our very first class. So this sweet, beautiful parish that is making a comeback in a thousand ways is where our family has chosen to deeply sink our roots and deeply call home. That's what keeps me busy most days and I do it with the most incredible group of human beings possible, and together we can pull this off.

 

0:27:02.9 AS: Well, I do appreciate that framework, it sort of helps give folks a scope. There are so many things and I love that... Is that actually like a little children's story.

 

[overlapping conversation]

 

0:27:10.6 KL: If you give a mouse a cookie, yeah, absolutely. I'll drop a copy off on your desk, it's one of my kid's favorite. But it's beautiful Audrey, because if you give him a cookie, then he wants milk and he wants all these beautiful things. But it comes back to kind of the last line is, if you give him a glass of milk, the mouse will ask for a cookie. And so it's this idea that there's just something really circular about our Catholic schools being founded as these great pillars of community. And so if we continue to keep that as our focus, then how can our Catholic schools continue to adapt and empower and serve the families that are within their reach? 

 

0:27:47.3 AS: Yeah. What do you personally see as this mission for your own heart? 

 

0:27:52.2 KL: I think there's something so deeply dignifying about education done well, about truly honoring the home language and the home culture of our children. About making spaces where families feel like they can contribute, that they're a part of something larger. There's something, I'll use the word again, there's something so dignifying when our schools are pillars of our community and are helping to promote, and it's not just upward mobility, it's the formation of the next generation of leaders in our countries. I also think what kind of keeps me going in all of this is the importance of our teachers. And it's really meaningful to me that teachers have the confidence and the skill set and the knowledge to do their job really well on behalf of the children that IRQ needed the most.

 

0:28:40.8 KL: And so I don't know if that comes together in a mission statement other than I just think this work is deeply hopeful and it's dignifying and it really brings to light the many gifts that God has given all of us.

 

0:28:55.3 AS: Thank you, I appreciate that. One of the focuses of your work is embrace, educate empower, right? To acknowledge the differences and to embrace them and make that be something that's a benefit for the students, the teachers, the community, correct? 

 

0:29:11.1 KL: Absolutely. We'd also throw in there maybe the fourth E that I call sometimes, and that's just this Pope Francis idea of encounter, which simply put, I say this to my own kids all the time, I have something good to give to you, and you have something good to give to me, literally together, that's how we can achieve incredible things. But we have this model of to embrace, to educate and to empower. And in some ways, we did not mean this to be, at first, maybe some kind of trajectory through our programs, but I actually think Audrey, this is a way to conceptualize that really messy organizational chart that I tried to draw with my hands. We believe in embracing the changing demographics of the church, and if we do that well, it means that we are absolutely called to provide the best educational opportunities for our children and for their families. So to embrace, educate and to empower. And if we do all of this correctly, then our families are empowered to share their unique gifts and talents to renew our communities, to renew our schools, and to renew our church. And so those three ideas ground us.

 

0:30:11.4 AS: Thank you so much, that's great. So always recognizing, and you're so gracious about this, but recognizing that there were a number of people involved. You were instrumental in getting the Two-Way Immersion program at Holy Cross Grade School developed and underway. Can you help me understand those first few days or the ideas of how that came together and why that was so important for you? 

 

0:30:32.4 KL: Absolutely. I had no idea that this idea of kind of pulling the strings or this idea of "giving a mouse a cookie" would be a theme for us today Audrey, but it is what it is.

 

0:30:44.4 AS: Yeah.

 

0:30:44.9 KL: I just realized that, kind of getting further and further into this work, I realized that it is vital for English learners to have the right to be literate and the opportunity to be literate in their first language. I mean language and equity... Language and access to home language resources, I think is a right, and I think it's a fundamental right that we need to deeply consider. And so my work with Latino enrollment, English learners led me to believe that we have a large number of Spanish-speaking children who speak Spanish at home with their families, who maybe attend mass, who exist in their communities in their first language, but when they come to school, we ask them to speak English and that's a big bridge when they're not yet literate in Spanish.

 

0:31:28.8 KL: And so all of my research led me to believe that we need to give children the opportunity to read and write in their first language before we bridge them to English. Not new. I am in no way novel in thinking that by any means, but I will say providentially, there's almost 100-year-old Catholic school a mile and a half down the road from Notre Dame in which the demographics were changing. There was a real opportunity to empower our own community there to say, "How can we honor the gifts that you bring in terms of language and culture?" And so my work led me there, and then by off-chance, I had a meeting with Dr. Luis Fraga, who I know you've interviewed, walked across campus, had a great meeting and I said, "I know you're interested in this. I've kind of come here on my own in my own way, from a pedagogical standpoint." Luis looks at it from a different standpoint and we said together, we wanna explore this idea.

 

0:32:20.6 KL: And I kid you not, a week later, the lovely Dr. Mike Griffin, who was at Holy Cross College and a parent at Holy Cross Grade School, just happened to call me and I was stuck in an airport and a layover in Dallas, Texas and we had a great conversation where Mike said, "You know what, we're this little school, we have about 190 kids, we have a great history, a great community. Would you ever consider an immersion program? We're thinking about how to really meet the needs of our changing demographics." And I said, "I'll be there next week." And so we went and toward and immediately knew that this could work. And so then...

 

0:33:00.6 KL: It's great to have an idea, but it's one thing when you have to hit the pavement to find teachers to try to convince parents to put their children in this school that you're... In this program that you're starting. And so there are thousands of people who have... Literally, I would say thousands who have contributed to this idea in one way, shape or form, and I could not be more proud as a parent to have our family as a member of this community.

 

0:33:25.7 AS: And it's such a thriving community. You can feel the care and... I don't know, I feel like anything's possible there. So it's a wonderful environment. So thank you.

 

0:33:36.1 KL: Oh, my complete pleasure. And I would say on that front, I can't do any of this without Clare Roach who works with us here at Notre Dame, and then we have Clare at Holy Cross several days a week. We have to acknowledge that, an incredible principal. But I completely agree with you, Audrey, it is a hopeful place that in five years, we've grown enrollment to 360 kiddos from 190. And just the sky is the limit when we... And I believe this, and you'll hear me come back to this over and over again, when we see the gifts that our own community has to bring and that we're working hard to hear parents and to celebrate the rich... As Pope Francis says, walking in the richness of diversity I think truly makes us stronger.

 

0:34:17.9 AS: Thank you so much. I love that you pointed out that you have a business background, management and marketing. That to me is fabulous and such an asset. Are you finding that in running these programs? How was that an added benefit? 

 

0:34:32.5 KL: This is a great question, Audrey. First off, I think our Catholic schools, and literally, God bless every principal and superintendent, our Catholic schools are small businesses, and so our principals are charged with a lot of... They're running a business, and our pastors as well. And I think some of that knowledge just transfers over. Programmatically, yes, we do a lot of marketing, and who is our audience, and who are we trying to reach? But I see my role... Maybe this is less education-focused, but I take my role very seriously as a leader of human beings. But we have multiple people on our team and I take very seriously, just as we say in our schools, to see the gifts that each person brings and how we best utilize them. I believe tremendously in this idea of the collective brain, this idea of... One more time, Pope Francis, you have something good to give, I have something good to give, and together, we can do something incredible. So I do think in my particular role...

 

0:35:31.7 KL: And hat's actually one thing I love about my role is it's not your traditional faculty position. I teach a little bit, I run some budgets, I do some marketing, I do a lot of PD, I get to do all of these things, but ultimately, I think it comes down to trying to find the best in people and trying to harness that in a way that ultimately makes the world a better place for both our employees and the people who receive what we're trying to do.

 

0:35:57.2 AS: That's part of the management and the marketing, and then the education piece. All the elements are working together so well in your programs. And I know I've heard some of the folks who have been through the program that it really is transformational for them, that they come to your PD specifically, you guys do so much of that. Can you tell folks what PD, professional development... Can you talk a little bit about that and help us understand sort of that piece and what you guys offer and some of the response you're getting? 

 

0:36:25.8 KL: Absolutely. Professional development is embedded in so many of our programs. But I would say that myself and for Jenny and Clare and Sarah and Manny and Steve and Itzxul and Kenna, I think I covered most of my human beings here right now, we are teachers, we are teachers at heart and we take very seriously the call to not just educate the whole child which transcends to teachers, but to make the whole experience deeply meaningful, to make God known, loved and served. And so in terms of PD, first and foremost, we come at this as just really solid teachers. So every professional development has clear objectives, clear embedded strategies. Every single thing is interactive.

 

0:37:06.1 KL: We model literally what we're saying, right? So we would never just lecture for hours because we know that that's not how people learn. And so we love being able on our team to marry this idea of we know what good pedagogy is. A lot of pedagogy that works for second graders and eighth graders is actually still effective with my undergrads and my graduate students and adults. We all come at learning in this really deeply human way. So that's our philosophy is that everything is guided and scaffolded and we account for language and content and all the things that we believe.

 

0:37:38.0 KL: You asked a great question in terms of how we go about this. In terms of our English learners, we do a lot of virtual PD. Well our team calls in constantly to hundreds of schools every year across the country. We used to do a lot more on-site PD, and then COVID hit and then we kinda realized, "You know what, I think our schools are ready." We do so much of this. The other thing that we've been able to develop over the years is a series of six learning modules, so we have these six different topics for English learners that teachers can enroll and they walk through these six two-hour modules independently, but we've also paired them. We encourage entire staff to do them together, we've paired them with Zoom calls where we call into a faculty meeting and we talk about what was learned and what it looks like in the classroom.

 

0:38:25.0 KL: And I'd say combined with all of those pieces... This is what I was saying earlier, it's close to 9000 teachers in the five years that we've been doing this, and you know what the feedback has been, and you asked about this, is that we're relatable, that we're warm. That we're real. We always say that everyone hates perfect, I believe that in my soul. We do a great job, but we're real. And maybe this is coming back to this word of dignifying, we honor how hard it is to be a teacher, we kept that in our bones, and it's important to always start there and say, "You're important, you're doing incredible work, we wanna validate that and we wanna push you with what we know to be best practices for serving culturally and linguistically diverse children."

 

0:39:15.1 AS: Great. You've hit on so many great points, but that underlying welcoming thought, acknowledging this is hard work and that they're not alone, that you guys understand and walk with them, and that they walk with each other. I hear oftentimes for people in these programs that I have a group of people I could call at a moment's notice. I'm not alone in this, and I think that that can be just so comforting and that they can lean on others and learn and grow with others, I think that those are enormous pieces.

 

0:39:41.5 KL: I think those are enormous pieces, and one thing that I maybe failed to mention that... That's at the heart of what we do too, is that we're not the experts, we learned so much from these teachers and these principals. Every time we do PD, which is multiple times a week... I just said it the other day, delivered PD, and I left and I ran right down the hall to tell something to Jenny, that, "This is what I just learn from this teacher, this is such a great idea." It's an enormously important vocation. And we need each other to get there.

 

0:40:10.9 AS: I agree, but I will disagree on one thing, I think you are an expert, I think your team is an expert team, you have all kinds of resources for folks, so yes, you are continually growing experts. I'd like to say that.

 

0:40:21.0 KL: Oh, I love that image. That's right, that's right. We're absolutely, because we always say as the teacher, you're the expert, and you should be. Almost 20-something children that are in your classroom, you know them better. You know what they need. You know what you need, and how can we help you? 

 

0:40:36.4 AS: Do you have a success story that you might be able to share that can kinda illustrate some of this? 

 

0:40:43.2 KL: Absolutely, and I love that you are asking and that's hard 'cause there's successes on a daily basis in terms of just small movements with teachers can be so powerful, and so those are there. But I will say... I'll just pick an example from last summer. One of our participants attended one of our sessions and initially frustrated. Right? They don't need one more thing to do. This is hard. These children don't speak English, this is a lot of work for me. My job would be easier if these parents spoke English at home. These are things we hear in many, many teachers lounges.

 

0:41:18.2 KL: And she's not wrong with some of those statements, right? Her job might have be easier, if parents speak English at home, but none of us get into this profession because it's easy. So after a series of PDs, and she picked up on so much of this language on her own. Just the shift in disposition to say, "I understand my English learners, my emergent bilinguals, I see them." Did you know that learning a second language is a superpower? Did you know that being multilingual is a superpower, did you know how hard these children are working and how incredible their brains are?

 

0:41:50.6 KL: Just even the shift in just disposition. Now, we're assuming that that shift in disposition means a huge shift in practice, and that's what I'm hoping. And in this case, I can tell you too, Audrey, there has been a tremendous shift in practice. But we often start with that disposition of understanding how incredible these kids are and how hard they're working. And to have a teacher who now walks into her classroom who looks at her beautiful children, her Jesus example and says, "I see you, I'm here for you. I'm your advocate." That's success in my book.

 

0:42:24.7 AS: Absolute success. Now, did this lead to your super power...

 

0:42:27.9 KL: Poster? 

 

0:42:30.6 AS: It's such a great campaign.

 

0:42:30.8 KL: Such a great campaign. And you know, Audrey, I think too, this has been a shift in the field from this idea of many, many years ago, we talked about English language learners and we talked about limited English proficient. And there has been a shift and I love it and I couldn't... I could not love it more, the shift honoring multilingualism, the shift to really putting the child first and not their language first, and so it has led us to... And I can't show this, but maybe Audrey will link it in here somewhere, but we have these beautiful posters that come from the principal of Holy Cross. It's her beautiful daughter, Sophia, who is in fact bilingual. It's incredible posters, where Sophia is wearing a cape and a mask, and she has her hand held high, and it says, "Being multilingual is my super power. I need teachers to help me soar." And so just the fact that there has been this incredible shift to this language, it makes me so happy, and I will say Audrey, small teaser here on a project we're working on that doesn't exist yet in the field, and we're really excited to unveil it. So I hope no one steals this first, but here we go. There's not a lot of language given to children. We talk a lot about teachers understanding the process of language acquisition.

 

0:43:40.1 KL: But we have yet to give children the meta-cognitive skills and language to say, I have a super power, I'm multi-lingual, I'm a language learner. Did you know that there are five stages of language acquisition. I'm at a level 2 and I'm bridging to a level 3. Did you know that writing is really hard in terms of the four domains of language? Did you know what my brain is doing, right? There's this kind of gap in helping children to understand their own process and to articulate it and to advocate for their needs.

 

0:44:09.2 KL: So we're working on this kind of a toolkit idea, whether it's posters or slides or something that can get into the hands of children to help them be able to say to their teacher, "You know what, I think I have the social language to explain this to you, I'm struggling with the academic language." Or, "I recall this academic vocabulary word, but I need help with the spelling, I'm struggling with some of these phonics patterns." Right? We've spent a lot of our time in the field focusing on teachers, but we've not shared this knowledge with children too, here's our keyword to empower them to advocate for their own needs. And so hang on tight 'cause we're working on that.

 

0:44:44.4 AS: We get a sneak peak. I love it. I think that's a great idea. We shall stay tuned. A lot of your work feels to be external-facing to bring all Catholic schools into the mission.

 

0:44:55.8 KL: We really are starting to see some nuance in this. And we also know too, our work is not just about Spanish-speaking children. While 75% of English learners speak Spanish, in the US, we know that there are lots of other languages. So a lot of our resources, including one that we just recorded yesterday for our 15 on the 15th, we get the pleasure of speaking about children who speak Mandarin at home, which includes my own husband and our children to some extent. There's lots of nuance, so it's a wide net. But Audrey, there's no end to the nuances of children and families and classrooms and communities, and so I never want that to be lost that... I always say one English learner is not another English learner is not another English learner. Each one of us in our home language and the language we use with family and the ways in which we interact with our communities is varied as the number of children that there are.

 

0:45:50.8 AS: You really are such a lovely person with a devoted heart to your family, to your faith, to this work. You put so much effort forward for so many folks. Why does your heart lead you to do that? 

 

0:46:05.1 KL: I think in my... There's many layers to this, right? But in my heart of hearts, I believe deeply that I have been so very blessed in this world and that God calls us to love deeply and without reservation. We have a little bit of a tendency these days to wanna hold back and say, no, out of my own preservation and balance. And trust me, that is a whole different conversation and not where I'm going with this today. But I tend to say, instead of why me, why not me like. Well, "Let's just give this a try. Let's... " Yes, my instinct is, yes to most things, except for my children, and they would tell you that that is not how I respond to most things.

 

0:46:44.2 KL: But I think in my heart of hearts, I believe that we are called to make the world a better place, to use our gifts and our talents for the betterment of others, and so I believe that we are called to do small things with great love. I believe in the idea that if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. I believe in and having great care for our children, having great care for our schools, my job, the people that I work with, I just believe that people and work deserve my utmost integrity and time. And I hope that I am doing justice to the gifts and talents that I've been given.

 

0:47:22.7 AS: You are, so thank you. I always kind of ask. I know you would never say that your work is without challenges, but are you hopeful? 

 

0:47:31.7 KL: Absolutely, and not without challenges by any means, and challenges that are worth fighting for on behalf of children. I believe that we are profits of the future, not our own, right? That the future belongs to our children. And so inherent in all of this, the future is bright because it rests in the hands of incredible children, and that is our job to raise our next generation of parents, theologians, teachers. This work is deeply hopeful because we are able to really get in the ear of teachers and principals who are change makers in the lives of children.

 

0:48:09.9 AS: I don't think I could have scripted a better closing sentence, so thank you.

 

0:48:16.1 KL: Thank you.

 

0:48:16.8 AS: Oh, my gosh, Katy, this has been such a pleasure.

 

0:48:17.4 KL: It was really fun. It is always a pleasure to talk to you. It was perfect.

 

0:48:20.0 AS: Thank you so much, Katy.

 

0:48:23.0 KL: Happy Easter.

 

0:48:23.4 AS: Happy Easter to you too.

 

0:48:24.4 KL: Thanks.

 

0:48:25.8 AS: And thank you all for joining us for Think. Pair. Share. If you enjoyed this episode, head on over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe, rate and leave a review. It's very much appreciated. Check out our website at iei.nd.edu/media for this and other goodies. Thanks for listening and for now, off we go.

 

[music]