Policy and Practice

Chante’s work as an educator has revealed that instructional gaps affecting Emergent Bilinguals are not simply classroom issues—they are policy issues. Decisions made at the state and district levels directly shape curriculum access, linguistic equity, funding, teacher preparation, and assessment expectations. Her goal is to help bridge the divide between policy and practice by elevating the realities of multilingual learners and the teachers who serve them by developing expertise in the following areas:

  • Language acquisition
  • Digital and multimodal instruction
  • Culturally sustaining pedagogy
  • Data-driven intervention systems
  • Policy analysis and legislative processes

By combining classroom experience, research, and innovative instructional design, she intends to contribute to conversations that influence educational policy and help reimagine how we support Emergent Bilinguals across Texas and beyond.

Policy Interests

Chante’s work as a teacher and researcher is directly shaped by the instructional realities faced by Emergent Bilingual students. These are the areas where she believes policy can create meaningful improvement:

1. Curriculum Reform for Emergent Bilinguals
A shift from the current curriculum to one that is intentional about developing academic language (CALP) through structured progressions and responsive teaching is necessary.

2. Expanding Access to Digital Literacy & Multimodal Composition
Students deserve authentic, creative, and culturally responsive means of demonstrating learning—including the digital modalities they use every day.

3. Investing in Teacher Support & Professional Learning
Teachers need sustained, practical training in language development—not one-off workshops or generic PD.

4. Ensuring Equitable Assessment Practices
Accountability systems should reflect student growth, language proficiency development, and access—not penalize students still acquiring English.

Emerging Instructional Model

Currently, Chante’ is testing an instructional framework through action research. The framework focuses on the movement of Emergent Bilinguals from social language to academic language. It is rooted in digital multimodal composition, recursive practice, and structured linguistic scaffolds.

Over the course of several instructional cycles, students engage in:

  • Low-stakes practice that builds confidence
  • Guided tasks that reinforce comprehension
  • Structured opportunities for verbal and written language production
  • Purposeful routines that strengthen academic vocabulary and reasoning

This research-based framework is intentionally sequenced to address the unique challenges faced by Emergent Bilinguals—especially those with interrupted schooling or limited foundational literacy skills. Early results show increases in student engagement, assignment completion, and academic persistence. Ongoing action research is necessary to refine the model before implementation.

The Significance of BICS and CALP

To advocate for Emergent Bilinguals, it is essential to distinguish between two types of language proficiency:

BICS – Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills
This is conversational language—the everyday language students use in social situations. Most multilingual learners acquire BICS within 1–2 years. Because it develops quickly, it often creates the impression that students are “fluent,” even when they lack the deeper language needed for academic success.

CALP – Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency
CALP refers to the complex language skills required for school tasks: analyzing, comparing, explaining, justifying, and synthesizing information. It typically takes 5–7 years to develop if students receive strong linguistic support, and much longer without targeted instruction.

Why This Matters

Many curriculum decisions assume students are ready for higher-order reasoning before they have acquired the academic language needed to demonstrate it. This mismatch contributes to chronic underperformance, learned helplessness, and disengagement.

Chante’s work and research focus on building direct pathways from BICS to CALP through intentional scaffolding, multimodal learning, and structured practice cycles. This approach ensures that students not only participate in class but also grow in academic language proficiency throughout the year.

Public Work

Chante’ is committed to fostering partnerships with stakeholders who share her passion for equity in education. Her ultimate goal is to ensure that underrepresented voices are not only heard but also celebrated in every digital space. Below is a list of her growing collection of work on Judah’s Blueprint:

Blogs

Visit the Judah’s Blueprint YouTube channel to access video tutorials that explain how to use multimodal tools for student learning.