Multilingual learners, often from immigrant or refugee backgrounds, face additional challenges in their education as they build English language proficiency. Dan Kimbrow, a multilingual learner specialist at Clackamas Education Service District, supports educators and other school district teams in building skills, strategies and resources needed to bridge gaps in multilingual learner achievement. The goal: ensure equitable access to core content regardless of a student’s linguistic background.
Over the past year, Dan has helped train more than 100 teachers in sheltered instruction, a strategic process for helping multilingual learners understand academic content while they’re still learning English by removing unnecessary linguistic barriers – and the need for Dan’s support is growing.
“We’re seeing more newcomers from around the world and growth in our linguistically diverse populations in Clackamas County and around the state,” explains Dan.
In addition to supporting our partner districts in Clackamas County, Dan is helping rural districts with limited budgets across the state provide better support for their multilingual learners.
“Districts with small numbers of English learners find it difficult to provide a full range of services. Thanks to funding from Oregon House Bill 3499, we can provide services including interpretation and translation services, resulting in better communication between the school and the families for whom English is an additional language,” Dan says.
With over 20 years of experience in education, ranging from serving as an English language development specialist in the North Clackamas School District to a school administrator in Oregon and Paraguay, Dan brings a wealth of knowledge about how to help students from diverse linguistic backgrounds thrive in their education. Coming full circle, Dan cites training he received from Clackamas ESD early in his career on instructional best practices for multilingual learners as a defining moment.
“Those trainings formed the basis of who I became as a teacher, instructional coach, and school administrator,” Dan shares.
