Over the past few months, the IRC has asked members of our community to nominate Illinois teachers working with multicultural, multilingual students who are going above and beyond, and now, we’re celebrating them and highlighting their work. Keep an eye out for these features in the coming months – and if you’d like to nominate someone, email leanet@cntrmail.org. Next up is Sara Giannopoulos, an EL and content support teacher at J.S. Morton High School.

Says Melody Becker, who nominated her: “As Lead Teacher, Sara has been an instructional leader within our EL department for the last five years. She has strong knowledge of our program and is an excellent support for our new teachers. She has a special talent for creating interesting curriculum that is appropriate for language development at the high school level.”

For Sara Giannopoulos, student advocacy and support for English Learners is an all-day, all-team undertaking. She advocated for a position at Morton that would benefit her students and content area collaboration teachers, where she would serve as an EL teacher and content support teacher, following the students from her EL class to biology and history to support their learning. As a result of that additional support, the team saw a reduction in behavior issues and increased academic performance. “We saw so many strengths come out of students and teachers in collaboration,” she says.

For educators who are not EL-endorsed but may have a large EL population, Giannopoulos encourages them to think about what their average class might do and how ELs may need to hear the same instruction more times, or explore document formatting that better serves ELs. She also encourages teachers to translate word walls or find someone in the district who can assist in doing so to support student discourse.

“I like to tell my teachers to know one phrase in Spanish, such as ‘como se dice en español,’ just that quick usage of their home language really grabs their attention,” she says. “Using their home language and showing them it’s an asset is really empowering.”

Giannopoulos has worked with her team to elevate and innovate the curriculum throughout the years, and is particularly excited about some changes for this year. The Illinois ELA standards include students reading memoir in 9th grade, and so students will be reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, a memoir of Kamkwamba’s work building a windmill for his community.

Giannopoulos wanted her students to see a protagonist who overcomes struggle and does so with hands-on experimentation, so as Kamkwamba learns to play chess and mancala and build a soccer ball from plastic bags, the students are doing those activities alongside him and journaling to reflect. Students will also have a chance to showcase their discourse skills and explore something they are passionate about with an all-class skillshare.

Because the EL department at her school is small but has many students, she says it can sometimes feel like a family and a tight-knit community. “I get to teach siblings, cousins, uncles, sometimes even parents,” she says. “It’s not just about a teacher or a student, but we’re all in this together and work will get done, and it won’t feel as heavy or as lonesome.”

Giannopoulos advises her incoming new teachers to not be afraid to collaborate or communicate with their peers. “I know sometimes it can be scary to advocate for yourself and your students, but it’s important to share that with other teachers,” she says. “We all have the same goals to help our students and parents and be their voice.”