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 Jenni Rodeghero, a Special Education teacher at Mechanics Grove Elementary School in Mundelein. 

Says Tanya Fergus, who nominated her: Jenni is a teacher who ALWAYS puts students first. She is constantly staying on top of best practices. Jenni has a deep acceptance and values children’s needs and diversity. Jenni is a true leader and team player with all colleagues and administration.

As a teacher, Jenni Rodeghero’s approach to education is that of a learner, seeking to soak up new information from the experts and always use new information to inform her teaching practices. “If it’s good for our language learners, it’s good for all our learners, because all learners are language learners,” she says.

She also seeks to learn from her students and acknowledge that she is not always the expert in the room – sometimes, her students are, especially when it comes to their own cultures and experiences. She says she tries to honor her students as whole people, and make time to celebrate as many cultures as possible and apply those celebrations to learning content to expand student worldviews. “I’m always trying to be better in this area because it’s so important,” she says.

In collaboration with her fellow team members, too, she is a learner.

“I’m really fortunate to work with amazing colleagues who are supportive and simultaneously challenge my thinking,” she says. “Whether it is working to align programming between the monolingual and dual language programs, problem solving, or answering my own questions as I’ve personally been trying to learn another language, they live the belief that ‘all our kids are all our kids.’ I’m a better educator because of all of them.”

In that learning and collaboration, Jenni and her team have become passionate advocates for the needs of their students. She says one of the greatest highlights has been witnessing her students grow in confidence.

“I think if I had to pick [an accomplishment], it has been witnessing the growth in the pride of our students in being bilingual, as we’ve continued to develop and improve our dual language programming over the years,” she says.

 

Her advice to her fellow educators? The words she herself lives by – “always be willing to be a learner.”