Nancy and Kara are excited to announce that they have just published a book together. They began the project 10 years ago when they were still closely connected with our school.
Viesca, K.M. & Commins, N.L. (2025) Humanizing pedagogies with multilingual learners: Transforming teaching in the content areas. Routledge.
Here are a few more details:
Humanizing Pedagogies with Multilingual Learners” is a love letter to teachers, students, families, and communities. All students should be able to be and become the best most desired versions of themselves in our classrooms. The authors advocate for teaching and learning that is relational, organic, real, and meaningful.
They created a road map for pre- and in-service teachers to develop what Betina Love calls their “north star” to guide their work. And, they provide tools to help educators on their personal learning journeys so they can develop their own “north stars” in authentic ways.
They focus on the knowledge and skills that all teachers need in three key areas: context, orientations, and pedagogy, as well as an approach to problem solving. In addition, they encourage teachers to grow through complexity thinking and critical reflection at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and systemic levels.
The book is organized in a three-part cycle where readers can Explore information, Make It Work in their own settings, and Share their learnings with others.
More about the authors:
Kara Mitchell Viesca, professor of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, focuses her scholarship on advancing equity in the policy and practice of educator development, particularly for teachers of multilingual learners.
Nancy L. Commins, clinical professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Denver, has focused her decades of teaching, scholarship, and service to connecting theory to practice and creating educational environments that build on and expand the cognitive, linguistic, and cultural assets that all children – especially multilingual learners – bring with them.