STEM PATHWAYS FOR MULTILINGUAL STUDENTS AND ENGLISH LEARNERS THROUGH STEM-LANGUAGE ARTS TEACHING/LEARNING ECOSYSTEMS (SLATE)

College- and career-ready standards for Earth and environmental sciences, like most STEM fields, present both opportunities and challenges for multilingual students and English learners (ELs), necessitating that educators at multiple levels and across content areas develop new strategies to engage learners. The teaching and learning approach schools take must also adapt to factors influencing the future of K–12 STEM education, including the changing demographics of the U.S. student population and a fast-growing population of multilingual learners and ELs. It is essential to support teachers in developing skills to adapt disciplinary practices associated with STEM subjects (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards, particularly science practices and inquiry, developing models, arguing from evidence, constructing explanations), to ensure their approaches are equitable to language learners. Here we describe results from early implementation of our university-school district partnership where we have built a multi-tiered STEM and language arts teaching and learning ecosystem that (1) develops and supports new near-peer mentoring opportunities focused on STEM engagement and near-peer tutoring and honing reading and math skills for STEM engagement, and (2) professional development for teacher teams to deepen teacher knowledge and foster teacher-team-led curricula development in science communication/writing. Ultimately, through these multiple interventions, SLATE aims to improve STEM interests and language/writing skills of high-needs and multilingual middle schoolers, thereby maintaining interest in STEM and opening pathways into the earth and environmental sciences for multilingual learners.