TESOL at UNI

06/28/2026

Congratulations to Dr. Stephanie Laird on her appointment as the new Multilingual Program Director for Southeast Polk Schools in Altoona, Iowa!

Dr. Laird has been involved in several Project UNITED initiatives (www.uni.edu/projectunited), and we're excited to see her continue making an impact on multilingual education in Iowa.

We wish her all the best in this new leadership role!

🎉Congratulations to Dr. Stephanie Laird, our next multilingual program director!

Currently a learning supports coordinator at the Southeast Polk School District, Dr. Laird will move into her new role July 1. She brings 17 years of experience to WDMCS and is known for her deep understanding of both student and adult learning.

Read more at the link below ⬇️

06/05/2026

TESOL colleagues: The University of Northern Iowa is seeking adjunct faculty for Fall 2026. Applicants must reside in Iowa, but one or both courses may be taught remotely. Opportunities are available at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and ABD applicants will be considered for the graduate-level course. Full consideration will be given to applications received by June 17, 2026. Please share with anyone who may be interested. Details in the link below.

If you are a current University of Northern Iowa employee and would like to apply for this position, login to UNI Works and type “Find Jobs” in the search bar to view and apply for open positions. Full Consideration Date: 6/17/2026 Job Description: The University of Northern Iowa's Department of...

04/22/2026

Attention Iowa In-Service Teachers!

Advance Your Career with the Project UNITED ELL Endorsement Graduate Scholarship!

✅ Full tuition covered for the 18-credit hour graduate ELL Endorsement (Fall 2026 start).
✅ Fully online—flexible for busy educators!
✅ Credits can count toward the MA in TESOL—take your education even further!
✅ 10+ scholarships available for educators from various fields (e.g., math, social studies, elementary education)

Earn your ELL Endorsement and help support multilingual learners in Iowa’s K-12 schools!

📝Application Details:
Deadline: May 31, 2026
Apply at https://uni.edu/projectunited

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04/08/2026

Session Spotlight: Alchemy of Communal M(o)thering: Leveraging Familial Capital for Multilingual Learners, presented by Ashley Coughlin

Join us for this session at the fully online 2026 Iowa Symposium on English Language Teaching (ISELT) happening Friday, April 10! Learn more and register at uni.edu/iselt

Session Overview: Communal m(o)thering is widely underestimated and undervalued in the dominant culture within the U.S. This is particularly true in educational settings where parent engagement is expected and encouraged, however often caregivers are grouped or inappropriately labeled ‘disengaged’ based on misaligned perceptions of involvement. This session seeks to call attention to the power held and transmitted by culturally and linguistically diverse m(o)thers to their daughters in a school-adjacent STEM program. Participants should expect to challenge perspectives about parent engagement and explore strategies for opening space for caregivers beyond traditional parent engagement activities. Participants will be encouraged to discuss and apply ideas to their own contexts for teaching and learning with diverse communities.

04/08/2026

Session Spotlight: “I Exist in Both Communities”: A Q***rCrit Portrait of Becoming a Q***r Bilingual Latino Teacher, presented by Patrick Lopez

Join us for this session at the fully online 2026 Iowa Symposium on English Language Teaching (ISELT) happening Friday, April 10! Learn more and register at uni.edu/iselt

Session Overview: This session explores how language, identity, family, and lived experience shape curriculum for multilingual learners through the framework of mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Grounded in self-portraiture and Critical Race Theory (i.e., intersectionality and counterstorying), the presentation centers a pre-service teacher’s experiences as a first-generation, Latine, q***r, low-income undergraduate navigating white cisheteronormative expectations within teacher education at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. The session highlights how language is not only central to participation and learning, but also deeply connected to identity, belonging, and self-understanding. Attendees will engage with a practical example of how teachers can co-construct self-portraits with multilingual learners who hold layered identities, and how those portraits can help educators better understand students’ family contexts, interests, funds of knowledge, and community cultural wealth. The presentation offers concrete ways to design a curriculum that is more humanizing, reflective, and responsive to multilingual learners’ lives.

04/07/2026

Session Spotlight: Pronunciation Strategies for Demanding Contexts, presented by Marisol Hernandez

Join us for this session at the fully online 2026 Iowa Symposium on English Language Teaching (ISELT) happening Friday, April 10! Learn more and register at uni.edu/iselt

Session Overview: In high-stakes contexts-such as healthcare, interpreting, or education-pronunciation can be the difference between clarity and misunderstanding. Messages must be conveyed clearly and accurately as “the cost of failure is very real” (Levis, 2018, p. 54). While this does not imply that speakers should lose their accents, their role in negotiating meaning requires a high level of accuracy. This session explores how the intelligibility and nativeness principles can coexist in the pronunciation classroom. Participants will discover strategies to help multilingual learners achieve confident communication while mastering the suprasegmental features essential for precision in professional environments.

04/01/2026

Session Spotlight: Drawing Multilingual Identities: A Translanguaging-Informed Activity for Exploring Language, Culture, and Belonging in TESL Classrooms, presented by Dr. Cory Buckband.

Join us for this session at the fully online 2026 Iowa Symposium on English Language Teaching (ISELT) happening Friday, April 10! Learn more and register at uni.edu/iselt

Session Overview: This interactive session introduces an identity-centered drawing activity designed to help multilingual learners express how language, culture, and lived experience shape who they are. Grounded in translanguaging and culturally sustaining pedagogy, the session draws on work with sixteen students in a U.S. trilingual immersion setting, highlighting how visual artifacts reveal rich insights into students’ linguistic repertoires, identities, and sense of belonging. Participants will briefly engage in the activity themselves, reflect on sample student work, and explore practical strategies for adapting the activity across TESL contexts. Please come prepared with a blank sheet of paper and drawing or coloring utensils, as this will be used during a short reflective activity. Attendees will leave with a ready-to-use, flexible tool for supporting multilingual learners’ identities and engagement.

03/27/2026

Session Spotlight: Why Personality Matters: Language Learning Strategies that Support Multilingual Learners, presented by Dr. Shelby Miller.

Join us for this session at the fully online 2026 Iowa Symposium on English Language Teaching (ISELT) happening Friday, April 10! Learn more and register at uni.edu/iselt

Session Overview: Multilingual learners approach language learning in diverse ways, and one often-overlooked factor shaping engagement is personality. This session explores how introverted and extraverted learners naturally gravitate toward different strategies based on their internal drives, preferred learning environments, and ways of processing information. Drawing on Oxford’s language learning strategy framework, participants will examine six major strategy types (cognitive, metacognitive, social, affective, memory-related, and compensatory) and how learners with different personality traits typically use them. The session offers practical guidance for designing instruction that supports both reflective and interactive learners, emphasizing flexible classroom environments that provide multiple entry points for participation, strategy application, and language practice. Attendees will leave with actionable ideas to foster more inclusive, personality-aware language teaching.