Alesha Moreno-Ramirez, director of the Multilingual Support Division at the California Department of Education, speaks to Language Magazine
How have your experiences prepared you for this role?
I’ll begin by sharing this: Many years before I was born, there was a teacher in Texas who stole my inheritance. Through outdated ways of thinking, this educator taught my grandmother that hers was not the language of school. The impact resonated and resulted in the stripping of both language and culture across generations, which I experienced as a sense of loss and longing. I am privileged and impassioned by the opportunity to support more positive experiences for today’s generation of multilingual learners from within the California Department of Education’s Multilingual Support Division, guided by our state’s English Learner Roadmap policy.