Welcome to Volume 42, Issue 1 of MinneTESOL Journal! While each article in this volume addresses diverse contexts, collectively this issue concerns access: access to academic texts, school systems, digital learning, and the professional knowledge teachers need to support learners within these contexts. Please enjoy and share with your colleagues.
In “Language learning as educational partnership: A blended model for engaging multilingual immigrant Haitian families,” Amy Gooden and Louise Michelle Vital describe the English for Education and Empowerment Certificate Program, a university-school district partnership that supports Haitian immigrant parents’ English development and engagement in family-school partnerships.
In “Teaching English through TiNi: Integrating environmental education with language learning,” Douglas Anderson and Ana María Ángel Acuña describe the integration of TiNi – a UNESCO-recognized environmental education methodology – into English-language instruction over three years with 500 elementary students in a Latin American context. TiNi (Tierra de niñas, niños, y jóvenes para el buen vivir [Land of girls, boys, and youth for living well]) grants children small plots of land to nurture life and biodiversity while developing knowledge, skills, and values. The approach offers English as a second language (ESL) educators a model for meaningful, context-rich language learning that supports whole-child development while addressing multiple United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Yacoub Aljaffery writes his narrative inquiry to explore how newcomer students navigated the hidden curriculum of U.S. high schools in “Beyond content: Teaching the hidden curriculum for newcomer students.” Participants’ stories show that unspoken classroom norms and school-system rules can become gatekeepers when they are assumed rather than taught. The article argues that teaching these expectations explicitly is an equity practice that helps newcomers thrive.
Meghan Love, Priscila J.B.M. Costa, and Luciana C. de Oliviera explore prompt engineering as a planning practice for using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to create mentor texts for second language (L2) writing instruction in “Designing GenAI prompts with purpose for mentor text creation.” Using the Prompt Creation Reference Chart for Mentor Texts as a foundation, the article introduces a Google Sheets-based tool that helps teachers design intentional prompts aligned to genre, language features, and instructional purpose.
In “Expert Pathways in multilingual classrooms,” Laura Clark Briggs presents Expert Pathways, a framework that helps learners interpret complex texts by drawing on their knowledge and interests. The approach supports academic discussion and writing while maintaining rigorous inquiry.
Finally, Catherine Clements makes the case for embedding educational technology training and online teaching preparation across the teacher education curriculum in her article, “Our bots, ourselves: An argument for the importance of online teacher training in ESL.”
Please enjoy these articles, share them with your colleagues, and stay connected to our MinneTESOL Journal community by following the journal on Facebook.
