09/08/2025

Chloe de los Reyes

Associate Professor and Multilingual Faculty Lead, English Department, CHC

The Multilingual Program at CHC received external funding to develop Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC)/Open Educational Resource (OER) materials specifically for the program. This funding will not only help ease the financial burdens of our students, it will also offer an opportunity to create cohesive curricula across the sequence and much needed professional development. (See detailed description of grant funding below.)

To carry out this vision, we have formed a learning community composed of faculty across the curriculum, counselors, and staff. This group will be tasked with developing curricula–from scratch–that are rigorous, culturally responsive, and attuned to the linguistic and academic needs of our students. Framing this work as a learning community ensures that those working with multilingual students are not just creating content but also engaging in ongoing reflection and professional development. The learning community, by extension, also helps build capacity by expanding expertise and cultivating shared pedagogy. Working across campus can also further increase stakeholder buy-in. We have also partnered with Dr. Lyn Westergard and Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) to ensure that our curricula are theoretical and pedagogically sound.

The Faculty Learning Community cohort includes: 

    ● Emilia Farago-Spencer, English
    ● Andrew Guevara, English
    ● Herberth Jaco, Outreach and Educational Partnerships
    ● Jasmine Ojeda, Computer Information Systems
    ● Jillian Robertson, Math
    ● Xochilt Trujillo-Flores, English
    ● Isidro Zepeda, English

For self-identifying multilingual educators like myself, the stakes of developing a multilingual program are enormous. They are magnified by a desire to create the kind of program that students like us didn’t have but deeply deserve: programs that support multilingual literacies, promote language diversity, honor linguistic identities, and equally importantly–center care. My first-hand experiences and identity shape every decision I make, and this labor of care is not merely a professional task; it is a deeply personal (and political!) investment in the communities I come from and serve.  Yes, I’m happy to help the district support our multilingual learners.

I would like to thank Drs. Jeff Smith, Sara Butler, and Keith Wurtz. Dr.Jeff Smith has been instrumental in both acquiring and stewarding the grant as well as ensuring that the learning community is running smoothly; Dr. Sara Butler has been a wonderful thought partner and strong support of our students, instructors, and the Multilingual Program as whole; Dr. Keith Wurtz has been essential in keeping the program running. I’m grateful to Alyssa Taylor for her help in navigating the district processes. I also would like to thank Alex Jaco, Dr. Westergard, themembers of the Multilingual Task Force, and the faculty learning community–all of whom ensure that we keep our students at the heart of our decisions. Lastly, I really appreciate the English Department for their ongoing support of this work.