by Victoria (Tori) Pierson 

April is National Bilingual/Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month!

Over the course of my career, I’ve embraced a shift in how we describe our students: from “English learners” to “multilingual learners.” It may seem small, but language matters. This shift sends a powerful message: Students learning English bring valuable assets to our classrooms.

When I began teaching ESL in Richmond, I worked in a large middle school with a growing multilingual learner population. I taught a full class of students at WIDA level 1, many of whom had been in the country for less than two years. At the time, all of my students were Spanish speakers, so I began experimenting with bilingual strategies during ELD instruction.

My favorite strategy was helping students make explicit connections between English and Spanish. It started with something small. One day, I noticed that my students wrote the date differently at the top of their assignments. I wrote two versions on the board: the U.S. format (MM/DD/YYYY) and the format used in most Spanish-speaking countries (DD/MM/YYYY). Then, I asked them to compare.

The students noticed differences in capitalization and punctuation, and similarities in the sounds and spelling of the months like September and septiembre. From there, I started intentionally building in these quick comparisons:

• Words in English that end in -tion are nouns, just like words in Spanish that end in -ción
• In English, adjectives usually come before the noun; in Spanish, they come after
• Those tricky vowel sounds! We started referencing “English e” vs. la e de español


These were simple, quick comparisons - mini-lessons I now call “pivots.” They took just a few minutes, but they noticeably increased engagement, and my students’ reading and writing began to improve.

Reflecting on those lessons, I realized something important: my students were capable of far more than many people assumed. They were learning grade-level content while acquiring English and, at the same time, developing a deeper understanding of how language works. They were making connections across languages and thinking in complex, flexible ways.

Too often, when schools see students learning English, the response is remediation. We pull them from grade-level instruction, simplify the curriculum, and focus on “catching them up.” While well-intentioned, this approach can limit access to rigorous content and overlook the strengths students already bring.

My students showed me something different. They didn’t need less rigor - they needed more opportunity. When we compared English and Spanish, they weren’t struggling to keep up. They were engaging deeply with language and building new understanding.

That realization shifted my thinking. Supporting multilingual learners isn’t about lowering expectations or remediating what they lack. It’s about expanding access - to rigorous content, to their home language, and to opportunities to develop bilingualism. Equity means raising the bar while providing the tools to reach it. Bilingual education does exactly that.

At the time, our division was serving more than 3,000 multilingual learners (97% of whom were Spanish speakers), but we had no formal bilingual programs. I kept asking: Why not?

Eventually, a leader was ready to listen (or maybe just ready for me to stop asking!). When a state grant opportunity came up, I wrote a proposal to give our division a year to research and design a dual language program. That year was filled with reading, listening, connecting, and reimagining what was possible. Then we built the plan. The rest is history, and a lot of hard work.

Fast forward to 2026, and Richmond now has two schools that host two-way 50:50 dual language programs. So far, about 200 children in our city have benefited from structured bilingual education. 

Across Virginia, dual language programs have been growing slowly and steadily for decades. This year, Virginia recognized its 100th dual language program, meaning that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Virginia students are benefiting from the power of bilingualism and biliteracy.

For me, what began as small “pivot” moments in a middle school classroom grew into a larger conversation about the power of bilingualism.

During National Bilingual/Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month, I’m reminded that change often starts with teachers noticing their students’ strengths and asking a simple question: What more could we be doing?

Maybe it starts with one small pivot and turns into a movement.