A Conversation with Huseyin Uysal and Luis Javier Pentón Herrera

In this episode, our guests Drs. Huseyin Uysal and Luis Javier Pentón Herrera talk to us about learning the English language, and supporting young people in humanizing ways as they learn English. 

Dr. Huseyin Uysal’s research interests, which tie back to several of his current endeavors, are primarily centered on studying fairness, justice and equity in language assessment, criticality in TESOL teacher education, and plurilingualism at public schools. His work has appeared in venues such as TESOL Journal, TESOL Quarterly, Linguistics and Education, and Peabody Journal of Education. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Education for Multilingualism, and the Associate Editor of Journal of Education, Language, and Ideology. He is the current Chair of the Bilingual-Multilingual Education Interest Section of TESOL International Association. Dr. Uysal is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language Education at The Education University of Hong Kong. He holds a PhD degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in ESOL/Bilingual Education from the University of Florida. You can reach Dr. Uysal at huysal9@gmail.com. 

Dr. Luis Javier Pentón Herrera’s current teaching and research projects are situated at the intersection of identity, emotions, and well-being in language and literacy education, social-emotional learning (SEL), autoethnography and storytelling, refugee education, and language weaponization. His books can be found in the University of Michigan Press, Routledge, Springer, Brill, De Gruyter, TESOL Press, Bucharest University Press, and Rowman & Littlefield. Dr. Pentón Herrera is an award-winning Spanish and English educator and a best-selling author. In 2024, he was selected as the 2024 TESOL Teacher of the Year, awarded by the TESOL International Association and National Geographic Learning. He is a Professor at VIZJA University, Poland, and a Book Series Co-Editor of the Cambridge Elements in Language and Power (Cambridge University Press) and Contemporary Perspectives on Learning Environments book series (Emerald Publishing), as well as Co-Editor of Tapestry: A Multimedia Journal for Teachers and English Learners, and Associate Editor of Language Teacher Education Research. Further, he is a Fulbright Scholar and Specialist, and an English Language Specialist with the U.S. Department of State. Previously, he served as the 38th President of Maryland TESOL from 2018 to 2019, and earned the rank of Sergeant while serving in the United States Marine Corps (USMC). Two of his professional accolades include the ‘30 Up and Coming Emerging Leaders in TESOL’, awarded by TESOL International Association in 2016, and the J. Estill Alexander Future Leader in Literacy Award, awarded by the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) in 2018 when his dissertation was chosen as ALER’s Outstanding Dissertation of the Year. Originally from La Habana, Cuba, Dr. Pentón Herrera enjoys creative writing, playing with his two dogs, Virgo and Maui, and running in his free time. You can connect with Dr. Pentón Herrera on his Instagram: @luisjavierpentonherrera and on his website https://luispenton.com/

To cite this episode: 

Persohn, L. (Host). (2026, Mar. 10). A Conversation with Huseyin Uysal and Luis Javier Pentón Herrera. (Season 6, No. 8) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/F619-2EFE-72B9-79F4-04DF-F

Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Welcome & Purpose Of Show

Lindsay Persohn 0:10

Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom Caffeine is here to help. In each episode, I talk with a top education researcher or an expert educator about what they have learned from years of research and experiences. In this episode, our guests, Drs. Hussein Uysal and Luis Javier Pentón Herrera, talk to us about supporting young people in humanizing ways as they learn English. Dr. Hussein Uysal's research interests, which tie back to several of his current endeavors, are primarily centered on studying fairness, justice, and equity in language assessment, criticality in TESOL teacher education, and pluralingualism at public schools. His work has appeared in venues such as TESOL Journal, TESOL Quarterly, Linguistics and Education, and Peabody Journal of Education. He currently serves as the editor-in-chief of Journal of Education for Multilingualism and the Associate Editor of Journal of Education, Language and Ideology. He is the current chair of the Bilingual Multilingual Education Interest Section of TESOL International Association. Dr. Uysal is a research assistant professor in the Department of English Language Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. He holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction with a specialization in ESOL and bilingual education from the University of Florida. You can reach Dr. Uysal at H U Y S A L 9 at gmail.com. Dr. Luis Javier Penton Herrera's current teaching and research projects are situated at the intersection of identity, emotions, and well-being in language and literacy education, social emotional learning, autoethnography and storytelling, refugee education, and language weaponization. His books can be found at the University of Michigan Press, Rutledge, Springer, Brill, De Gruder, TESOL Press, Bucharest University Press, and Roman and Littlefield. Dr. Penton Herrera is an award-winning Spanish and English educator and a best-selling author. In 2024, he was selected as the TESOL Teacher of the Year, awarded by the TESOL International Association and National Geographic Learning. He is a professor at Vizja University Poland and a book series co-editor at the Cambridge Elements in Language and Power with Cambridge University Press, and Contemporary Perspectives on Learning Environments book series with Emerald Publishing, as well as a co-editor of Tapestry, a multimedia journal for teachers and English learners, an associate editor for language teacher education research. Further, he's a Fulbright Scholar and Specialist and an English language specialist with the U.S. Department of State. Previously, he served as the 38th president of Maryland TESOL from 2018 to 2019, and he's also earned the rank of sergeant while serving in the United States Marine Corps. Two of his professional accolades include the 30 Up-and-Coming Emerging Scholars in TESOL, awarded by TESOL International Association in 2016, and the J is Still Alexander Future Leader in Literacy Award, awarded by the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers, or Ayler, in 2018 when his dissertation was chosen as Ayler's outstanding dissertation of the year. Originally from La Habana, Cuba, Dr. Penton Herrera enjoys creative writing, playing with his two dogs, Virgo and Maui, and running in his free time. You can connect with Dr. Penton Herrera on his Instagram at Luis Javier Penton Herrera, that is, at L-U-I-S-J-A-V-I-E-R, P E N T O N H E R R E R A. And on his website at Luis Penton.com. That's L-U-I-S-P-E-N-T-O-N.com. So pour a cup of your favorite drink and join me, your host, Lindsay Persohn for Classroom Caffeine. Research to energize your teaching practice. Hussein and Luis, thanks for joining me. Welcome to the show.

Defining Humanizing Support For ELs

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 4:58

Hi, Lindsay. Thank you very much for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here.

Hussein Uysal 5:02

Thanks for having us. It's it's a real honor to be here with you and with my dear colleague Luis.

Lindsay Persohn 5:08

Thanks so much. So today we're going to switch things up just a little bit. We're going to start our questions in a different order. So, what do you all want listeners to know about your work?

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 5:20

Well, if it's okay, I can get started. My work is situated at the intersections of identity, emotion, and well-being. And I have a particular focus and interest on social emotional learning. And the goal of my present work, whether it's teaching, research, is to promote conversations about the importance of understanding ourselves as language teachers, of understanding our students, and of understanding us as individuals who use language as a medium of communication. Also, I'm very, very interested in researching and talking about more about the power of language and emotions in making our world a better place. So everything connected to the social and emotional aspects of language teaching, learning, and youth.

Why Long‑Term ELs Stay Stuck

Hussein Uysal 6:12

So I'll go next. So my work lives at the intersection of language equity and advocacy very broadly. And much of it centers around a group of students that I think often get left out of the conversation. So using a policy term, we call them long-term English learners or LTELs with aberration. So these are the students who have been labeled as English learners for for many years, so sometimes five or more, even though they often sound fluent in English and may have been even been born and raised in the United States. So what I found traveling and and what actually motivates my work is that many of these students remain stuck in the ESL programs, not because of their abilities, but because of how we measure success. So I'm talking about standardized tests, of course, in a high-stakes testing environment, these tests often miss their linguistic brilliance, their bilingual skills, and their academic potential. So, for example, these state-mandated tests don't account for these fluid hybrid identities, and often translanguaging practices these students spring to the classroom. So, because of these practices are the ways of using language that don't always fit the test score boxes and you know the norms that are prevalent in the mainstream narrative about US education. So in the big picture, my work calls for more equity-driven and emotional responsive approaches to language education. So these are the approaches that not only teach to the test, but speak to the students' identities, aspirations, and leave the experiences.

Lindsay Persohn 8:01

So it really makes me wonder how do teachers get there, right? How do we actually honor the language that learners bring to the classroom? How do we measure and convey? I think that that might be an even bigger part of it in this idea of what standardized testing does and doesn't do. How do we convey the brilliance of English language learners when the assessments given to teachers aren't designed to measure that? How do we get there?

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 8:30

Yeah, that that's an that's an amazing question, Lindsay. So a recent thing that I'm focusing on with my colleague Sara Kangas, individualized language plans, right? So ELPs. So I focus on promoting asset-based, humanizing alternatives to the test. So one of these is something that I'm exploring, especially the implementation of these ELPs as a kind of tailored roadmap. So of course, not unlike IEPs in special ed that honor students' multilingual realities and give educators more flexibility to support them meaningfully. So these are especially powerful for long-term English learners and for multilingual learners with disabilities. So that's a tool that I can think of in response to your question.

Lindsay Persohn 9:24

Luis, do you want to add anything to that?

Beyond Tests: Individualized Language Plans

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 9:27

Well, for assessment, it's quite interesting that you mentioned this and just this question because j ust yesterday I was talking to some colleagues. One of my colleagues invited me to talk to her students in Mexico. Of course, that was online because I'm here in Poland. But we were talking exactly about the flexibility that teachers have in their classrooms in the face of, you know, administrative restrictions, right? So, and they were asking Luis, what can we do? And and it was about assessments, but just in general, What can we do when we have administrators that really don't give us a lot of flexibility? And I always go back to this idea that in our classroom, and I say our because it's our students and I, in our classroom, what happens in our classrooms is usually between students and I. You know, I, the teacher, I think of myself as a teacher, right? So the teacher, the students. So whatever I can do to help them in the classroom, I will do that. Standardized testing, I cannot perhaps control it, but I can prepare them for what's coming. So I think it's very important for us, and I worked with elementary, middle, high school students for many, many years, and especially elementary school children. I remember they were very, very scared of standardized tests when they had to take the WIDA exams, just to give you an example, you know, many of them were just terrified. And we would talk a lot about it, just talking to students, approaching standardized testing as something that is not to be feared. And also talking about performance, you know, if you don't do well in this test, that doesn't mean that you're not good or that you're not, you know, what does it mean to be good, right? So it doesn't mean that you're not proficient, it just means that you had a bad day, and that's okay. We're going to retake it. And this is what I shared with the audience yesterday that the way that I approach standardized testings, things that we cannot change as teachers because that that is above us, you know, it's administrative, it's maybe county level, whatever the case. In the classroom, we can at least help students change their perspective and approach it differently. And that's the work that I do, you know, for my students. And that goes back to social emotional learning as well, right? But that's how I approach in situations like this where we don't have a lot of control because of administrative demands or restrictions.

Reframing Standardized Testing With Care

Lindsay Persohn 11:53

And I think that maybe you're getting to the heart of my question. You know, where do teachers find space to do humane and compassionate work in environments that don't always lend themselves to that kind of work, right? But I I think the framing, as you mentioned, the framing of the assessment is critical to share with young people that this is not the only thing. This doesn't say whether they're smart or not. You know, this is just one instance of one assessment that's designed to produce a data point. And that data point is not who they are. And I think that that's something that's become really conflated over time in schools. You know, even shortcut language that, you know, lots of us as educators use seems to equate a student's identity with a test score. And I think if we can even step away from that kind of thinking or that kind of language, it puts us in a different headspace when it comes to acknowledging social and emotional development and how we can support. Because I think you've also acknowledged some of the kind of the barriers and boundaries of what teachers are able to do in their own classrooms.

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 13:02

Yes, if I may add to that, Lindsay, you know, I just reminded me here in Poland, just to give you an example, another example. I've been working with my students, I teach here at the university level, and for my bachelor students, we have what we call a social project. Instead of a bachelor's thesis or capstone, we have a social project. And the way that is structured, students have to identify a problem in their community, however they define community, and then they have to add a service element to it, you know, kind of solve a problem in their community, and it has to be connected to their specialization, whether it's language education, translation, or business English, because those are the three in English you know, programs, those are the three modules that we have. Now, a lot of my students have fantastic ideas, but then they feel defeated when we're talking, and their amazing idea doesn't align with the template and the expectations of that specific project. And then they're like, oh, this is bad for me. This is terrible, I'm never gonna come up with a good idea. I'm like, no, no, you came up with a fantastic idea. It's just that it doesn't align with what the university is looking for. And then I talk to my students a lot about reorganizing their thinking. You know, it's not that your idea is not good, and I always tell them, save it. This will be a fantastic idea for a master thesis, for example, or you can use it later for something else. It's just that sometimes the tests that we have and the type of evaluations assessments that we have, what they're looking for is something so specific that it really doesn't capture your brilliance. I tell them like that, you know, and that's the reality in many assessments that we have in schools. And I think we really need to start thinking about how do we, especially in the again, I'm I might be going on a tangent here, but especially with all of these conversations about AI and the evolution of education, it seems like we're going through an evolution now in education. How can we re-envision assessments to really capture, and we've been saying this for years, we really need to have spaces where students can show their full brilliance, not specific things that we're looking for in their development, if that makes sense.

Lindsay Persohn 15:09

I think that makes a lot of sense. And I would agree, I think that most often assessment tools that we are are given to evaluate students' knowledge, they don't capture brilliance. They're designed to capture one specific detail that may or may not have anything to do with what our students know. And of course, I think we have to acknowledge that assessing things like projects can be expensive. And so on a mass level, that doesn't always happen because it's hard to do and it takes time, which costs money.

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 15:42

Exactly. Yes.

Monoglossic Tests Vs Multilingual Realities

Hussein Uysal 15:46

You know, the part of the problem is that um these standardized tests are also deeply monoglossic, right? So they assume that there is only one right way to use English, usually academic, decontextualized and like very formal, but multilingual students or emergent multilinguals don't operate in just one linguistic code. So they move fluently between languages, registers, and cultural frames, often within the same sentence or conversation. So that kind of rich dynamic language use, you know, it doesn't show up on a second road. So these assessments end up pathologizing what are actually linguistic strengths, I guess, multilingual strengths. They mistake flexibility and multilingualism for deficiency, so like from a deficit perspective, I guess. And I think that's a huge missed opportunity, right, for for both our students and for the educators trying to support them. So I just want to add that.

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 16:49

Thank you for that, Hussein. Just a final idea that I had here when Jose was mentioning that I just remember yesterday I was talking to my friend, and she lives in Italy, and her children, their first language is Spanish, because she's Cuban, she's she she speaks Spanish and Italian, but you know, so they grew up speaking Spanish, Italian has become their dominant language. But in school, when they're learning Spanish, she just had a conversation with the teacher because one of her kids, she wrote the verb in Spanish, we have to drink. We have usually we use two verbs, tomar or beber. And then she wrote tomar, which in Cuba that's what we use. We don't use beber. Beber is for other countries, which both are correct. But then the teacher said, No, no, no, uh, tomar is incorrect. You should have written beber. And then she went to school. I mean, the daughter speaks Spanish as a native language, and the teacher is telling her, no, no, you cannot use that verb, you should have used the other one. So talk about not fully evaluating students' knowledge when it comes to assessment, right? But yeah, t hat was I just started laughing out loud as a speaker, but also as a teacher of Spanish and English, right? I was like, this is fantastic what we're doing with assessments nowadays, you know. But it goes back to like scantron and like teachers having this particular set of responses. And if you deviate from that, then you know it's incorrect.

Lindsay Persohn 18:16

Something Hussein that you said really resonates with me. And that's the idea that we mistake linguistic flexibility for deficiency. And I think, Luis, the example you just shared is a perfect way to exemplify that. And so I'm wondering if you all have any tips or pointers for teachers who are looking to break out of the plasticity, the mindset that, you know, standardized assessment sort of forces us into. How do we get away from that? How do we understand flexibly, particularly if we're dealing with a language that isn't a familiar language for us ourselves as teachers? How can we help? How can we, you know, make this a kinder and more responsive world for students who are multilingual?

Valuing Variation: “Tomar” Or “Beber”

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 19:05

I think Hussein, if I may, some things that I've been doing personally as a teacher. First, professional development in the form of continuously learning and learning and learning. Yes, I'm a Spanish speaker and teacher. Yes, I'm an English speaker and teacher, but there are different varieties of Spanish, there are different varieties of English. So I'm continuously learning more about the languages that I teach and the languages that I speak as well. So that's very important. That's one thing because, for example, for my students, I have students who speak British English, and I have students who speak Canadian and American. And am I gonna tell them, no, write American English only? No, I'm not gonna say that because it doesn't reflect the reality of the world, you know, that we interact with people who speak different varieties. Same with Spanish. So I think just continuously learning about the languages that that you teach and and use, that's very, very important because language evolves and we know that. Uh so that's very important. And then the second point is asking students, you know, um if you don't know something, I think this goes back into our pedagogy and ego. If you don't know what the student wrote, can you can you ask questions to the students? Of course, yes, we're teachers, but we're learners too, right? So I always go back to my students. What do you mean by this? Can you explain this to me? It might be mistakes or it might be something that I don't know about. I remember I had this student, she that was a couple semesters back, and she taught me this word that it has a different meaning in Gen Z vocabulary conversation that I did not know about, and the words aura, and like aura plus 500. I don't know if you've seen uh you know social media and things like that. And all of them had to present on about about a specific word or topic. That was the thing for the class, right? The project. And then she's like, okay, I'm going to present on aura. And then I kept asking, aura. And she's like, aura. And I'm like, aura. And you know, it was kind of like one of those moments, and I just couldn't get it. And then she wrote it down, and it took me a moment to understand the word, and I'm like, okay, please explain that to me. What is that? You know, and that's okay. If you're a teacher, you know, ego is something that we have to forget about. We're learners too. So I've been learning so much from my students, especially my younger students. Thanks to them, I have I have uh uh an Instagram account, you know, because they told me Facebook is for old people. So, you know, and I've been learning different things from them and how to use language in today's society in the way that they communicate, you know, that's very important.

Practical Shifts For Teachers

Hussein Uysal 21:43

Also, one thing that I always try to remind teachers, and also, of course, remind myself for my teaching is that fluency doesn't mean academic mastery, especially here in Hong Kong. That's coming to Hong Kong from US, that's a big shift for me and uh And we're talking about word Englishes, right? Different ways of using English. So just because a student sounds fluent in, let's say, everyday English doesn't mean that they've got a solid grip on the kinds of academic language we ask them to use in essays or science labs or standardized tests, right? So that's that applies to long-term English learners in the United States. So it's worth pausing and asking. So where are they traveling? So where do they still need support? So that's something that content area teachers can keep in mind. So another shift that has been important in my own thinking is this. So we're not here to fix students, we are here to form them. So it's it's so easy to focus on what we can't do yet, especially when they are starting, you know, they are doing very well in that test, right? State-made test. But when we zoom out, we start to see the richness in their language practices. So their storytelling skills, for example, or they are caught switching their deep cultural knowledge. So that's where we've uh built from. And finally, I would say it's worth reflecting on our own assumptions, right? So like how do we see language difference? Right? How do we treat it as a problem to solve or as it's a strength to cultivate? So that mindset shows up uh in the small things. The way we create writing, for example, the way we respond to different accents, even in the text we choose. Uh so sometimes the verb starts not with changing students, but with changing ourselves as the teachers.

Translanguaging To Unlock Confidence

Lindsay Persohn 23:40

What I think I hear you both saying is that one way to approach this is what could be seen as a challenge in classrooms is to approach students as though they are the experts, right? We treat them as though they're teaching us about their language. And I found that that is a really useful approach. It reminds me of a student I was working with a couple of weeks ago at a community center where I teach one of my courses, and a seventh grader who is learning English, his home language is Spanish. And I gave him a picture to write from, you know, as a as a writing prompt, an image of high interest, uh, you know, something silly or goofy is going on and animals, that kind of thing. And when I asked him to write, he sort of froze. And I sat there with him for a few minutes and I said, you can write in English or Spanish or a combination of both of those things. And at that point, he put pencil to paper. As soon as he was put in that, you know, that expert translanguaging kind of position, you could tell he felt empowered. He smiled and he got to work rather than I think feeling like, who is this person? I don't know her, and I'm probably going to disappoint her because I'm not sure what I'm going to write about in English. So as soon as he had that permission to show me his language, everything changed. It was a good moment for all of us.

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 25:08

And that reminds me, you know, Lindsay, it is true. And I always put myself as a teacher, right? Because word language teachers. So it's very easy, especially when you're teaching the language that you're teaching, you you forget that you learn that language. So it's easy to forget your experience as a language learner. But I always put myself in situations where I have to learn. I'm in Poland, so I have to learn a new language and I have to, so you know, it really helps me empathize with students. But what you just mentioned, your your story, it just reminds me a little bit of my own experience with Polish sometimes. That it feels at times it feels like um if I'm only using Polish, it feels like my hands are kind of tied, you know, and then I they're tight and I speak with my hands, so that's very bad for me when I'm speaking, you know. That's number one. But number two, if I'm able to use a little bit of what I call poglish, which is polski, which is pop uh Polish and English, that's why I call it Poglish, you know. Uh, but if I can speak a little bit of that, then I can you know feel more comfortable, and I do feel more comfortable, but it is hard, especially when you're learning at a beginner intermediate level. Um, it is hard to not be able to use your full linguistic resources. And then it makes you also feel sometimes, you know, if I'm only using Polish, I feel like I'm a five-year-old. You know, that's that's how I feel as a child. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so smart in other languages, but in Polish, not so much. So, yes, yes, the story reminded me of that.

Lindsay Persohn 26:42

Yeah, totally. Whenever you have the thought, you just need to put a word to it. And when that word does either doesn't come to you or you're not sure what it is in the language you're speaking, it's definitely a little bit tricky. So, from your own experiences in education, I know we've already touched on a few, will you all share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking and your work now?

Forming Not Fixing: Asset Views

Hussein Uysal 27:04

Oh, so that that's a powerful question. So, one moment that really shaped me and my um research happened during my time as a faculty member at a um small liberal arts college in the Midwestern US. So that was my very first job after my PhD, uh getting my PhD. So the college talk talk a lot about the diversity, right? So, and they meant it really. Um so but I started to notice that linguistic diversity often wasn't part of that conversation. So there was a kind of invisible monolingualism back into the culture uh in the curriculum, in how um students were assessed, even in how faculty interacted with multilingual student groups like international students or US-based multilingual students. So this this was a moment of realization during my role as the as the organizer of a TEDx event on my campus with the theme advocating for diversity, inclusion, and belonging. And that that particular experience informed my decisions in determining the themes and inviting the speakers and advising them on the on the topics to talk about. So this moment made me realize uh we can't talk about inclusion if we are not talking about language as well. So we are focusing on, let's say, on the race, gender, ethnicity, without recognizing language as a core part of students' identities. Then we are we are we are missing the mark, right? So that realization pushed me to uh look at how institutions shape teacher identities too, especially for educators from um multilingual or or transnational backgrounds. So in my research, I explored these what I call what we called actually, uh Luis was part of that research and study, what we called institutional third spaces. So the messy in-between zones where belonging is negotiated, sometimes denied, and uh where teachers are constantly navigating who they are allowed to be.

Lindsay Persohn 29:15

Luis?

First‑Year Moments That Shaped Us

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 29:15

Yes, and I have a couple, I'll keep it short, but one is from my time as a student, and the other one from my time as a first-year teacher. So as a student, I arrived in the US when I was 17, and I do vividly remember because as a student and as a speaker, as a learner of English, it really took me a long, long time to learn English. It took me seven years to feel comfortable with English, and I started reflecting. That's my big thing now, reflection as a learner, as a teacher, and I started reflecting back on why? Why did it take me so long to learn to feel comfortable with English? And I always come back to this situation, this instance that happened in the classroom during my first year as a language learner in high school. I was in high school at that time, and uh I was practicing English with my one of my classmates, and the English teacher was talking to another uh teacher there by the door, uh in the classroom door, and then she just turns back, and then she sees me and my classmate speaking, and then she yells at us, you know, like, What are you two doing? It's like Miss, we're we're practicing. And then she said, Yeah, right. And then she started laughing at us. And that just crushed me. And I I remember talking to my classmate about this as well, and it just crushed us, you know. And uh the tone, the way that she said that, like, you know, the the lack of trust in us. The expectation was that students will be just sitting down and quiet, and you know, if the teacher was talking to another teacher, then you just sit there quietly. But I really wanted to practice, I really wanted to learn English. I I consider myself a pretty good student, you know, at least in Cuba, in the US, that that's another topic, but you know, kind of uh you have to go through an identity transformation because you don't speak the language, so you don't you don't see yourself as a good student anymore, right? But I really, really wanted to learn, but that really crushed me. And uh I'm gonna come back to that. Uh and then the first year of my teaching experience was that uh I always think about the moments where I used to finish the school day, and then I would go back home and then just drop everything by the entrance of my door and just go to the couch and start crying, you know, unconsolably. I was like, I cannot keep doing this anymore. Um you know, like I'm giving up, it's too much, you know, because the first year of teaching was and is very, very hard for all of us. And I think those two experiences, and I I it took me a while to put these two together, but a lot of my research and my pedagogy and the way that I see language teaching and learning now are guided by those experiences, and that's why I'm so interested and passionate about social emotional aspects of language teaching and learning. I don't think you can separate language teaching and language learning from social experiences and from emotional experiences. Uh, many, many language learners, for example, and I love teaching, we we call it basic uh level or A1 here in Europe, they call it A1 or beginner level newcomer, we would say in the US. I love teaching newcomer level English and Spanish because I feel that teachers who teach that particular population group, they have an additional responsibility of keeping students motivated. If students feel demotivated that first year, we lose them. We lose them. It's very hard for them. Once they lose motivation, that's it. You know, um, it's very hard to get them back. We lose teachers usually within the first five years of teaching. And it's because they don't have the social and or emotional strategies to survive or to deal with teaching. Because usually in teacher preparation programs, we don't talk about the social and emotional aspect, labor, work that we have to put in as teachers, right? So I think those two experiences uh really, really connect to how I approach language teaching and learning, how I approach my research and my just really my interests in in academia and in teaching. They they're very much connected to those experiences.

Lindsay Persohn 33:34

It's really interesting to me, Luis, how you connected the first year of learning a new language, particularly I think being immersed within a culture where you're learning a new language, and the first year of teaching. And I can certainly understand how there are parallels there, right? In the world of teaching, you're learning new social conventions, the emotional work of teaching, of supporting every student. You are also learning some new language in that role and being immersed in a new culture where you're learning a new language. Also, there's emotional labor, right? There's there's those moments where you may not really understand what's going on and everything feels so overwhelming. Yeah, that's an interesting parallel for sure.

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 34:20

Yeah, actually, uh, thank you for that comment, Lindsay. Just made me realize that it is true. Those two stories are about my first year of teaching, learning, and then I love teaching first year students. I just realized that, by the way. So thank you for saying that.

Lindsay Persohn 34:35

To my ears, there were some real parallels in what you just shared. But it also reminds me of what we were talking about earlier about going back to how do we put someone who may be novice in one area of their life, how do we put them in an expert seat? How do we make them feel efficacious in what they're doing and give them a way to stay motivated, right? So I think that's another thing you really touched on is you you can't lose that motivation to just keep going and keep learning. Reminds me of another story from the community center that I mentioned earlier. We were describing a picture, an illustration in a book, and there was a squirrel that appeared over and over and over again. And I was sharing the story with maybe four or five young boys who were in the room and then uh used my little bit of Spanish knowledge to say, como se dice squirrel and español. And everyone knows the answer. I think that sort of switching that role rather than feeling like a novice in that situation, I wanted to give them an opportunity to teach me something. So then I repeat it and I say, Did I say that right? And they say it again and I say it again. And it's my hope that those kinds of moments do offer encouragement and support for those students, as well as just I want them to understand that I care about what they know and I care about how they feel about what they know and what they have to offer in the world. So that was a lot of fun. And of course, I learned a new word that day too. So it's a good time.

Motivation As A Lifeline For Newcomers

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 35:59

I love that, Lindsay. Thank you for sharing that. And you know, what you're doing also is building trust with students, and that's so important. For of course, I'm gonna go back to social emotional aspects of learning and teaching, but that's how I see teaching and learning, right? It's very, very hard to learn from someone you don't feel safe with and you don't have trust in. So those are the moments I do really believe that, and I talk to my students all the time, those students who want to go into language education, I tell them the single most important aspect of education in general is building trust for relationships. Really, really it's that's the key, you know. And it takes a lot of little tiny interactions. It doesn't have to be a big thing, just daily tiny interactions with students. You know, hey, how do you say this? Or like exactly what you just said, you know, showing them that you care. It doesn't have to be anything grand, just a very short exchange. Hey, how are you doing today? How is everyone today? You know, little things like that. Do you eat today? Do you have breakfast? Um, those things really uh make an impact on students and also on teachers too, because it fills our teacher heart too, you know, when students come to us and say, Thank you for asking me, or thank you for but those are the moments that really keep us going, also as teachers, because for students it's very important to have those moments, but also for teachers too, you know, what can we do for teachers as well, right? For for teachers to keep moving forward. We need that too. We're human beings, also. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

Lindsay Persohn 37:35

Yes, absolutely. So, given the challenges of today's educational climate, what message would you all like teachers to hear?

Hussein Uysal 37:45

So I could offer one message to teachers right now, and that would be your emotional awareness is not a self-skill. So it's a survival skill, uh, especially uh in today's world. So multilingual students, especially those navigating immigration, racialized language ideologies, and systemic neglect. So these students are facing not just academic hurdles, but emotional and um and institutional ones as well, right? And what we need most is is not just content knowledge from us, but care, courage, and what Luis and I I often call a pedagogy of hope and resilience. So that starts with us, right? So the the teachers. So we can't be uh advocates for our students if we are running empty ourselves. So that's why I believe advocacy has to be um relational, collective, and emotionally attuned. Tools like ELPs, individualized language plans, can help, but only if they are used collaboratively with teachers, students, families, and also they work well with deep respect for for the full humanity of our learners. So teachers are aren't just deliverers of interaction, right? So we are and always have been equity leaders. That leadership doesn't always look like uh speeches or protests, sometimes it looks like listening, right? As Luis said, uh really trying to understand the student, or questioning why a student is still labeled N DL after seven years, or despite being born and raised in the US, right? Or maybe saying to a multilingual student, you belong here, and all of your languages do too, right? So maybe like a simple um comment like that, reminders to the students. So they'll help a lot.

Micro‑Moments That Build Trust

Lindsay Persohn 39:51

I love that. You've given us some small but important ways to accomplish advocacy work, particularly in an environment that doesn't always support that at this political moment. Uh teachers don't always feel supported to even acknowledge diversity or to support equity. And so I think the simple things of listening and questioning, that's really empowering, you know, when you think that this doesn't have to be, you know, marching on the steps of the Capitol, but what does that look like in an everyday teaching instance? And it it is asking questions and honoring who people are and who they're becoming. That's really helpful. A very hopeful message, also, Hussein. Thank you for that. Luis, anything to add?

What Teachers Need To Hear Now

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 40:39

Yes, thank you for that question, Lindsay. You know, I a few things come to mind, but I want to focus on one that I think is very important. I've been having a lot of conversations with teachers from different parts of the world. And something that I'm seeing more and more uh a concern, I would say, given today's realities, uh many teachers are worried that we're going to be uh perhaps taken over or uh we're going to lose our job due to AI, right? Like we're going to be changed by AI. And that's something that I'm very much aware of and of that concern because many teachers are telling me, Luis, do you think language especially language teachers, but do you think language teachers are going to be needed anymore now that AI is becoming more popular? I mean, look at AI just like two, three years ago, and now, you know, it's evolving so so quickly. You know, are we going to be supply- I'm losing the word here, but um, you know, are we going to be changed for uh AI tools? Are they going to need teachers in the future? And my response is always yes. But we need to evolve as well. In the same way that teaching has evolved in many, many places, where I mean, you look at education 50 years ago, before computers, it was different. Uh, the way that we taught, the way that we approached education, teaching and learning. Yeah, teaching and learning has evolved now. Um, but AI is just a new evolution, you know, and in society, whatever happens in society, it it percolates into education because we're a microcosm of society, right? Education is a microcosm of society. So I I'm very, very much uh uh telling all the teachers who ask me this question. I'm telling them, please go deeper into your why. Why do you become a teacher? And oftentimes a response to that why is connected to again social and or emotional aspects, you know, because I want to help students, because I want to teach, uh, you know, I'm I'm passionate about the content that I'm teaching, so I want to to spread that content knowledge, you know, language in our case. Okay, perfect. How can we do that in such a way that is different from what AI is doing, right? It goes back to social aspects of teaching and learning that AI still cannot, and to my knowledge, cannot uh do. For example, um when it comes to communication strategies, I'm I'm focusing more on think about speaking. I teach speaking classes a lot for my students in Spanish and English. And whether it's you know theoretical knowledge like tone, this, that, AI can do that. I all go through it, but I'm like, okay, in class we're going to practice. I'm going to give you practical strategies of things that you can do in real life conversations. You know, if you make a mistake, how do you recover from that? Because sometimes, depending on the culture. I remember when I lived in Japan, sometimes Japanese people didn't want to lose face. So when I would say hi, they would run away from me because they didn't want to speak English. You know, we don't do that usually when we're speaking, right? So, how do we maintain our confidence or do not lose face when we're making mistakes or we know we're making mistakes? You know, so Those are strategies and things that we can work on in the classroom that AI cannot reproduce in real life, right? So those are the the social emotional aspects of of teaching and learning. That's what I'm asking teachers to consider and to go deeper into because I think that's at the end of the day, that's going to separate us teachers from AI. So in my perspective and from my point of view, I don't think we have to worry about AI if we evolve also as teachers.

Lindsay Persohn 44:27

That's a really interesting point. What I think I hear you saying is that we can work through those fears and those challenges by identifying what is most human about the job of teaching. Really lean into that. And it actually reminds me of the conversation that was going on probably globally about 10, 15 years ago around ebooks. I was working in the world of libraries when Kindle was really big and, you know, they had the nook and all these other things. And the question was, well, will print books disappear? And fast forward to today, I think we can safely say the print book has not disappeared. You know, even though there are elements of technology that move so quickly, there are still things that technology can't do. And there's a real good chance there are things that technology may never be able to accomplish. And so maybe it really is about determining where the best work can happen or who can do the best work in which areas. And let's lean into our tools for the things that technology does best. And let's lean into what we do best as humans. And maybe that way we can make some real progress in the world. That's an interesting question about AI and and teachers' jobs.

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 45:45

Yes, thank you for rephrasing it that way. And I I loved it. Yes, yes, exactly. Kind of regaining, which I think we have lost. It goes back to assessment and some of the uh you know administrative responsibilities that have been placed on teachers and how we have sometimes lost touch with really the the reality that uh you know the teaching is a human activity, it's it's supposed to be. We have made it uh uh kind of robotic professional activity, but it's it's it shouldn't be. It's not. And um maybe AI is just kind of uh pushing us into where we belong, you know, which teaching humans uh perhaps going back into our humanity.

Lindsay Persohn 46:24

Yeah, but I couldn't agree more. Uh when we can lean into the humanity, I think everyone wins. Hussein and Luis. Thank you all so much for spending some time with me today and for sharing your work that you're doing in the world. Yeah, thank you so much for this time together.

Luis Javier Penton Herrera 46:38

Thank you, Lindsay. Thank you so much for the invitation, for the opportunity to be here, and for the amazing questions. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Hussein Uysal 46:46

Thank you so much. It's it's it was a great pleasure to be part of that conversation.

Lindsay Persohn 46:51

Thank you. Well, have a great afternoon, have a great night. Um, I know we're we're all in different places in the world. And yeah, thanks again for the conversation. Thank you. For the good of all students, Classroom Caffeine aims to energize education research and practice. If this show gives you things to think about, help us spread the word. Talk to your colleagues and educate or friends about what you hear. You can support the show by subscribing, liking, and reviewing this podcast through your podcast provider. Visit ClassroomCaffeine.com where you can subscribe to receive our short monthly newsletter, The Espresso Shot. On our website, you can also learn more about each guest, find transcripts for our episodes, explore topics using our drop-down menu of tags, request an episode topic or potential guest, support our research through our listener survey, or learn more about the research we're doing on our publications page. Connect with us on social media through Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We would love to hear from you. Special thanks to the Classroom Caffeine team, Leah Burger, Abhaya Veluru, Stephanie Branson, and Csaba Osvath. As always, I raise my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me.