Elizabeth Varela

ESOL Specialist | Arlington, VA

Elizabeth Varela is an ESOL specialist at Claremont Dual-Immersion School in Arlington, VA.  In 2010, Elizabeth wrote an article entitled “Whose Student Is She?” for Teaching Tolerance magazine. In the article she explained her frustration that colleagues tended to label ELLs as “her students” rather than thinking of ELLs as everyone’s responsibility.  We recently had a chance to interview her about the experiences that inspired her to write the article as part of our recent NEA video project about dual-language education.