 Hello, my name is Rebecca Alhader and I am an ESL instructor at Reedley College. I was fortunate to have participated in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Grant by the Katesel Education Foundation. It was a great opportunity to learn about the important topics that impact ESL students at various levels and institutions, to also learn about the challenges that my colleagues of color face, and to collaborate with great educators. I learned a lot through the six sessions. A big takeaway that re-emphasized for me is the need to incorporate students' voices in the curriculum. Educators have so much to learn from students, and they have great stories to tell, so educators should create brave spaces for them to share those stories. I'd like to thank Dr. Nancy Kwong-Johnson for her dedication to DEI and the Katesel Education Foundation for making this possible. Thank you. Hi everyone, my name is Risa Weber and I am an Assistant Principal at W. Clark High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. An immigrant from France living in the United States, but also as a child who grew up as a parent of immigrants in France, I had completely different experiences and I really was able to feel firsthand, not simply the double consciousness of who I was and how people perceived me as a child of immigrant in France, but also triple consciousness as an immigrant from France in the United States. Thank you Katesel Aid Foundation for this wonderful opportunity and my promise that I will take it here in Las Vegas into application and make the best out of the learning I was able to do through your generous grant. Michelle Scalbo, I teach at Palo Alto Adult School. I'm also the blog editor for Katesel and I'm one of the DEI grantees. For me, DEI relates to English teaching in that, you know, as English teachers we have certain experiences and oftentimes our students have very different experiences and so we have blind spots and so part of studying diversity, equity and inclusion is gaining awareness of what our blind spots are, gaining a better understanding of, you know, what our students are dealing with and I feel like over the last few months in this program I've learned different ways to, you know, kind of fill in some of those gaps. It's always going to be a work in progress, but I feel like I have a clear sense of how I can, how we can work on my blind spots. Hi, my name is Anjali Sharma. I'm one of the DEI teacher trainees. I am very, I teach ESL at the Palo Alto Adult School. I immigrated from India 20 years ago. And I am very proud to be one of the awardees for this amazing teacher training opportunity that we had this opportunity. Thanks to Dr. Nancy Kwong-Johnson and the Katesel Ed Foundation to look at English as a second language teaching and learning from a DEI point of view. I think, you know, I teach English, I teach ESL at the Palo Alto Adult School and two areas from the training that are close to my own heart that emerged from this grant program is the importance of learning about student background knowledge and also coming as an immigrant from a world English speaking country, the importance of accent bias and how it can become a DEI issue.