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Growing With Proficiency The Podcast
Welcome to Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast! Are you a World Language teacher who is looking for ideas, strategies, activities, and inspiration to create a World Language class where you and your students enjoy using the language to learn about the world and each other? Do you want to transform your class into an acquisition-driven instruction space where you intentionally provide a ton of comprehensible input?
If you are, you're in the right place.
Let's start this journey together. Head over to IG, and send me a DM @claudiamelliott to let me know what topics you would like me to cover in an upcoming episode.Join my free Facebook community, Growing With C. Also, check out my blog to start discovering some of these ideas and strategies at growingwithproficiency.com
Growing With Proficiency The Podcast
Episode 170: How Do We Support Neurodivergent Learners in the World Language Classroom? Designing Inclusive Classrooms
A conversation with Wesley Wood
What happens when we stop planning for the “average” learner and instead design our classrooms with neurodivergent students and students with disabilities in mind? In this episode of Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast, I’m joined by Wesley Wood, Disability Specialist at Georgetown University and former world language teacher, for a powerful and eye-opening conversation about expanding what is possible in the language classroom.
Wesley brings deep experience supporting students with disabilities as well as working side-by-side with world language teachers. Rather than focusing on labels or deficits, he invites us to see the strengths and identities our neurodivergent learners bring — and to plan instruction that welcomes different ways of processing, communicating, and engaging from the very beginning.
Together, we explore:
- Why planning for the “middle” unintentionally leaves many students out
- How planning for the margins strengthens learning for everyone
- The difference between accommodations and designing with accessibility in mind
- How predictable routines, visuals, and co-created norms help students feel safe and ready to communicate
- Ways to offer multiple paths to input: visuals, text, audio, modeling, and gestures
- How choice and flexible output honor students’ strengths and lower anxiety
- What it looks like to slow down, observe, and truly see our students
This conversation connects deeply with the core of our work in world language classrooms: comprehensible input, communication, connection, and cultural competence. You’ll walk away with mindset shifts and simple classroom practices you can begin using right away — not by doing more, but by seeing differently.
If this episode resonates, make sure to follow the podcast, share it with a colleague, and tag Claudia on Instagram @claudiamelliott so we can continue learning and growing together.
Resources:
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