Leaders: Regents Professor Kathy G. Short, Dr. Dorea Kleker, and Narges Zandi (University of Arizona)
June 4-5, 2026
9 am – 4 pm at Worlds of Words, at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona
Join us for a two-day workshop to engage in experiences and books that invite students to immerse themselves in an appreciation and awareness of the multiple languages in their lives and world. This workshop is based on multilingualism as a resource, not a problem, and on developing strategies for interacting with familiar and unfamiliar languages. In this interactive workshop, we will explore new picturebooks and participate in engagements with these books. We will also interact with several children’s authors/illustrators to talk about their global books. You will receive their picturebooks along with booklists and other materials.
This workshop will be framed around translanguaging, the natural process of flexibly using one’s entire linguistic repertoire to make meaning. Translingual picturebooks are written in English but weave another language into the story, often through dialogue between multilingual family and community members. Recently, many picturebooks and novels have been published in a wide range of world languages, not just Spanish and English, with a natural integration of these languages into the book. Our focus is not on learning a language but learning about language and language diversity and coming to view multilingualism as a stance on the world. We will highlight strategies and examples of engaging students with unfamiliar languages both in their communities and in literature. There will be time to browse books, use dialogue strategies for discussion, and participate in multilingual engagements.
Registration is limited to 35 people. It closes on May 25, at 12pm MST.
Cost: $40 (includes lunch, materials, and a PD certificate for 14 hours)
Biographical Details for the Presenters
Kathy G. Short
Kathy G. Short is a Regents professor and endowed chair of global children’s literature in the College of Education/University of Arizona and is Director of Worlds of Words: Center of Global Literacies and Literatures (wowlit.org). She has worked extensively with teachers around the world on literature and inquiry and has authored many books and articles. She served as President of the National Council of Teachers of English and the US Board of Books for Young People.
Dorea Kleker
Dorea Kleker is an early childhood teacher and educator. Focusing on students and teachers across a wide variety of educational contexts in both the U.S. and Latin America, her work focuses on global and multicultural children’s literature, literacy and play to develop intercultural understanding, and the use of literature to actively engage children as inquirers across all content areas.
Narges Zandi
Narges Zandi taught elementary school in Iran and is currently a doctoral student in Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona. In Iran, she engaged in academic writing and research aimed at enhancing school education. In her efforts to support equitable education, Narges utilized Autoplay Media Studio software to create projects designed to provide students with equal learning opportunities.
You can learn more about the work that fed into the development of this workshop in an article by Kathy Short, Dorea Kleker and Nicola Daly. It describes research from a previous online professional learning opportunity:
Our findings show that engaging with dual language picturebooks in the workshops and in their classrooms encouraged teachers to develop awareness of how these picturebooks can be used to explore language diversity and develop awareness of languages beyond the classroom – to develop a stance of multilingualism. Teachers were intrigued with inquiries into language diversity through dual language picturebooks as a way to build this multilingual stance with students as well as themselves.
Questions about this event? Contact dkleker@arizona.edu or shortk@arizona.edu.
This institute is organized and sponsored by the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL) and Worlds of Words Center of Global Literacies and Literatures, with support from the University of Arizona College of Humanities and College of Education.
Refund Policy: A 50% refund will be given for registration cancellations received by May 12. No refunds will be offered after this date. Please notify us by email (at cercll@arizona.edu) if you are canceling your registration.
The University of Arizona reserves the right to cancel the institute if necessary; in the unlikely event that cancellation happens, registrants will receive a full refund of their registration fee.