Elianna Kantar
EL Teacher at Farrington High School
Elianna Kantar was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has been living in Honolulu, Hawai‘i since 2017 where she has been working at Farrington High School as an EL teacher. At Farrington, she has taught a wide variety of classes ranging from foundational language classes to both single instructor and co-taught content classes in English Language Arts and the sciences.
Her work as an educator focuses on supporting language learners. As a teacher, Elianna works to create an environment that centers her students’ experiences by celebrating their multilingualism and using it as an asset to directly support their learning in all content areas.
* Schedule: Elianna will be presenting in a breakout session with Norman Sales titled “Amplifying Multilingual Student Voice through Poetry” on Thursday, March 4th 1:00-2:00 pm MST.
Breakout Session Description: In this presentation, the speakers will reflect on how they collaborated to craft a process for the publication of their students’ multilingual voices by using poetry to elevate the voice of linguistically and culturally diverse students. By centering the idea that students have the ability and power to tell their own stories, the speakers were able to facilitate an anthology that resulted in almost 1,000 copies purchased worldwide and both local and international notoriety. Session participants will leave with a better understanding of why and how to support their students’ multilingualism. In addition, they will learn how the process of student self-publication can be applied to their own classrooms.
Featured Text: Voice Poetry by the Youth of Kalihi by Students of Farrington High School
“The voice of culturally and linguistically diverse students is often unheard. This voice, anchored in their experiences as children of immigrant families in one of the toughest neighborhoods on O’ahu, highlights what it means to be adolescent in today’s Hawai’i. Featured in this book are the stories of long-term English Language Learners (ELLs), newcomers, and students who are part of a 1.5 generation of immigrants.” Book Link: https://amzn.to/36e8slM Twitter: #VoiceKalihi Instagram: @voicekalihi
