In this article, I address some of the fundamental notions that must be explored to prepare urban special educators to serve today's students. To address the needs of a highly heterogeneous population of students with regard to language, culture, and disability characteristics, this triad of essential child characteristics (language, culture, disability) is explored to draw implications for instruction and teacher preparation. The article is accompanied by a resource listing for teacher educators engaged in the preparation of urban special educators who will work with culturally and linguistically diverse exceptional students.

In this piece, a teacher educator and two secondary teachers describe how they implemented the Learners' Lives as Curriculum model (Weinstein, 2004) with adolescent English language learners using a unit from a pilot secondary curriculum titled Lives Unfolding (Weinstein & Cloud, 2007). They discuss the development and adaptation of the Names unit and how their work around this theme transformed their classrooms into participatory communities of successful and highly motivated English learners.

Secondary English as a second language (ESL) curricula that address four levels of ESL proficiency and prepare students for the English language arts (ELA) curricula and state‐mandated ELA tests are not common. A curriculum jointly developed by two districts is even rarer. Yet two urban districts in Rhode Island undertook such a curriculum development effort that not only created and field‐tested a four‐level, standards‐based ESL curriculum but also developed a four‐subject newcomer curriculum for students with limited formal schooling. This article describes this innovative cross‐district curriculum development project and offers the design process as a model for educators seeking to align ESL standards with ELA standards. It also explains how district administrators pooled resources to provide cross‐district professional development to language and content teachers on effective academic literacy practices for English language learners.

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