Pang Yang

(she/her/they)

Teacher and co-creator of Hmong for Native Speakers courses

Pang’s journey: spent 19 years as an English as a Second Language teacher. She started at Minneapolis Public Schools before coming to Osseo Area Schools, where she’s been since 2003. When Pang began at Park Center, she taught upper level EL courses, collaborating with history teachers for years and even integrating lessons on the Hmong Secret War into a unit on the Vietnam War. It was then the opportunity for Hmong for Native Speakers opened up.

A similar course, Spanish for Native Speakers, was already underway. Hmong students saw the opportunity available to their peers and asked, “What about us?” Pang answered, “If you’re willing to work, we can do anything.”

A group of a half-dozen Hmong students took initiative, organizing several parent meetings and later a large community meeting with parents, students, and important stakeholders like school board members and school department heads. At the meeting, students and parents shared the need for more programs to support Hmong students in Osseo Area Schools, second in the state only to Saint Paul Public Schools for the size of its Hmong student population. They expressed the need for students to discover who they are and develop their identity, language, and culture.

After the meeting, Pang’s English Language Coordinator, Kiersten Nicholson, said to her, “Let’s write a course proposal.” The year after, they wrote a proposal for year two, year three, and year four. Now, nearly 40% of all Hmong students at Park Center are enrolled in the course.

Bio: Pang Yang is a dedicated multilingual veteran teacher and the mother of seven children. Her 20+ years of K-12 classroom experience includes the teaching of English Language Learners and Hmong Heritage Language Learners. Her expertise is in Personalize Learning, amplifying student voices in language classrooms and creating civic engagement opportunities to allow students, families, and community experts to thrive as they use language in authentic settings. Pang is a powerhouse who takes on the roles of a counselor, cultural navigator, parent educator, grant writer, event coordinator, and an advocate for students of color. She is an active member of the Coalition of Asian American Leaders, a visionary of Project Tshav Ntuj, and serves on several school/community committees, and the co-convenor of the National Coalition of Hmong Teachers. Pang is MN Council on the Teaching of Languages and Cultures 2019 Teacher of the Year. She holds a B.A.from Concordia University and a Masters of Arts in English as a Second Language from Hamline University.

Jenna Cushing-Leubner

(she/her/they)

Assistant Professor | World Languages Education (Licensure Coordinator) | Heritage Language Education |
at UW – Whitewater

After over a decade of working in various ESL and Heritage Language settings around the world, Dr. Jenna Cushing-Leubner’s dissertation on developing a “heritage language”curriculum for students who speak Spanish at home opened up the doors for her collaboration with Hmong language teachers. For years, Hmong language teachers have worked in silo. The opportunity to create a pathway for Hmong language teachers to grow professionally in their expertise area, teachers creating Hmong language and culture units with elders, artists, in the community to civically engaged students and the community that allows for units to be open access to the community, and community-based Hmong Language Standards creation is just a few innovated ideas of what has been transpired in the last few years.

Bio: Dr. Jenna Cushing-Leubner is an Assistant Professor in World, Heritage, and Bilingual Education at University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, where she coordinates World Language licensure and developed a fully online Heritage Language Education Certificate program. She has ten years experience with community-based, participatory action and design research. Her primary research connects variable power dynamics to infrastructural changes in order to transform educational experiences to better serve multilingual children of color and increase the number of multilingual teachers of color with the skills and knowledge to teach in ways that are connected to community, sustain and strengthen multilingualism, and promote intraethnic studies. She serves as a university partner for the Hmong Educators Coalition, as part of the Lub Zej Zog Hmong Education Project. Since 2018, Lub Zej Zog has brought together nearly 50 Hmong educators, artists, and community experts to map educational strengths and desires, develop culturally and linguistically sustaining curriculum, and create community-developed and standards to guide Hmong language, literature, culture, and history teaching.