Melissa Paton
Professional Development Outreach Specialist
Melissa Paton is passionate about creating educational equity for English language learners which is why she has found a home at WIDA. Her fifteen years of teaching experience have been devoted to working solely with students with diverse linguistic backgrounds and to helping all teachers build their capacity for developing students' language acquisition. Her interest stems from an upbringing in a multi-lingual home where she developed an interest in language, culture and social justice at an early age.
Melissa holds degrees from UC San Diego and Edgewood College in Literature, English as a Second Language and Bilingual Education. She is a professed math geek and enjoys working with general education teachers in particular to address differentiation and scaffolding for language growth within content areas.
Her focus at WIDA is to bring the WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards to life in the classroom. She also works closely with the FLARE project and is delighted to be in the forefront of creating avenues for formative language assessment.
When not at WIDA, you can find her on the dance floor, spinning to a salsa beat and keeping her Spanish skills sharp, or playing with her bilingual chocolate lab.
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