Meet Our Team
English Learner Portal's professional development team is top notch! With extensive experience in many aspects of public education, the English Learner Portal team brings the best of current research, best practices, legal requirements, program management, and practical experience. Most of the English Learner Portal team is still employed by a public school system (even our founder), making their knowledge current, relevant, and responsive to the changing needs and demands of the classroom.
Kelly Reider, Founder
Kelly has 30 years of experience in public education settings including consultant, ESL district program coordinator, school administrator, instructional specialist, & teacher. She is an international workshop facilitator, former WIDA Certified Facilitator, a recipient of the TESOL ELT Leadership Management Certificate, and a National Board Certified Early Childhood Generalist. She provides consulting and professional development services in all aspects of instruction, language development, program evaluation, curriculum development, & system level program planning. Kelly holds a Master's degree in Instructional Systems Development & certification in Elementary Education, Spanish, ESOL, & School Administration.
Learn more about Kelly's signature course View Kelly's vlogs
Katie Davis
Katie serves as Administrative Coordinator for English Learner Portal. She is your go to person for logins, passwords, digital credentials, grad credits, and enrollment questions. Katie has over 20 years administrative experience in both public and private sectors. She has supported Title I schools as well as special education students.
Adriana Brown
Amy Kines
Amy Kines brings 30 years of experience as a classroom teacher, staff developer, and instructional specialist to her company, Ready Aim Teach, in Rockville, MD. In addition to achieving both National Board Certification and a Masters in School Administration from John’s Hopkins, Amy is thrilled to be able to impact teaching and learning on a broader scale. Amy’s unwavering passion for active learning and student engagement permeates every project as she supports teachers, schools, and districts across the country.
Learn more about Amy's courseBeth Skelton
Beth has 30 years of experience as a language educator. She has worked with early childhood, elementary, middle, high school and adult language learners in rural, urban, suburban, and international school settings. She is an active board member of CoTESOL (Colorado Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages). She has published materials for teaching adult English Learners with the TPRS method entitled Putting it Together. She holds a Master’s Degree in Multicultural Teacher Education and certification in German and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education. https://bethskelton.com/
Learn more about Beth's "Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals" course
Brenda Custodio
Dr. Brenda Custodio is a former secondary ESL teacher, a district-level resource teacher, and building administrator with Columbus City Schools in Ohio. She helped to create the newcomer program and the sheltered content courses for secondary level SIFE learners for the district. She is a frequent presenter at both the state and national level on topics of literacy development, refugee resettlement, newcomer programs, trauma-informed strategies for immigrants, and SIFE. She has written three professional books.
Farhana Shah
Farhana N. Shah holds a M. Ed with a focus in administration along with several teaching certifications. She has over 20 years of teaching in the classroom, leading teams, evaluating teachers, and providing staff development.
Farhana has delivered training and community outreach internationally as a U.S. Speaker and Specialist, a program funded by the U.S. Department of State. She also delivered several thought-provoking presentations to Smithsonian Associates and is currently a consultant. Farhana has authored several articles on Islam and Muslims, including a feature article for NJEA’s magazine, The Review, and has contributed a short story titled, “My Journey After the Hijab” in an anthology called, Mirror in the Veil.
Learn more about Farhana's course - COMING SOON
Frank Bonkowski
Frank has over 30 years of experience writing English language teaching materials, creating e-courses, and teaching English language at university, college, and high school levels. Frank teaches at Cégep de Saint-Laurent in Montreal, Canada. He has co-authored nine textbooks and consulted on many projects with publishers and e-learning companies. Frank is a course developer for ELP.
Learn more about Frank's course View a vlog
Judith O'Loughlin
Judith B. O’Loughlin, M.Ed., a former New Jersey K-8 ESL and special education teacher, works with K–12 teachers, providing professional development on newcomers, SIFE, sheltered differentiated instruction, and intervention tiers for students at risk. She has taught graduate-level TESOL endorsement courses. She is a frequent presenter at TESOL, NABE, CABE, and CATESOL. Her publications include the Academic Language Accelerator and chapters in three edited books.
Dr. Karen Woodson
Dr. Woodson is a retired Principal of a high-English learner enrollment Title 1 elementary school. A veteran in public education with over 35 years of service as a teacher, instructional specialist and district wide EL Program Director, Dr. Woodson focuses on creating equitable conditions for English learners in schools, English learner centered school improvement strategies, and Baldrige guided strategic planning. Dr. Woodson is the founder of Leading for School Improvement.
Laura Gardner
Laura has 17 years of experience working in public education, refugee resettlement, and social work. While in public education, she worked as a district level manager for immigrant family and community engagement as well as a school social worker. Laura also worked for Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services (BRYCS) managing their national technical assistance initiative to federal Refugee School Impact Grantees. Laura holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Education. She is a course developer and professional development facilitator for ELP. https://www.immigrantsrefugeesandschools.org/
Learn more about Laura's 5 hour courses Learn more about Laura's 15 hr course View a vlogMiaAriela Allen
Mia graduated with an EdS in Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment, focused on English Language Learning programming for new arrival students that have timed-out or dropped-out of a traditional secondary school model. Mia earned her Masters in Elementary Education with a focus on Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. Mia then went on to study at the University of Colorado-Boulder focused on bilingual special education. Mia is a content developer and workshop facilitator for ELP.
View Mia's ELP Colorado Professional Development Project
Natasha Quiroga, Esq.
Natasha has spent the past 20 years advocating for immigrant children, youth, and families as a lawyer, fundraiser, and executive director. Most recently, she was Director of the Parental Readiness and Empowerment Program (PREP) and Senior Counsel in the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Natasha served as the first full-time Executive Director of Escuela Bolivia (now Educación Para Nuestro Futuro) in Arlington, Virginia. Natasha received her J.D. from American University Washington College of Law and a Master's in International Politics from American University School of International Service.
Learn more about the Legal Journey Pathway
Rachel Ross
Rachel has 20 years of experience working in public education in Florida & Maryland. She has worked as a teacher specialist, literacy coach, mentor teacher, elementary & ESL teacher, ELD curriculum writer K-12, model unit author for the Maryland State Department of Education both in Language Arts & STEM. Rachel holds a Master’s degree in Leadership in TESOL and certification in Elementary Education, Administration, and ESL. Rachel is a workshop facilitator and content developer for ELP.
Ruslana Westerlund
Ruslana Westerlund, Ed.D., has a Master’s in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Bohdan Khmelnytskiy Cherkassy National University and Doctorate in Education. She is an associate researcher in WIDA’s Research and Development Division. Previously, Ruslana worked as an ELD Specialist at K-12, teacher preparation programs at undergraduate and graduate levels and served as an ELD and refugee student specialist at the Minnesota Department of Education. She is also an adjunct faculty member teaching courses in the ESL/bilingual licensure programs in several universities. Ruslana is a course developer for ELP.
Learn more about Ruslana's course View a vlog
Sarah Said
Sarah is a former Director of English Learning and teacher leader in the suburbs of Chicago. She has been an advocate, writer, speaker, and constant learner about English learners for over a decade. Sarah is a course developer for ELP.
Learn more about Sarah's course View a vlogSavanna Flakes
Savanna Flakes is an international education consultant specializing in Inclusive Practices, Special Education, and Social Emotional Learning. Savanna has worked with school communities around the world to build teacher leaders and support effective instructional practices for students with exceptionalities. Savanna has served as a Division-Wide Technology Specialist, Inclusion Coach, and Professional Learning Manager. She is also a Professor at American University, training teachers on best practices to reach and teach learners with exceptionalities.
Susan Zimmerman-Orozco
While Susan has retired as an active member of our professional development team, she continues to support the English Learner Portal community. Check out her new adventure as an author of the young adult novel, Hear My Words, about a newcomer finding her voice in a new culture.
Download Susan's first ebook!Tan Huynh
Tan (@TanKHuynh) is a career teacher, consultant, and author specializing in language acquisition and literacy development. Tan has taught students from 5th to 10th grade in public, private, charter, and international schools. He has served as a language specialist and is currently a secondary social studies teacher. Tan shares teaching strategies on his blog and podcast with the hopes of celebrating teachers who answer the call to serve multilingual learners.
Tan's Teacher Collaboration Pathway The Secondary Learner Pathway with Tan & Kelly
"I love this (vlog) so much! Just sent it out to all the content supervisors, who will be sharing it in their beginning of year newsletters! A few things...the bilingual Thinking Verb Place Mats are a huge hit! Will be ordering more soon. We had our big county-wide Literacy Conference yesterday, and I presented along with one of my ESOL teachers that attended your workshop--she was able to share a couple of the strategies she learned from that workshop at the conference. 🙂 ...You guys are really great, Kelly. I am so thankful for English Learner Portal...you are providing exactly what we need!"
