My Name, My Identity: McGraw-Hill and NABE

NEW YORK – March 3, 2016 – McGraw-Hill, a learning science company, today announced partnership with the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) to support their “My Name, My Identity” campaign, as part of a collaboration with the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE). The campaign seeks to raise awareness of the importance of properly pronouncing each individual student’s name, thereby respecting one’s identity while building an inclusive and caring school environment that values diversity. McGraw-Hill is the founding educational partner in the campaign and has initiated its support with a monetary donation for NABE’s work around policies, programs, research, pedagogy and professional development for bilingual and multilingual students and teaching.

To advance this cause and inspire action, the My Name, My Identity campaign is encouraging educators, students and communities to pledge their promise to properly pronounce every student’s name and has a goal of securing one million pledges by February 2017.

“NABE’s mission to promote educational equality and excellence for bilingual and multilingual students aligns with one of our core values – to keep the learner, including English learners, at the heart of everything we do.” said Christine Willig, president of McGraw-Hill's PreK-12 group. “At McGraw-Hill we empower great teaching, and learning how to pronounce and value students’ names is just another critically important way of building a positive teaching and learning culture that is founded on respect.”

“I started the My Name, My Identity campaign based on my own personal experiences,” said Yee Wan, NABE president and director of multilingual education services at SCCOE. “Mispronouncing a student’s name truly negates his or her identity, which, in turn, can hinder academic progress. We need to revitalize our commitment to English learners, and that’s why we are excited to be working with a leading education company like McGraw-Hill to help raise awareness for this important issue.”

McGraw-Hill's support for NABE underscores the company’s overall commitment to diversity, demonstrated through a number of community programs supported annually, as well as recruiting efforts and employee resource groups that promote a diverse, inclusive workplace. We are committed to providing appropriate learning scaffolds across all curriculum areas to help students learn academic language and increase their proficiency. For example, in K-6, McGraw-Hill offers core programs such as Maravillas, a Spanish Language Arts program that supports students as they become bilingual and biliterate.