Students with Interrupted Formal Education: Bridging Where They Are and What They Need

New hope for our most vulnerable English learners

"One of the guiding principles of effective English language teaching is for educators to know their students. And that in a nutshell captures the value of this book. . . . The compassion that Custodio and O’Loughlin feel for our SIFE students, the commitment they have to educating them well, and the comprehension they have of the assets these learners bring to the classroom are evident in the writing, tools, and vignettes they share."

-Deborah J. Short

Under the best of circumstances, the academic demands of today’s classrooms can be daunting to our English learners. But for the tens of thousands of newly arrived students with interrupted formal education, even the social challenges can be outright overwhelming. 

Rely on this all-in-one guide from Brenda Custodio and Judith O’Loughlin for expert insight on how to build the skills these students need for success in school and beyond. Inside you’ll find

• Essential background on factors leading to interrupted education
• Specific focus on refugee children and Latino immigrants
• Guidance on building internal resilience for long-term social and emotional health
• Recommendations for creating supportive environments at the classroom, school, and district level

About one thing, Brenda and Judith are absolutely convinced: our SIFE students can learn and make progress, often at a remarkable speed.  But it’s up to us, their educators, to provide the time, attention, and a specific focus. Consider this book your first step forward.

Dr. Brenda Custodio is retired from Columbus City Schools (Ohio) where she served as a middle and high school ESL teacher, a district-level coach for secondary ESL teachers, and a building administrator of a newcomer secondary academy. She worked with the school district to help establish a newcomer program for middle and high school students with a large refugee population, most of whom had limited prior schooling.

Dr. Custodio developed the program for use by Ohio State University to train alternative license candidates through a federal grant and served as a coach for several years for the teachers enrolled in the program. She has served as an educational consultant for several school districts in Ohio, and has worked as a teacher trainer for the Ohio Department of Education on the topics of refugee education and unaccompanied minors. She has developed curriculum and programming for both high school and adult refugee students with limited home language literacy.

Her professional responsibilities have included president and conference chair of Ohio TESOL, chair of the Secondary Schools Interest Section and the Refugee Concerns Interest Section of TESOL, Inc., and membership on the international Professional Development Committee. She has been awarded the Winston Churchill Traveling Fellowship Grant to visit Australia, The Moira McKenzie Literacy Grant to work with Dr. Gay Su Pennell, and is a five-time recipient of the Ameritech Impact II Grant. She received the Ohio TESOL Outstanding Achievement Award twice, and also the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award by the same organization.

She is currently preparing pre-service and in-service teachers at the Ohio State University to work in second language classrooms. As a frequent presenter at both the state and national level, she has presented on the topics of: literacy development for adolescents, unique needs of refugee students, culturally diverse classrooms, newcomer programming, and students with interrupted formal education. Her first book on the topic of Newcomers has led to site visits in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, Florida, Minnesota, Washington, California, Texas, Ohio, and Toronto, Ontario.



Judith B. O′Loughlin, an independent education consultant, has twenty-five years experience as an English, ESL, and special education teacher. She has taught ESL at K-12, adult education, and graduate levels in university endorsement programs in NJ, MO, MA, KS, and OH. She is currently a bilingual/ESL eCoach for pre-service candidates for The Ohio State University “Transition to Teaching” grant.

While teaching in New Jersey, Judith worked as a consultant with the New Jersey Department of Education, Office of Bilingual/ESL Education on standards and assessment for English learners, developed a draft of ESL/ELA Standards, low incidence ESL programming and instruction, and providing inservice sessions throughout the state about sheltered instruction for ELs in mainstream classrooms.

As an independent consultant, Judith focuses on standards-based curriculum, instructional strategies, differentiated instruction, addressing the needs of newcomers, formative assessment, and collegial collaboration for ESL and mainstream co- teaching. Recently, Judith was an invited presenter at the 2014 TESOL Academy in Columbus Ohio, June 20-21, 2014 and Stockton University, NJ on June 19-20, 2015. For the latter program, she worked with 25 visiting linguistic professors from Pakistan. Her topic focused on ELL Writing and Formative Assessment. She is a certified WIDA Consultant in Standards and Assessment, as well as a Pearson SIOP Certified Trainer.

Ms. O’Loughlin previously served on the NJTESOL-NJBE Executive Board as President, and currently serves on both the CATESOL Board of Directors as Conference Services Coordinator and Advocacy, as well as the CATESOL Education Foundation as Vice-President. She is also the 2015-2017 Chair of the TESOL Standards Professional Council.

Ms. O’Loughlin was the 2015 CATESOL Sadae Iwataki Service Award recipient and the one of the TESOL “50 at 50” recognized leaders in the field, as nominated by her peers. She has previously received the 2003 Seton Hall University, Multicultural Education Teacher of the Year and the 2001 NJTESOL-NJBE Leadership Award.