Jane D. Hill, a lead consultant for Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL), has worked in the areas of second language acquisition and special education for 25 years and consults and trains nationally with teachers and administrators. Prior to joining McREL, Jane worked as a Speech/Language Specialist for 13 years specializing in bilingual special education. She directed a two-way language school for three years and served as district director for second language acquisition and special education for seven years. She earned her BA from Simpson College in Iowa in theater arts/speech and her MS from Colorado State University in communication disorders. She has recently written for Language Magazine and contributed to the second edition of the CD-ROM, Making Schools Work for Every Child (Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education, 2005). Jane also conducts training in Teaching Reading in the Content Areas and Classroom Instruction That Works. She can be contacted at jhill@mcrel.org.

Kathleen M. Flynn is a senior consultant at McREL, where she shares management responsibilities for McREL's regional educational laboratory contract. In this position, she is responsible for helping McREL staff write and revise laboratory publications. Most recently, she cowrote (with Jane Hill) a resource guide titled English Language Learner Resource Guide: A Guide for Rural Districts with a Low Incidence of ELLs (McREL, 2004). This document was based on McREL's recent work with a rural Wyoming school district that has encountered a growing number of ELLs in its student population.

Prior to joining McREL, Kathleen spent seven years as a practicing attorney and also worked as an elementary school teacher. She received a BA cum laude in English and philosophy from Mount Holyoke College in 1985 and a JD from Northwestern University School of Law in 1994, and she is currently on track to receive an MA in educational psychology from the University of Colorado in 2006. She can be contacted at kflynn@mcrel.org.