WIDA Standards and Disciplinary Literacy Consultant
Email
Phone: 608.239.3396

Ruslana Westerlund, Ed.D., is a Ukrainian-born educational consultant, linguist, and author. She started her education in Ukraine in 1990 and continued in the United States by earning a doctorate in Educational Leadership from Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota in 2014. At CESA 2 she is a consultant in the Language & Culture Center of Excellence specializing in the WIDA ELD Standards implementation at various levels by creating online resources, materials, and courses. She works with educators on the use of Systemic Functional Linguistics within all content areas and classrooms K-12 so that all students have access to the state standards and disciplinary literacies. Her work brings to life in a very concrete way our CESA 2 equity mission statement with the state standards, learning for justice and learning for joy. Prior to CESA 2, she was a researcher and developer at WIDA where she contributed to the development of the 2020 edition of the WIDA ELD Standards. Her research is published in Journal of English Learner Education, MinneTESOL, ASCD, Language Magazine, and Routledge. Her most recent co-edited volume is Scaffolding for Multilingual Learners in Elementary and Secondary Schools. She has also authored From Borsch to Burgers: A Cross-cultural Memoir where she chronicled her journey from Ukraine to the US and the making of her transcultural Ukrainian-American identity.