Meet Team ABCDS&S

Team Biographies

Shawn Slakk

As the Founder and CLO of ABCDS&S Consulting, Shawn collaborates with teachers, administrators, school & state agencies to offer strategies and supports for multilinguals and their classmates: K-12 and adults. Shawn himself is a multilingual learner; Spanish & Japanese. He is an author, developer and facilitator of professional learning sessions centered on academic language, literacy, and content integration for teachers with multilingual classrooms. He along with Team ABCDS&S also offer sessions for the coaches and administrators who support instruction and learning. He has consulted with the Center for Applied Linguistics and WIDA. Shawn brings a wide understanding of a variety of strategies and how they relate to language and literacy acquisition as well as lesson delivery. He has served as a Spanish and ESL teacher at the elementary and middle school level. Additionally, Shawn has was a school, district, and state level administrator. His BA is a double major in English and Spanish. He earned an MA in English: TESOL and a second one in School Administration. His doctoral work in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Virginia focuses on post professional learning support and transfer of teacher learning into reading and writing lessons and implementation for teachers who serve multilingual learners.

Barbara Cohen

Barbara has been teaching multilingual learners for more than 30 years. Her career began in the Peace Corps in the Philippines. She herself is multilingual; Hebrew, Japanese, and Spanish. Barbara has works with all ages and grade levels in various settings, from higher education to public education, in the US and abroad. Barbara also participated in the Massachusetts RETELL initiative at the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. She assisted in the creation, roll out, and training of trainers of RETELL – a professional development course designed to bring multilingual learning best practices to core content teachers and administrators across Massachusetts. Barbara currently serves as the Director of English Learners with Nantucket Public Schools.

Joy Kreeft Peyton

Joy is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), where she served as Vice President for 16 years. She has over 30 years of experience working in the filed of languages, linguistics, and culture in education.

Michael Lefko

Amy Sherman

More team bios and team member pix are on the way. If you have questions for or would like to speak with one of our consultants, email Shawn at shawn@abcd2sco.com and he’ll pass along your message.