About me

Education helps us ask the questions to engage every challenge with possibilities.

Karen Nickel

I am a consultant and coach specializing in multilingual learner instruction, with a focus on eliciting, assessing, discussing, reporting, and providing feedback on language performance in proficiency-based learning environments. I am employed as an adjunct instructor in education at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, where I instruct Clinical Experience Seminars and work with teacher candidates getting their student teaching experience. I am also a teaching specialist at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where I have instructed Curriculum and Planning for Multilingual Learners, and am currently instructing Testing and Assessment for Multilingual Learners in the grow-your-own teachers (MNGOT) program for ESL and WL teaching licensure candidates. I serve as an ACTFL workshop facilitator and am co-author of the ACTFL publication Learner Feedback for Language Growth. I have 35+ years’ teaching experience, mostly as an educator of German language and culture and of English for learners becoming bi- or multilingual. I served as the World Languages Curriculum Coordinator for Wayzata Public Schools (Plymouth, MN), and as the 2021 President of the Minnesota Council on the Teaching of Languages and Cultures (MCTLC), and I continue to serve as an Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®) Qualified Administrator. Passionate about my work with educators in a variety of districts and diverse situations, I am an advocate for equitable grading, multiple pathways to learning, and am optimistic about the role education plays in addressing social justice issues.