Diana Scalera
is the director of the film.
She has been a Spanish teacher in the New York City public schools
for more than 13 years.
She has worked with many different language groups to help them maintain
and enrich the languages that their families speak.
She is one of the principal authors of Teaching Heritage
Learners: Voices from the Classroom.
Lillian Farhat, a content advisor for the film, has been an
Arabic teacher and coordinator of the Arabic program in the Department of
Africana Studies at Rutgers University for the past 20 years.
Her current area of study is the
interrelationship between different colloquial forms of language.
Suad Mohamed, a content advisor for the film, is an adjunct lecturer in
Arabic at City College, CUNY and at the United Nations Arabic language
program for diplomats and staff members.
Suad has two children who are heritage learners of Arabic.
Jamal Farhat is the film’s cinematographer and an award-winning
Lebanese documentarian.
Among his previous films are Children and the War and
There is Life Behind the Barricades
which document what he witnessed as a photojournalist in Lebanon
during its civil war.
Dr. John Webb is the Director of the Program in Teacher Preparation at
Princeton University. He conceptualized and co-edited
Teaching Heritage Language Learners: Voices from the Classroom.
Dr. Webb and his work were the inspiration for this film.