Courtney Caouette just finished her Master’s in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL) at the University of Southern Maine. She teaches middle school integrated MLL/literacy and English Language Development in Maine. Last summer she conducted research on students’ spelling development and presented at the Northern New England TESOL conference in the fall. She has recently been invited to present her research at the TESOL International Conference Graduate/Doctoral Forum in Tampa, Florida this March. Her research is titled “Effective Word Work Interventions for the Multilingual Learner”. In this research, she explores hands on manipulatives that positively benefit middle school MLL students in their spelling development.