Marco Huerta shares four moves that reached every multilingual student in one semester
The Rosetta Stone carried the same decree in three distinct written languages. It still took scholars roughly 20 years to work out what it said.
One credit recovery teacher got a shorter deadline and a longer set of instructions. Her state had just handed down a requirement to support up to 23 languages.
She brought the list to Marco Huerta, our Head of Engineering at Subject, who spent decades writing software for ticketing companies, dating apps and, at one point, Oprah (We just HAD to name drop that in…). He now runs our seven-person engineering team, still writes code himself and visits classrooms up to six times a month.
Thanks to all this, Marco knows educators, their strengths and their needs. “Nobody speaks 23 languages,” he says.
He was right. The requirement showed up anyway. And the multilingual students behind the requirement were already in that credit recovery teacher’s room, waiting on a lesson they could actually read.
Key takeaways:
- With Subject, students can learn in their home language and submit graded work in English, so teachers can grade without speaking that language.
- Reading level is a separate setting from language, and a third of U.S. eighth graders scored below NAEP Basic in reading in 2024.
- 69% of U.S. high schools had trouble filling an ESL or bilingual vacancy with a certified teacher heading into 2024-25.
Hiring was never going to fix this
That mandate is the loud problem sitting in every classroom in the country. About 5.3 million public school students were classified as English learners in fall 2021, roughly 10.6% of total enrollment. Together, students learning English speak more than 400 languages at home.
Hiring your way out sounds reasonable until you check the job board. Heading into the 2024-25 school year, 69% of high schools reported trouble filling a single ESL or bilingual vacancy with a fully certified teacher. No district is posting 23 listings and filling all of them by Thanksgiving.
Behind each of those languages was a student who needed to understand the lesson in front of them. Two seats over sits a student who speaks fluent English and reads several grades below the worksheet. A state decree just made one version of the problem loud enough to put on letterhead.
Students don’t have just one setting
Language support sits in the foundation of Marco’s platform, built long before any state letter arrived. Courses get rebuilt in each language, text and video together. “All of the videos are lip-synced in each localized language,” he says, which puts students closer to a well-dubbed show than a wall of subtitles.
That handles one setting. Language tells you what a student can understand. It says nothing about what that student can read, or how the lesson reaches them once they can read it. Every student walks in with all three “settings” already set, and language is the only one states write memos about.
Four Moves for the Students Left Out
Step 1: Teach in their language, grade in yours
Thanks to the work of our engineering team, Subject allows students and teachers to work together and understand each other. A student takes the instruction in the language they think in, then completes the graded work in English.
“A teacher will say, hey, this is your native language, take the course in your native language… but come back to the English course. So it’s almost like they’re doing both, but only the English course is being graded,” Marco says.
The teacher never has to speak another language to grade the assignment. The student gets understood and still gets held to the same standard as everyone else, which matters when state assessments come around.
Step 2: Check reading level separately
A student can follow a lesson in a language and still read well below where that lesson is pitched. Grade level and reading level are two different numbers, and they drift apart more often than anyone plans for.
“I might be in sixth grade, but my reading level is at the fourth grade level because I never really did reading,” Marco says.
That gap is not rare. A third of eighth graders scored below basic in reading in 2024, the largest share in the 32 years NAEP has tested it. Reading level also shifts between languages, so a student at sixth grade in English might sit somewhere else entirely in Spanish. Set both settings, separately.
Step 3: Give them a second way in
Some students need the material delivered a different way before it sticks. Subject’s Homework Helper covers that. “It’s an AI tutor where they can ask questions, or can ask it to explain a concept. There’s an ‘explain this’ feature where you can highlight things and then explain them, or read aloud or translate it to this other language,” Marco says.
He also flagged something worth a teacher’s attention. Adults love this tool. Students use it less. “I don’t know that it’s being used as much by students. They’re the ones that should benefit from it,” Marco says.
Point students to it directly. A feature nobody mentions is a feature nobody opens.
Step 4: Let the platform do the adjusting
Marco’s team is building toward instruction that shifts based on how a student learns, not just what language they speak. “Maybe my instruction looks different than that of my friend, maybe because I like to read more,” he says. That version is still on the way, so treat it as a question to ask rather than a setting to flip.
Teachers rarely sit in the meeting where a platform gets chosen. Whoever does should hear the question from you first. Ask whether a platform notices how a student learns or hands every student the same lesson and hopes. “We can’t have one solution that solves the needs for everyone. It has to adapt,” Marco says.
Nobody waited to be understood
A large new language requirement usually means students sit and wait while a district hunts for bilingual staff. With Subject, those students got instruction in a language they understood, starting that semester. “We can add support in a matter of days,” Marco says (as opposed to weeks, months, or years).
That speed came from building for the question years before anyone asked. “You really have to make sure that you build it with the future in mind… like with the ability to add more languages down the line,” Marco says.
The part that never scaled was choosing which students got real instruction and which ones got a worksheet and good luck. Now, that choice goes away. “You have to look towards a platform for that support,” Marco says.
This leaves the teacher free to do the work a platform was never going to do anyway.
“We’re not here to replace teachers,” Marco says. “We’re here to make teachers’ lives better.”
Teachers should never have to choose which students get real instruction and which ones get a worksheet. See what Subject looks like in your district.
FAQs
How do teachers support students who speak a language they don’t?
Teachers can use a platform that delivers the same course in each student’s language while keeping graded work in English. Subject’s Head of Engineering Marco Huerta says courses get rebuilt language by language, with videos lip-synced, so no staff member has to speak all of them.
What is the difference between grade level and reading level?
Grade level is the class a student is enrolled in. Reading level is how hard a text that student can actually read. The two often differ by years, and reading level also shifts between a student’s languages, so both get set separately.
Why isn’t hiring bilingual teachers enough for multilingual classrooms?
Hiring cannot scale to the number of languages in most districts. 69% of U.S. high schools reported trouble filling one ESL or bilingual vacancy with a certified teacher in 2024-25. A state requiring 23 languages cannot fill 23 roles in a semester.
How does an AI tutor help multilingual students?
An AI tutor explains a concept a second way, reads text aloud or translates a highlighted passage. Marco Huerta says adults use Subject’s Homework Helper more than students do, so teachers should point students to it directly.