Which, if my experience is any indication, also makes engineers fairly poor advocates for education. I did not speak their language (initially), understand their approach to the problem, or know what the next steps would be.
+1 here, too.
This is why I became the go-to person with medical and with educational advocacy. My DH doesn't speak the language as a native in either instance. I was raised in a bilingual household w.r.t. education, so I know that stuff. I don't have to
think about translating.
If you're not a native speaker, you have to do some legwork up front to understand where the other players are coming from. Classroom teachers are generally there because they really care about children-- so resistance is often about ignorance, not malice.
