Moving Beyond for Multilingual Learners: The Blog

 **This is the 3rd part in the #LoveOurLanguages campaign series!** Click here to read Part One.   Click here to read Part Two . You've made it to Part Three! Now that we've had time to have conversations with students and teachers about languages present in our lives, and we've discussed ways to actively incorporate languages inside of our learning spaces and schools, you may be wondering what's next!  This post will help us to start thinking beyond the walls of our schools. After we have posted our languages in the hallways, take a moment to notice what happens the next time we invite families into the building.  I'll never forget when I attended an event after one school participated and displayed their posters outside of their classroom doors. I watched as a father took his son's hand after exiting their classroom. He paused to look at the languages on the poster, and he nodded. Then they turned to exit the building, but the poster across the hall caught his

 I *loved* cheerleading. I loved the choreography, the energy, the teamwork, the Friday night lights, the competitions, and the stunting.  When I was in college, I was a flyer on my squad and I loved every second. However, there were moments were certain stunts scared me. I didn't think I had the right timing, the right skill, or the right strength to test out new tosses.  My coaches were always so encouraging. They prepped me by helping me to scaffold my skills (did any other flyers practice their one-legged stunts on cinderblocks or park benches?) and built stunt up progressions over time with my stunt groups. Even with the scaffolding and the progressions, I of course was not able to stick all my stunts.  There were moments that I had some nasty falls. There were moments that led teammates to black eyes or bloody noses. There were moments were I went to the ER for an injury- a tear, an x-ray, a brace, or a shiny new pair of crutches.  What I remember most is the times where I wo

 **This is Part Two in a multi-part series on creating a #LoveOurLanguages campaign in your school or district! Please check out Part One by clicking here .** By now, you (hopefully) have several posters on classroom doors around your school. How exciting! Teachers have led conversations with students about languages that we have present in our classrooms, and students have started to become more aware of the languages all around them!  What next? Now is the perfect time for us to start taking some actions, one of which is to start conversations with colleagues and teammates about how to actively incorporate heritage language usage into our day .  Wait! Don't panic! You don't have to be multilingual in order to do this! By exploring various ways to do this, you are demonstrating the value and respect you have for languages of those you serve - which is powerful and goes a long way in modeling linguistic appreciation, respect, and validation. You may wish to start with a classr

**This is Part 1 of a series! Stay tuned for the next post to continue this work! I would like to personally thank Clara Vaz Bauler for her thoughtful collaboration and insightful feedback in this piece, which helps me (and all of us) move from passive "appreciation" to intentional action in our classroom spaces, so that we can better serve our students, families, and communities! Follow her on Twitter! ** A few years ago, I was wondering about all the ways to invite conversations about how many languages are present in our classrooms. Generally, the EL or Multilingual Learner teacher has stacks of papers that indicate all students' home or heritage languages - but does the rest of the school staff? How about the students? In a country of anti-immigrant and English-only rhetoric, it is important that we are intentional about honoring students' identities by acknowledging, recognizing, and celebrating their languages.  Let us begin by having conversations with our stu

On my old (deleted) blog, I wrote a post about whether or not speaking into a device is "authentic." I received a lot of responses, representing a full spectrum of thoughts. These thoughts included statements like, "The only true communication is face to face," and also "today's world requires students to speak into screens." What say you? I’ve heard many educators express worry that students haven’t grown in the speaking domain on annual language assessments, so it’s important to have discussions about how often students have the chance to actually speak across their instructional day. Not only do we want to increase opportunities for students to build oracy, but we want to be strategic about what this entails:  *Who are they speaking with- a peer, a small group, a device, an adult? Sometimes, speaking opportunities are informal (casual classroom discussion) while other times, a speaking task may feel more formal (delivering a report, for example). Wh

 Recently, I came across Trevor Muir's blog post on the power of positive phone calls home . I absolutely loved this read and it reiterated how important these phone calls truly are to families.  You can click here to follow him on Twitter. As we look at disproportionalities in education, we can recognize that students of color are more often receiving disciplinary referrals than their white peers. While not all multilingual families are families of color, it's critical that we pay attention to these statistics and analyze these in our school settings.  We recognize the power of a phone call, but how many of those phone calls are provided in a student's heritage or home language? We always must advocate for language access for families, and we have civil rights laws that ensure families receive critical school information in a home language- however, how do we deem whether or not a piece of information is critical? We don't want to skip over opportunities to connect in