I chose my doctoral dissertation topic when I was a young teacher in El Barrio, New York City’s Spanish Harlem. I wanted to study the intersection between students’ linguistic and cultural identities and their academic success. Twenty years later, when I finally did my Ph.D., I found that students’ linguistic and cultural affirmation, through their interactions with adults who used their language and appreciated their background, led to a deeper sense of belonging to the school community (Sada, 2020; Walqui & van Lier, 2010). We know from research that the opposite is also true—students who sense a demand for assimilation commonly suffer the post-colonial trauma of being the lesser other, one who needs to disguise who they really are, to belong (Feinaur & Howard, 2014; Gandhi, 1998).
One of the questions I hear the most as I travel around the country supporting educators as director of Boston College’s Two-Way Immersion Network for Catholic Schools (TWIN-CS) is: “How am I supposed to use students’ language if I can only speak English?” Recognizing the majority of educators in our Catholic schools are monolingual English speakers, this article offers three strategies that teachers—especially English-only teachers—can use to capitalize on students’ linguistic and cultural assets, while enhancing learning and fostering belonging across classrooms and school communities: 1) create a multicultural and multilingual classroom environment; 2) include instructional multilingual and transcultural spaces; and 3) provide a culturally relevant library in every classroom.
1) Create a Multicultural and Multilingual Classroom Environment
Classroom environment refers to what one sees when entering a classroom, including the class walls, posters, signs, images and desk formation. The classroom environment is an ecosystem where the different classroom items and physical layout support student learning.
a) Word walls — Areas on the classroom walls where vocabulary and other key instruction are represented can be a great way to celebrate language. Typically, they are in English. In a multicultural and multilingual classroom environment, space on the wall is reserved for the different languages and cultures represented in the class. Walls in different languages communicate that all language representatives belong equally. There are several ways of crafting language-specific word walls dependent on students’ grade level. Students can post three-part pictionaries—papers divided into three containing the word in English, a drawing of the word and the word in students’ home language. Or they can post four corner dictionaries—four-part papers that include the word in both languages, an image and the definition or example. Other student-created walls include cognates—lists of words or word parts that sound and are written similarly in English (typically between Romance languages and English) or glossaries. Some walls can also include differences and similarities that students notice between their culture and other cultures during instruction time. Sometimes, students label drawings or diagrams in their own language, which can be displayed as part of those walls.
b) Labels and phrases — Object names and frequently used expressions written and posted in every language represented. Studies have demonstrated that this practice leads learners to understand that the same concept can use different names in different languages and that their capacity for vocabulary learning expands (Ghasemi, & Hashemi, 2011). Teachers typically point out these labels and printed expressions during classroom routines—instructional moments that through repetition have become well known to students creating a sense of security and comfort. Classroom routines, therefore, once mastered in English, lend themselves to be multilingual: greeting or counting in the languages represented in the class; the labels or printed expressions are used for support.
2) Promote Multilingual and Transcultural Instructional Spaces
Including instructional multilingual and multicultural spaces refers to meaningfully promoting times during instruction when multilingual students can make connections and teachers can model how to celebrate this ability. The following are some common ways teachers create belonging in instructional multilingual and multicultural spaces. The application of these practices depends on the age groups.
a) Language research — Teachers learn the main differences between the languages spoken by students and English. If teachers have Spanish-speaking students in their class, they learn that prefixes and suffixes in English and Spanish are the same (spelled and pronounced slightly differently). Another important finding in teachers’ language research can be a list of cognates for each of the languages represented, which are the false cognates—words that sound similarly in English and another language but do not mean the same; in Russian, for example, the word marker sounds like a Russian word for mail; and, in Spanish, the word for being pregnant, embarazada, is a false cognate of the word embarrassed. With non-Romance languages teachers may take a different approach. A teacher who does not know Arabic, for example, learns that while English and Spanish follow a subject-verb-object sentence structure (Romeo climbed to the balcony), Arabic does not. This equips teachers to know what to ask the Arabic and Spanish-speaking students, creating moments for language connections: “Farid, how do you say ‘Romeo climbed to the balcony’ in Arabic?… So how do you say to climb? Ah! English is different.”
b) Bilingual songs, dances, readings and greetings — Bilingual read-alouds are particularly helpful in these spaces. Teachers explain to students who are the characters or what is the setting of a story can refer to bilingual or students’ home-language texts to point out the characters and setting since teachers can refer to them without having to know and read the language.
c) Journals or posters — Studentcreated entries with their language connections. How the teacher and the classroom community respond to these connections is important; I have seen teachers select cognates detectives—students in charge of identifying cognates and ringing a bell when a cognate is used—so students can form a list of unit cognates on the wall or in their journals. Some teachers allow students to place a yellow card on their desk during the lesson, which means “I am slowing down to notice linguistic or cultural similarities and differences and I am writing them in my connections journal.” The incentive to later grade the journals or use them during student-parent-teacher conferences is typically sufficient to maintain student excitement and motivation as they utilize their multilingual and multicultural superpowers.
d) Short videos, texts, or diagrams with key explanations in students’ home languages — While the best way to build background knowledge in a second language is through experiences and hands-on activities with ample oral language opportunities (Alanís, Arreguín-Anderson, & Salinas-González, 2021), we should not underestimate the practicality of short videos or diagrams in students’ homelanguage, since these can give students a better understanding of difficult concepts before the group practices them in English. For example, when explaining “cause and effect,” teachers ask students who speak the same language to watch a short video explaining the concept in their home language. Later, during whole-class instruction, the teacher can say “cause and effect” in English and in students’ home languages.
3) Organize A Culturally Relevant Library
Many schools are expanding their libraries to include books that represent the languages and cultures that their students’ families represent. While this expansion is important, there are other ways to turn classroom and school libraries into culturally relevant libraries.
a) Libraries by topics — Book organization by common themes. Teachers who create culturally relevant libraries go beyond the obvious group or ethnic culture and pay attention to students’ interests, hobbies and fascinations. Research has shown that students read better and more when the texts they read are about topics that interest them. Students in a controlled-group study considered to be low-skilled readers were given texts on baseball, a topic they had great interest in. These students scored higher than high-skilled readers who knew little to no base-ball (cited by Wexler, 2020). School and classroom libraries that organize books solely by reading levels greatly reduce the students’ ability to choose topics that interest them.
b) Appreciation for diversity libraries — Libraries that include books in which students not only see themselves, but also encounter characters who affirm others’ ethnic and cultural identities, appreciate diversities, collaborate and promote a kinder world. Young minds and hearts are inspired to be loving when they see the fruits of these competencies brought to life in book stories.
We are the languages we speak and the cultures in which we are raised. When we foster the home/school language and culture connections and celebrate that ability, we are demonstrating through our actions that all students belong in our classroom with everything they are. As we renew our commitment to fostering a sense of belonging in our schools, I encourage readers to embrace our students and our families in their entirety and apply the strategies articulated here.
Elena Sada, Ph.D., is program director for Two-Way Immersion Network of Catholic Schools, Roche Center for Catholic Education, Lynch School of Education and Human Development, Boston College.
Elena Sada, Ph.D.sadae@bc.edu