Culturally Sustaining Mindset
3 takeaways to apply to classrooms/schools
I wrote Centering Multilingual Learners: An Essential How-to Guide for Secondary Teachers based on my stories, lived experiences, and observations in secondary schools across the country. I wanted to provide a guide that was based on research but super applicable and concise. Today, I want to share three takeaways from the book's first chapters. I hope they contain some gems you can use during this pushback against MLs and public schooling.
I’d love to know your thoughts.
Here are three foundational principles with applications for the school and classrooms.
1. Culturally Sustaining Mindset
Integrate Students’ Languages and Cultures into the Curriculum: Go beyond acknowledging diversity—actively incorporate students’ home languages, cultural practices, and histories into lessons. For example, invite students to share stories, traditions, or community knowledge as part of classroom discussions.
Encourage Translanguaging: Allow and encourage students to use all their linguistic resources to support their learning. This could mean writing bilingual responses, discussing in their home language before sharing in English, or using multilingual classroom labels.
Center Student Identities: Give students opportunities to see themselves in the curriculum through books, case studies, and projects that reflect their backgrounds. Let students choose topics relevant to their cultures for research and presentations.
2. Creating Welcoming Learning Spaces
Use Culturally Responsive Materials: Incorporate books, videos, and assignments reflecting students' cultural backgrounds and experiences.
Scaffold Instruction for MLs: Use visuals, graphic organizers, sentence frames, and hands-on activities to support comprehension.
Build Relationships & Promote Belonging: Greet students in their home languages, learn about their cultural traditions and create a classroom culture where every student’s voice is valued.
3. Advocacy For Belonging
Support Fair Access to Resources: Recommend that MLs to be placed in rigorous coursework with proper scaffolding rather than being tracked into lower-level classes.
Collaborate with Families: Communicate with families in their preferred language and invite them to share their cultural knowledge in the classroom.
Push for Systemic Change: Speak up about school policies that may unintentionally marginalize MLs and push for professional development opportunities focused on best practices for ML instruction.
*I now offer school workshops for secondary teachers focusing on Multilingual Learner support. Please email me through my website:
marileecoles-ritchie.com
Here’s the link to the book to get more details:
