I think we as future teachers can help multilingual student be engaged by getting them to share their unique stories and perspectives. That way they can feel heard by their peers and teachers and then the other students can gain new, different perspectives that perhaps they have never heard of before. Also allowing room in the classroom for multiple languages, never telling kids that they must only speak english or whatever the language of instruction might be. We can also take the stigma away from them speaking other languages and make it a norm in the classroom rather than an outlier or an exception.
It would go a long way to integrating multilingual instructional strategies if we as teachers invite students to share words from their home languages with their classmates and explain wwhat it means. Over time, students and teachers learn a new collection of words in different languages. Or perhaps teachers can display words in other languages in the classroom, making the environment more inclusive in general for multilanguage speakers. Inviting teachers and community members to share stories orally and written would also be a good step forward.
Carlos, I really liked how you highlighted the importance of having students share their stories and their languages with both students and teachers in the classroom. As well, I also think it is a cool idea to have teachers put up words in other languages around the classroom for students to begin to understand even just a little bit of new information. Even just a wall with greetings in multiple language is a cool way to have students begin to develop understandings of different languages that are around them in the classroom and it would allow for students to engage with their classmates in different ways.
Hey Carlos,
I really enjoyed this post, you brought forth some great ideas for engaging multilingual students in the classroom. I really liked your point about allowing students to speak in whatever language they feel comfortable in rather than only allowing the official school language. I feel it is super important to remove the stigma around speaking other languages and allowing all students to speak freely to encourage them to feel included and comfortable for who they are.