Fostering Collaboration to Effect Change in Multilingual Education

• Published in: English Leadership Quarterly 2023-08, Vol.46 (1), p.8-13
• Main Authors: Cruz-Fernandez, Delia M, Fernandez, Cody
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Classrooms; Collaboration; Curricula; Design; Education; Educational Policy; Educational Strategies; English as a second language; Foreign language instruction; Language Acquisition; Learning Processes; Linguistics; Literacy; Meetings; Multilingualism; Pedagogy; Second language learning; Students; Teachers; Teaching Methods; Terminology; United Kingdom; Urban schools
• ISSN: 1943-3050; 1054-1578; 1943-3050
• DOI: 10.58680/elq202332579

Background The Secondary Schools MET, a team of seven, provides instructional support and program guidance to 31 schools in an urban central Texas district in which over 30 percent of the student population identifies as emergent bilinguals. There was very little focus on instruction that included the voice and background of students. [...]the team identified a need for an instructional framework that would guide teachers and administrators across the district in all multilingual classrooms by bringing the importance of culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogy into focus within the existing SI strategies. In this reflective article the authors talk about the development process of the MIF and why this work is important for the student population that we serve. The district had been doing the work of cultural proficiency and inclusiveness for many years and had a rich history with sheltered instruction. [...]the team seized on that groundwork to build an instructional framework that would provide learning spaces that sustain students' cultural and linguistic resources. The result is the omission of the rich funds of knowledge (Moll et al.,1992) that students bring to the classroom and the encouragement of a deficit approach.