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I will include this to my teacher tool kit because it list important tips on how to engage the families of ELLs and how it has a positive impact on their English language development.

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6 Tips for Engaging the Families of English Language Learners

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Schools can better support students who are still learning English by working to involve their families in their education.

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This stood out to me because it's a good blog that addresses the importance of partnering with families of English language learners.

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Whenever we ask veteran educators of English language learners (ELLs) the secret to their success, the answer is almost always the same: Build relationships with students and their families.

Relationships establish trust and improve communication. They help us better understand students' strengths and needs, which is especially important for ELLs. If you're new to working with English language learners, you may wonder how to partner with families who come from other countries and speak different languages.

Here are six ideas to help you get started. As you read, look for one or two small steps that you might try with families this year.

1. Create a welcoming space for families.

Imagine what it's like for immigrant families to enter your school or classroom. Do families see something familiar to them, like signs in their language or objects from their culture? Are books available in their home language? Small gestures can go a long way toward saying, "You are welcome here. We want your child to thrive."

Make your classroom walls family-friendly. Start by hanging a bilingual welcome sign. Put up maps from students' home countries and photos that reflect the students in your class. To make sure the images are authentic and relatable, check with colleagues who share those same cultures. Or ask your students to help pick the images.

Learn a new word or phrase in a family's home language that may help students and their families feel welcome in your classroom.

Share ideas and collaborate with your administrator about schoolwide practices that help families of ELLs and immigrant students feel welcome.

Step into their shoes for a moment. Take a look at this school form in Arabic to get a sense of what it's like to be presented with information in a language you can't read.

2. Get to know your students.

Getting to know English language learners will give you essential information about them. If you suspect a student learns and thinks differently, you'll especially want a complete picture of the student. To navigate the special education process with families, you'll need their trust. This may be easier to earn if you've developed a caring relationship with their child.

Look for informal opportunities to spend time together, like during lunch.

Learn about students' strengths, talents, and interests. Ask students to complete a questionnaire about their interests. If they can't complete it by themselves in English, try to find a classmate or a bilingual staff member to help. Or they can cut out pictures from magazines to make collages about themselves.

Start to collect the 10 pieces of information you need to learn about your English language learners.

Talk with colleagues who already have relationships with your students, such as bilingual staff, ESL teachers, counselors, or teachers from previous years. Ask them what they know about students' culture, language, academics, and social-emotional learning. Discuss students' strengths and needs, particularly around learning and thinking differences.

3. Build relationships with families.

Developing a partnership with your students' families may take some creativity and flexibility on your part, but it's well worth it. Families of English language learners can bring great skills, talents, and strengths to your school. They're likely to have deep reserves of strength, resilience, and resourcefulness. But these resources might go unnoticed if no one is looking for them.

Families who are new to this country may have many questions about education. They may wonder about topics like class schedules, events, celebrations, and homework. And when it comes to special services, families may not understand what special education is or does. They may want information about referrals, tes ting, identification, support, and their rights and roles. By building a relationship early, you can help families feel more comfortable talking about these topics.

Rather than waiting for families to come to you, go to where they are. Find out if there are times families are already coming to the school, like before or after school. Make a point to connect with them at those times for informal chats to share positive updates.

Find out about families' skills and hobbies. Consider that many immigrant families have worked in prestigious careers in their home countries.

Avoid asking direct, personal questions, which may make families uncomfortable. Instead, ask open-ended questions. You could ask about a favorite food, community activity, or how their experience with the school is going so far.

To improve communication, give families plenty of ways - in-person conversations, emails, notes - to ask questions and share concerns. Some families may choose not to discuss much at all. As you get to know families better, others may share important insights about issues facing their community.

Keep your eyes and ears open in the classroom and around the school. Learn from colleagues who already know the families.

I have yet to meet a family that is uninterested in the well-being of their child. -Juliana Urtubey, 2019-2020 Understood Mentor Teacher Fellow and 2021 National Teacher of the Year

4. Check your assumptions.

Immigrant families might not always take part in traditional school activities. But don't assume they're uninterested in their child's education.

At the same time, immigrant families may come from countries with different expectations of the family's role in education. For example, in many Latin American countries, families see the teacher as an authority figure and sole provider of academics.

Ask families to describe the role they played in their child's schooling in their home country. This may open a rich discussion about the differences between your cultures.

When explaining the "school-family partnership" in the United States, don't list off strict requirements. Instead, focus on how your school welcomes family input.

To better understand family expectations, ask about their dreams for their child's future. For example, Albuquerque teacher Clara Gonzales-Espinoza invites her students' families to write her a letter. She asks them to share their hopes for their child, as well as details about their child's personality, interests, and strengths. The letter starts off the year on a positive note and yields important insights about the family, too.

5. Get to know your language resources.

Schools are legally obligated to share information in a language that families understand. Keep in mind that if families have lower levels of literacy, written documents (even translated ones) won't be as useful as personal conversations.

If families of English language learners are also navigating the special education process, you'll need even more support in place. Families need to understand technical details to take part in all conversations and decisions. They also need to understand their rights, the implications of the special education process, and how the school can support their child.

Families need access to easy-to-read, jargon-free documents in their home language. Check with your school or district to find out what documents have already been translated and what service you could use for new documents. Your ESL colleagues may also be a valuable source of information about this topic.

See if you have access to a bilingual interpreter, family liaison, or paraprofessional (at the school or district level) to help with communication.

Find out if you can access a language hotline for interpreters.

If you have concerns about families' access to information, reach out to your school's administrators with questions and ideas.

Developing sensitivity around these topics can help you think of new ways to partner with families. Here are some ideas that have been successful in other schools.

Ask families when and where they would like to attend events.

Create events that families can help plan and that take into account certain work shifts.

Consider options such as meetings at a family's home, a house of worship, or a public place.

Try group parent-teacher conferences. At these meetings, parents and caregivers hear the same general information. Then they meet with teachers for short, private conferences. Families can learn from each other's questions and may feel more comfortable in a group (especially if they come from a culture that has a group-minded orientation, as opposed to a more individual orientation like the United States).

Learn more fromHow to Support Immigrant Students and Families: Strategies for Schools and Early Childhood Programs.

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6 strategies for partnering with families of English language learners

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Learn strategies to build relationships with immigrant families and caregivers of English language learners.

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This is a good resource to look back at because it defines the different education programs offered to our EBs/ELs.

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The Emergent Bilingual Support Division provides direction and leadership with the implementation of Bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) Programs for emergent bilingual (EB) students/English learners (ELs).

Announcements

Check out the Emergent Bilingual Student Web Portal TXEL.ORG for continuously updated resources for Teachers, Leaders, Parents and families of Emergent Bilingual Students, and Community Partners.

Language Proficiency Assessment Committee (LPAC) Guidance and Resources

Current School Year

2022-2023 Emergent Bilingual Support Update Meetings with LEAs and ESCs

The TEA Emergent Bilingual Support Division welcomes Local Education Agencies (LEAs) and regional Education Service Centers (ESCs) to join our English Learner Support Update Meetings. See our EL Portal for dates, meeting links, presentations, and recordings.

Program Requirement Resources

These resources, tools, and web pages provide guidance on bilingual and English as a second language (ESL) program requirements:

Program Requirement Resource Web Pages

Program Implementation

The TEA Emergent Bilingual Support Division has developed program implementation rubrics and associated tools to support LEAs with evaluating and enhancing their bilingual education and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs.

Program Statutes

The following statutes relate to bilingual and English as a second language (ESL) programs:

Title III, Part A - English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement Act

Title III, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as reauthorized under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), aims to ensure that English learners (ELs) and immigrant students attain English proficiency and develop high levels of academic achievement in English. Title III will also assist all English learners meet the same challenging State academic standards that all children are expected to meet.

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Bilingual and English as a Second Language Education Programs

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The Emergent Bilingual Support Division provides direction and leadership with the implementation of Bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) Programs for emergent bilingual (EB) students/English learners (ELs). Check out the Emergent Bilingual Student Web Portal TXEL.ORG for continuously updated resources for Teachers, Leaders, Parents and families of Emergent Bilingual Students, and Community Partners.

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This is a good resource because it gives ideas and strategies on how a teacher can best support emergent bilingual children in early learning.

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This is a good reading about comparing and contrasting first and second acquisition.

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this is a good resource to look back at because it explains Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition.

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Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition (SLA)

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This link it good to look back at when teaching EBs/ELs because it defines Hallidays 7 functions of language and this helps develop students speech.

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This is a good link because it helps define BICS and CALP and there is a video embedded in this link which summarizes these two terms.

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The acronyms BICS and CALP refer to the length of time required by immigrant children to develop conversational skills in the target language and grade appropriate academic proficiency in that language. Understanding the difference between social language and academic language acquisition is an important concept for teachers working with non-native students. Learn more in our academic language resource section.
BICS = social language
Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) refer to linguistic skills needed in everyday, social face-to-face interactions. For instance, the language used in the playground, on the phone, or to interact socially with other people is part of BICS. The language used in these social interactions is context embedded. That is, it is meaningful, cognitively undemanding, and non-specialized. It takes the learner from six months to two years to develop BICS.
CALP = academic language
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) focuses on proficiency in academic language or language used in the classroom in the various content areas. Academic language is characterized by being abstract, context reduced, and specialized. In addition to acquiring the language, learners need to develop skills such as comparing, classifying, synthesizing, evaluating, and inferring when developing academic competence. It takes learners at least five years to develop CALP. Research from Collier and Thomas (1995) has shown that it may take children with no prior instruction or no support in native language development at least seven years to develop CALP.

The distinction between BICS and CALP was made by Professor Jim Cummins.

Learn more in Explaining BICS and CALP from EverythingESL.

Video: BICS and CALP

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The acronyms BICS and CALP refer to the length of time required by immigrant children to develop conversational skills in the target language and grade appropriate academic proficiency in that language. Understanding the difference between social language and academic language acquisition is an important concept for teachers working with non-native students.

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This is very important to include in my teacher toolkit and look back at when I become a teacher because it gives strategies on how to provide a multicultural education for my future students.

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Multicultural education involves more than reading a book about a historical character of color or celebrating a holiday surrounding a diverse hero. It includes policies, practices, and pedagogical approaches that affirm students' differences and intersectionality.

"It's about appreciating the uniqueness of every single student in your classroom, what they can bring to your classroom, and how they can make that classroom more of a robust, vibrant community," said Dr. Leanne Howell, a faculty member with the EdD online in Learning and Organizational Change program from Baylor University's School of Education. "Every single student is essential to the community of that classroom."

Educators can work to take steps that make their curricula and classrooms safe spaces and incorporate teaching styles to support all students, regardless of their backgrounds.

What Is Multicultural Education?

Multicultural education helps all students see themselves in the curriculum and the classroom. It is a field of study that embraces techniques to advance and advocate educational equity for all students of every age, Howell explained. It focuses on, but is not limited to, ethnic, racial, language, and gender issues that potentially marginalize groups or subgroups of people.

"It helps all students acquire the knowledge, skills, attributes, and attitudes needed to function in a democratic society while feeling valued and heard," Howell said.

Critical multicultural education also involves challenging forms of oppression, said Dr. Ann Lopez, president of the National Association for Multicultural Education.

"You cannot have multicultural education that speaks about celebrating diversity but doesn't address, for example, anti-Black racism or doesn't address issues of homophobia," Lopez said. "It's so important that critical multicultural education disrupt power, forms of oppression, and really work with educators to begin to think about, how do they engage in this world? What does that look like and what is the impact?"

Although imparting multicultural education is often seen as a responsibility that resides with certain teachers, the task of approaching education through a multicultural lens belongs to every educator.

"Even if you do not have diverse students in front of you and you're teaching where all of the students are homogenic, that knowledge is also for them," Lopez said.

How to Incorporate Multicultural Education in the Classroom

Incorporating multicultural education strategies begins with self-reflection. Teachers should question their expectations for students of different identities and reflect on how those expectations affect how they engage in the pedagogy.

"Ask, 'Am I meeting the needs of all of the learners in my space?' It starts by asking questions around, 'What biases do I have? What stereotypes might I be bringing to the table?'" Lopez said. "Teachers have to see themselves as learners."

Howell suggested teachers set aside time before, during, and after the school year to journal or think critically about their biases.

"Take a really hard look inside your soul," Howell said. "It doesn't have to be a written reflection. It can be while you're on a three-hour drive; it can be on a night with your head on the pillow and you can't fall asleep. But really engaging in that reflective thinking of, 'What are my biases?' and really examining those, and being honest with yourself to say, 'We all have biases. What are mine?'"

Lopez believes teachers should view the process of learning and unlearning as a journey.

"None of us were born with this knowledge," she said. "It is knowledge that has to be gained, so we have to create that space where teachers - whether they're in K-12 or higher ed - can find space to learn."

Overcoming Challenges for Educators

Multicultural education requires time, resources, and professional development. Sometimes educators may feel like engaging in multicultural education is extra work.

"Many teachers feel as if they simply don't have enough hours in the school day to personalize lessons from the ones that are already in existence," Howell said.

Educators can rally teaching teams by grade level or content to rethink lesson plans together in a way that ensures equitable learning experiences for all students.

"It's not onerous," Lopez said. "It simply requires a different way of thinking about teaching and learning, a different way of thinking about how we ensure that all students can be successful."

For districts that have limited resources, Howell suggests relying on collaboration with teachers who have proven strong multicultural education skills.

Exploring culturally sensitive topics can also be a challenge for teachers. Howell suggested using existing literature and media as gateways to explore sensitive topics. Children's books, novels, films, and other media can all be useful references. And while she says there are many fabulous resources out there for teachers to use, she provided a few websites that teachers can bookmark to begin their journey:

However, no matter how much thought is put into the curriculum, there is always a possibility that an educator might offend a student while addressing culturally sensitive subjects.

"All of us have blind spots," Lopez said. "All of us say things, but it's never about intent. It's always about impact."

When a teacher offends a student, Lopez suggests coming back to the point of self-reflection.

"What do I know? What do I need to learn? And what do I need to unlearn?" she said. "Sometimes we don't realize how our unconscious biases come out in what we say and things that we do."

It is important to establish a classroom atmosphere where students feel safe, have space for dialogue, and know their concerns will be heard, rather than getting defensive, Lopez said. If students feel uncomfortable, they should be able to explain their discomfort.

"It's about saying, 'Help me understand how that created a discomfort for you so I can know not to do that again,'" Lopez said. "It's about creating the environment for students to feel safe and feel that they're able to speak up when they're feeling uncomfortable or there is discomfort in whatever way."

Educators at all levels should serve as models of empathy and respect for their students, Howell said.

"In the classroom modeling your care and respect for every student is so important," Howell said. "It's really just modeling what you want your students to in turn emulate for their students."
Citation for this content: Baylor's EdD online in Learning and Organizational Change.

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How to Provide a Multicultural Education

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Multicultural education involves appreciating the uniqueness of every single student and what they can bring to the classroom.

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I will look back at this website as a future teacher because it gives me a list of different multicultural books that I can provide for my future students so they can learn about different cultures and gain understanding of accepting diversity.

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This list features chapter books and novels for middle school students (grades 4-7). Some of these books are at the younger end of that range, and some will be at the older end. A few of these titles are also appropriate for young teens. These books are written by authors from marginalized groups.