Preparing Monolingual Teachers of Multilingual Students: Strategies That Work

Abstract

Although the K-12 public school system in the United States has witnessed increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in its student population, there is a severe lack of teachers who are fully trained to support those students (Teacher shortage areas nationwide listing: 1990–1991 through 2016–2017 (pp. 1–184). United States Department of Education, 2016; Promoting the educational success of children and youth learning English: Promising futures. Consensus Study Report. National Academies Press, 2017). Regardless of its growingly diverse student population, the US teaching forces remain dominated by white, middle-class, monolingual English-speaking females (Teacher Education Quarterly, 37(2), 115–135, 2010; Preparing white teachers for diverse students. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, D. J. McIntyre, & K. E. Demers (Eds.), Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts (pp. 94–106). New York: Routledge, 2008) who are found to be underprepared to support their bi/multilingual students (Multicultural Perspectives, 17(1), 46–52, 2015). In response to the current situation, this chapter introduces three hands-on, practitioner-oriented activities which aim to raise awareness of linguistically responsive instruction (Theory Into Practice, 52(2), 89–97, 2013; Making content comprehensible for elementary English learners: The SIOP model. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2013; Journal of Education, 197(1), 33–40, 2017) and function as helpful resources in preparing monolingual teachers of bi/multilingual students. The nature of the chapter is a research-informed practitioner reflection. The three activities introduced are (1) Field Trip to Bi/Multilingual Communities, (2) Writing without Letter “N,” and (3) Are You Really Monolingual?: Rethinking the Role of Heritage Language. While originally designed with the US context in mind, these activities have the potential to be adapted to cater to the needs of other Anglophone educational settings.