When I taught Deaf students in New York City, my class was full of children from all over the world: Mexico, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Guyana, and many other countries. American Sign Language brought us all together. And yet, their home languages were also a mighty part of them—as was English, the majority language of their new city.
Teaching these students was an extraordinary experience—watching them navigate three (or more!) languages while making friends, experiencing new cultures, and learning to read, write, and communicate. Language and literacy, inextricably connected if not one and the same, are the bedrock of everything we do as educators, no matter what subject matter we teach. Repetition, practice, skill-building—yes. But let’s ensure all this work is undergirded by the joy of story-making and story-sharing.
Exploring Our Own “Beautiful Islands”
My student Sam had recently arrived from the Dominican Republic, carrying two languages while learning a third. In my class, he wrote a story called “My Beautiful Island” to share his memories of home and what he wanted us to know about it. He used his languages to connect with us—and with himself. He began by putting his thoughts to paper in Spanish, then translated them into his signs, and finally expressed them in his first spoken words in English. I saw his joy for his home country, his cherished memories, and his learning come together in a powerful confluence.
Think about your own life when you’re honing a skill—the simple pleasure of digging your hands into the dirt while gardening and realizing you’ve learned something about how that plant will grow, or effortlessly measuring ingredients for a recipe you’ve memorized by heart. That same joy of exploration and accomplishment is what multilingual learners often bring to school, eager to learn and grow. Yet too often, they are viewed as deficient. Their greatest strength—multilingualism, an undeniable superpower—is instead treated as a liability.
When multilingual learners arrive in our classrooms, they may be carrying heavy stories of leaving behind familiar sights, sounds, and faces. They are stepping into the unknown. Yet, alongside those stories is a sense of resilient wonder. And within the stories that already make up who they are—their own “beautiful islands”—there is an abundance of joy waiting to be shared.
Their greatest strength—multilingualism, an undeniable superpower—is instead treated as a liability.
Three Ways to Build Skills and Joy
Let us see the joy in skill-building, and the skill of building joy itself. Literacy work with multilingual learners should be joyful, as they are learning to tell the stories of who they are at home and at school. Here are three ways we can use literacy to foster the connections between joy and skill-building with multilingual learners.
1. Write every day.
We can simultaneously foster joy and literacy skill-building by increasing the opportunities we give students to write across a variety of genres and forms. Writing allows us to “meet” our multilingual students in deeper, richer, and more rewarding ways.
Story-centered writing practices help multilingual learners develop the skills they need to tell their stories effectively. We might encourage them to write letters to loved ones in their home countries or describe a photograph they wish they had taken of a beloved place that is no longer nearby. Incorporating visual imagery and AI tools can help students bring to life the settings and cultural memories they hold dear or that have been shared with them by their loved ones. Use genre as a tool to build students’ writing skills across all subject areas. Explore the genres of science writing, literary essays, and even social media writing. Teach students how to craft phrases and sentences commonly used at home, on social media, or in texting and messaging apps. Encourage them to write by hand, as handwriting practice solidifies language knowledge through muscle memory more efficiently than typing on a computer.
2. See language as a puzzle.
Approach language skills as a spectacular puzzle to explore together, rather than a problem or deficit to fix. Create opportunities for multilingual students to engage across languages—encouraging them to notice similarities and differences in their home languages and to teach one another (and you!) unique aspects of their linguistic heritage. Invite them to teach their language to the class or a small cohort. Ask them to collaborate to uncover similarities and differences among their languages, both in grammar and form (such as which languages read from right to left).
Think of words as tiles in the mosaic of language and grammar as the pattern in which they are laid. Grammar is essential for organizing words and ideas so they can be understood by others. Teach students the roots of words and see how they apply across their varied languages. Explore how emotion is expressed differently in each language, from sentence structure to tone and expression.
3. Center personal stories.
Make student and family stories a centerpiece of learning by creating opportunities for storytelling to be a shared experience that fosters connection and growth.
The productive struggle of language learning can be both an excellent skill-building exercise and a joyful bonding experience for families. Invite parents and caregivers to writing celebrations at school, where students share the stories they’ve authored. Encourage families to tell stories at home together by providing story-sharing prompts, perhaps about a time they laughed deeply or a moment they wish they could revisit. Remind families that reading, writing, and speaking in their home languages is a superpower and encourage them to share stories in the language(s) that feel best. By valuing and honoring these stories, we create meaningful opportunities for learning that celebrate both language and relationships.
Literacy work with multilingual learners should be joyful, as they are learning to tell the stories of who they are at home and at school.
Experiencing Every Student’s “Beautiful Island”
Sam embraced new languages by staying rooted in his home language of Spanish, using ASL to connect to his friends, and stepping into the possibilities of his new life through English—a language that offered him a new layer of community.
His “beautiful island” allowed him to approach these languages with joy. Every child has their own beautiful island, full of stories and experiences waiting to be shared. Our role, more often than not, is as simple as listening and being present to that joy.
Literacy Across the Disciplines
How schools can embed meaningful reading and writing practice in all content areas.
