Hello Prerna :)
One of my biggest takeaways from this week was also the importance of creating a positive environment for emergent bilingual students, so I really appreciate you bringing this up! I liked that the readings/videos gave a lot of concrete, practical strategies for building this environment as a teacher. For example, one strategy for creating a positive environment for bilingual students that stuck out to me was from the Herrera and España reading, which mentioned the importance of having texts with translanguaging in the classroom. This strategy is definitely something that I have seen in my field placement at Pan American. Their classroom libraries are filled with books written in Spanish, English, or a mix of both. Children not only have the option to pick these books in their own independent reading, but also get to work with them in more direct classroom lessons that use them as mentor texts. The importance of bilingual literature in the classroom is also something that we talked about in Swarthmore's Teaching Diverse Young Learners course. In this class, we were introduced to Social Justice Books, which is a booklist resource for teachers that includes a lot of really great recommendations for bilingual/translanguaging children's literature. If anyone hasn't checked out this site before, I'd really recommend it! It's something I've continued to consult even after finishing the course.
One of my biggest takeaways from this week was also the importance of creating a positive environment for emergent bilingual students, so I really appreciate you bringing this up! I liked that the readings/videos gave a lot of concrete, practical strategies for building this environment as a teacher. For example, one strategy for creating a positive environment for bilingual students that stuck out to me was from the Herrera and España reading, which mentioned the importance of having texts with translanguaging in the classroom. This strategy is definitely something that I have seen in my field placement at Pan American. Their classroom libraries are filled with books written in Spanish, English, or a mix of both. Children not only have the option to pick these books in their own independent reading, but also get to work with them in more direct classroom lessons that use them as mentor texts. The importance of bilingual literature in the classroom is also something that we talked about in Swarthmore's Teaching Diverse Young Learners course. In this class, we were introduced to Social Justice Books, which is a booklist resource for teachers that includes a lot of really great recommendations for bilingual/translanguaging children's literature. If anyone hasn't checked out this site before, I'd really recommend it! It's something I've continued to consult even after finishing the course.
I also loved getting to see how the monolingual teacher in the CUNY video positioned herself to be a "co-learner" with her students! In class, I know we've talked a lot about how important it is to show that you value and take an interest in your students' languages, and to me, practices like taking the time to learn basic phrases in students’ home languages or inviting students (when they want to) to teach the class about their linguistic backgrounds are both powerful ways to support emergent bilinguals. The other great thing about these strategies is that they are something teachers can more easily implement in schools/districts that are not particularly supportive of initiatives for providing materials and testing in languages other than English.
Thanks for highlighting so many positive examples of ways that teachers can support bilingual students in your post this week :)