Five Elements of Courage for Teaching Young Multilingual Learners

Thanks to Exchange Leader Karen Nemeth for today's message:

Have you thought about the role of courage for early childhood educators who teach dual language or multilingual learners? To be truly effective in helping all young children learn, teachers need to do a lot of reflecting and adjusting. Consider these six elements of courageous practice:

1. The courage to use each child’s home language in meaningful ways to help them understand content and build a sense of belonging. It may take extra courage to try speaking a new language, but it’s good for adults AND children.
   
   
2. The courage to engage more child talk and less teacher talk because learning home language and a new language depends on using language – not just hearing it.
   
   
3. The courage to change your environment to reduce visual clutter and make sure the walls, labels, and displays attract discussions. Anything that is not talked about is probably not supporting learning. Change and relatability inspire conversations.
   
   
4. The courage to rethink your choices of activities and explorations. Teaching multilingual children depends on choosing content that children can understand and relate to. Instead of doing what you always did with some fixes for MLLs, try re considering your choices even if that means letting go of activities or content that may have worked in the past.
   
   
5. The courage to multitask because multilingual learners need constant support and repetition to learn and use new language. You can plan a math lesson that includes gross motor skills and social emotional learning outdoors. Always build in maximum, multipurpose language.

Nemeth offers more resources at languagecastle.com.

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