How do we teach students with diverse languages?

I imagine a classroom for myself where I have students from 7 Indian states, all with extremely different dialect and 4 different countries, non-native English speaking. I wonder how I will design my lessons! Considering maths is a universal language, so much of learning maths happens through English language in my country for all private schools, that I wonder how I will map the English speaking with the non-English speaking students. These are culturally and linguistically diverse [CLD] students, henceforth addressed in this paper as CLD. While cultural diversity can be managed with immersive experiences including various cultures, language diversity is a challenge considering I speak English alone as an international language!

“Today’s teachers are faced with the complex responsibility of educating the growing student population who speaks a wide variety of languages/ dialects (more than 177), come with varying levels of formal schooling, and represent a varying number of cultural traditions. Creating instructional environments as well as implementing instructional strategies to support learning outcomes aligned to state standards and core curriculum for this student population have become essential for classroom teachers”, (Gonzalez ).

Nevertheless, “This preparation for diversity must begin with the teacher”, (Brisk). And it starts with reflecting over my own cultural filters. What goes in my mind when I see students from different cultures? What are my set of belief systems? Reflect, investigate and negate them in order to learn afresh about the students. my central value for the pedagogy is humaneness. To learn to connect with the students at human level. To make myself vulnerable in the ‘I do not know’ space. This is because finally “…what you realize is that connection is why we're here. It's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives”, (Brown).

Curiosity is hugely useful in a situation where connection is to be established. Curiosity about the culture from where the students have come, the pros and cons of where they are and extending help for positive integration. However, this connection also requires some professional tools and techniques in order to make the classroom experience fruitful for the CLD students. Both feed into each other. These are in several areas.

1. Language: “Teachers need experiences in their preparation that allow them to understand the realities of negotiating academic instruction in another language”, (Brisk ). I think if we just understand the challenge of following instruction in another language, it may make us empathic to the CLD students. while it may be a lot to expect for me to learn multiple languages, there are a number of things I can do as a teacher in the class such as (a) avoid local expressions, especially those involving stereotypes such as girls don’t cry, (b) support words with visuals and gestures, (c) write clearly on the board, (d) have a clear routine for the class to avoid multiple instructions, (e) give information byte size and (f) emphasize key vocabulary.

2. Cultural Integration: Every culture has given something beautiful to the planet. I would love to know the background of CLD students and “…incorporate their cultures and backgrounds into the curriculum through examples…”. The best examples for maths are games. Local games can be integrated with maths. This not only makes the culture alive through story telling by the student (s) about the games, but also often brings commonality as one discovers similarity in games of different cultures.

3. Reflection: To enable the CLD learners to reflect authentically on the content learnt, “Learning logs can be used to help learners practice writing as they collect and organize information…”, (Gonzalez). Here students can communicate in the way they find best what they understood and not in the content taught. The expression in the logs can be differentiated so they can choose their way.

4. Teaching Strategies: Considering I teach maths, which is an international language, a lot of issues are not expected to arise, as the symbols used are mostly similar. What I will bring is differentiation of teaching strategies in the class. Differentiation is in a way “…just shaking up the classroom so it’s a better fit for more kids,” This is an all-round differentiation in rigor, content, process, product and assessment.

There would be choice in (a) using method of solving appropriate to the students’ culture, (b) amount of content the student is able to do without the stress of it, (c) product design for a project and (d) expression of content as a visual, descriptive or verbal.

I would organize group study ensuring CLD students have empathic buddies in the groups to help them to be a fruitful member of the group. Buddy system would be a part of the class, ensuring each CLD student has someone to reach out to in any situation.

5. Null curriculum: I am an Indian, India and Pakistan are at war at political level since 1947 and we had a Pakistani student amidst us in the class. All events between India and Pakistan, cricket match or war on the border or international mediation turns into hate filled messages on social media. This was an innocent kid with special needs who had come to the school for it gave space for special needs students to learn well. “Due to structures and systems designed to maintain business as usual, many educators will not work to explicitly help students heal and work toward building strategies to pursue justice themselves”, (Milner). In this situation, it would be prudent to have a discussion with the student to explore his feelings. Then, if required, have a frank talk in the class to bring students to a level of empathy needed to accept each other in a situation that can lead to a confrontation.

Conclusion 

Although the solutions to individual situations would be very contextual, dependent on the cluster of the CLD students one has. However, with some preparation and a tool box of practices, one ought to be able to face most of the challenges presented. It would lead to an intense learning in the teacher.