Integrating Home and Heritage Languages in Schools: Pedagogy and Promise

Taking the perspective that young people’s home languages are benefits rather than deficits, this book moves beyond simply acknowledging the richness of language varieties to provide specific demonstrations of the ways these help promote linguistically rich classrooms and nurture students’ academic development and success. Highlighting a range of classrooms, the focus is on what teachers and students do to understand, value, and capitalize on students’ language brilliance, especially in the current age of accountability. The book has two goals: to communicate contemporary critical research about the use (and value) of home and heritage languages in schools, and to offer intimate portraits of linguistically rich and effective preK-12 classrooms and instructional settings. To this end, it illuminates the range of issues, challenges, and successes experienced by teachers and students (and researchers) in those settings, offers specific teaching strategies that build on students’ home languages, and illustrates their language use with work samples.