A foundational understanding of Linguistically Sustaining Practices can be broken into three main components:

• Foundations: Cultivate an approach that integrates students' and their families’ funds of knowledge into campus and classroom environments as well as instruction.
• Linguistic and Background Assets: Leverage and celebrate students’ backgrounds, elevating their background and linguistic abilities.
• Background Context: Recognize that teaching and learning occur within the varied beliefs, values, and practices of the families of each particular group of students.

First, educators working with emergent bilingual (EB) students must cultivate an approach that values and integrates each student's existing funds of knowledge. This term was originally defined as the historical accumulation of life knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being. For families with varied backgrounds, these funds of knowledge may not directly connect with school curriculum, and can lead to a less additive mindset toward students and populations in general. Decades later, the funds of knowledge approach includes methods through which educators can identify their students' funds of knowledge and intentionally bridge knowledge from home to school application (Moll 2019).

For teachers implementing Linguistically Sustaining Practices in their classrooms, surfacing this body of knowledge and skills is a critical first step.

Teachers who view these funds of knowledge as assets that add to classroom discourse, according to Larson et al. (2020), “demonstrate respect for the families served and build on their strengths in teaching targeted skills in children’s natural environment (e.g., homes or classrooms)” (p. 158). And the results are demonstrable, with Madhlangobe and Gordon (2022) finding that teachers who cultivate this strengths-based approach to students’ funds of knowledge succeeded more often with students with varied backgrounds by creating relationships that consciously value the students’ funds of knowledge, or “ways of knowing” (p. 198). Furthermore, when educators are able to leverage the funds of knowledge of their EB students’ parents/families as well, respect is demonstrated and teacher-to-family connections grow.

Next, a key facet of this asset-based approach is the recognition that students’ home languages are among the valuable skills they bring to the classroom and treating them as such. This begins with the terminology we use to describe our students who are in the process of learning English. For this reason, Texas Education Code now refers to the federal term of "English Learners (ELs)" (formally referred to as "limited English proficient or LEP") as "emergent bilingual (EB) students". This shift intends to highlight the linguistic skills EB students bring to the table. Ewing (2021) explains, "...in many ways, ELs are language experts. They speak at least one language and are learning another" (p. 2). These students' language-learning experiences can be reframed under the umbrella of an additive approach, which refers to an approach to second-language teaching in which the second language is seen as an addition to the learner’s first language rather than as a replacement for it. After all, according to Kleyn and Garcia (2019), young bilinguals tend to utilize their full linguistic repertoire in every phase of the writing process. Empowering them to do so by embracing their home languages will have a profound impact on both content and English language acquisition.

The educator’s third responsibility in cultivating Linguistically Sustaining Practices is to develop relationships with students that hold their backgrounds in high regard. According to Yzquierdo (2017), understanding backgrounds is the foundation for constructing and maintaining a caring environment (p. 49). This regard for and responsiveness to students’ backgrounds makes classroom learning meaningful for both children and their families, as it allows for supports that better align with the community’s beliefs and values and capitalizes on students’ funds of knowledge (Linan- Thompson et al., 2018). According to Woodely et al. (2017), it is this student-centeredness and value placed on a variety of student experiences that provides access for students to maintain background integrity while succeeding academically (p. 471).

The next critical piece to understanding the power of Linguistically Sustaining Practices is to understand that cultivating and preserving students’ linguistic and background assets promotes language acquisition and academic achievement in significant and varied ways. A linguistically sustaining approach to academic development uses students’ background knowledge, experiences, frames of reference and performance styles to make the learning more relevant and effective for each of them (Gay, 2013).

Honoring linguistic and background assets through Linguistically Sustaining Practices promotes both language acquisition and academic achievement, as well as increased self-esteem. In terms of language development, in their review of language-focused supports for students from linguistically varied backgrounds, Larson et al. (2020) found that the most effective supports for improving students’ language abilities in English and/or the home language were practices that related to students’ linguistic and background characteristics And in terms of academic achievement, Klein and Garcia (2019) note that research has shown effective teachers can increase academic performance of students with varied linguistic diverse repertoires by engaging in teaching methods that connect curriculum with students’ background and linguistic experiences.

In short, teachers striving to support students’ linguistic and academic achievement and meet the needs of their emerging bilingual students through Linguistically Sustaining Practices need to familiarize themselves with their students’ backgrounds in order to design lesson plans that will reflect and sustain them.

The final foundational piece to Linguistically Sustaining Practices is to recognize that teaching and learning occur within a distinct context that changes among groups with varied linguistic and background experiences. This begins by understanding that teachers’ own backgrounds often differ from those of the varied groups of students within their classrooms. Student background is a complex concept, and can have an abundance of variety. Demographics are one example of background context when it relates to the classroom. For instance, in Texas, teachers who identify as White make up 53.4% of the teacher population, and 30% of the teacher population identify as Hispanic. Conversely, the Texas student population is made up of 53.2% of students who identify as Hispanic and 25% of students who identify as White (2023-2024 TAPR). Such demographic and attendant background differences can negatively affect EB students when not addressed (Madhlangobe & Gordon, 2015). To combat the potential negative effects of those differences, teachers must demonstrate openness to and appreciation for all backgrounds within the classroom. The changing demographic composition of the United States necessitates preparing teachers to be able to meet the needs of children from a multitude of backgrounds that are likely to be unfamiliar (Kelly et al., 2015).

As explained further in this component, this doesn’t mean teachers are required to become experts in every student’s unique background. Rather, effective teaching practices take into consideration the background l and linguistic context of EB students, making space for them in the curriculum and the classroom. There are plenty of ways educators can do this, which will be discussed throughout this component. Overall, as Gay (2002) suggests, a powerful way to make content meaningful in teaching is to integrate a variety of perspectives into the most fundamental and high-status aspects of the instructional process on a habitual basis (p. 113).

Once the foundations of Linguistically Sustaining Practices are understood, the next step is to identify how to implement these practices in a classroom setting, creating an environment that welcomes and encourages students to leverage their unique linguistic and background experiences as they develop complex language skills and learn the academic content at hand. This can be accomplished through three primary vehicles:

• Intentional Connections: Capitalize on the varied funds of linguistic and background knowledge, prior experiences, and interests of students to make intentional connections during instructional planning and delivery.
• Affective Support: Integrate research-based methods that address the affective needs of EB students, including trauma-informed practices, particularly for new arrival students.
• Equal Access: Use comprehensive collaborative methods of instruction and resources that ensure equal educational access to language and content.

Teachers who employ Linguistically Sustaining Practices use students’ prior knowledge, values, and experiences to ensure meaningful learning (Gay, 2013). In other words, teachers who make intentional connections between academic content and their students’ experiences make a concerted effort to incorporate students linguistic knowledge, background perspectives, and prior experiences and interests into the curriculum during both planning and delivery of instruction.

On the integration of linguistic knowledge, Cenoz and Gorter (2017) note that spontaneous translanguaging should be accepted as a legitimate practice and that, by allowing bilingual students to translanguage, educators can enable them to participate in more situations. This empowerment to participate leads to more exposure by EB students to the second language and increases their motivation to learn the new language—the two criteria De Benitez (2021) notes must be met for students to be able to transfer their primary language skills to a second language. In short, welcoming students’ use of their full linguistic repertoire in the classroom can have a powerful, positive impact on the way they learn the target language.

Administrator Considerations

Translanguaging is defined within the Texas Effective Dual Language Instruction Framework (TxEDLIF) as "a process by which students who are bilingual use both languages as one integrated communication system" . While supporting students' translanguaging, it is important to maintain a strategic separation of languages during instruction to ensure fidelity to the program's language allocation plan. Professional learning for teachers and monitoring of program implementation are essential to ensure the asset-based approach of supporting translanguaging is honored while upholding target language instruction.

For more information on translanguaging, see this publication from the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Equally important as incorporating linguistic knowledge is making use of students’ background perspectives in instruction. This means leveraging both students’ funds of self-awareness and their funds of knowledge. Roe (2016) defines funds of self-awareness as the learning students gain from their family and background as it applies to their self-definition and self-understanding and funds of knowledge as the transfer of funds of personal knowledge from student to teacher about the student’s knowledge learned from their family and background. Teachers implementing Linguistically Sustaining Practices must leverage both. To do so, Yzquierdo (2017) recommends connecting key concepts to EB student experiences by choosing examples of content concepts that are relevant to the personal, background, or world experiences of the EB students and providing opportunities for students to share their experience and knowledge of content concepts. And, again, the results are proven: Linares (2017) concludes that the increased achievement of EB students, particularly of newcomer students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE), was directly tied to linguistically sustaining pedagogy and an ethic of care.

Finally, incorporating prior experiences and interests draws a critical connection between students and their learning, making it clear to students from all backgrounds that they belong in the classroom. This includes “incorporating material immediately relevant to their lives and creating a sense of interconnectedness or classroom community” (DeCapua & Marshall, 2022, p. 243). Teachers can create these connections in a variety of ways that meet both the needs of the students and the rigors of the content.

According to Escamilla (2022), teachers incorporate student experiences and develop literacy using a variety of materials and instructional strategies that reflect and engage language and background to meet student needs, whether learning to read and write in their home language, a new language, or both.

The following are examples of of the three types of intentional connections related to instructional planning and delivery.

Instructional Methods

Linguistic and Content Knowledge

• Prepare student reference materials, such as cognates and bilingual glossaries related to the topic (as applicable).
• Plan for strategic points in the lesson to draw attention to linguistic connections between the EB students’ language(s) and English, including vocabulary and grammatical structures.
• Have students pre-read information on the lesson’s topic in their primary language to activate prior knowledge and to make linguistic connections.
• Have students explore terms related to a new topic, including cognate or bilingual glossary resources, and share what they know about the topic or what they think some of the new vocabulary means based on their prior knowledge or linguistic connections.

Background Perspectives

• Take time to consider potential varied perspectives of your students and families and how this can impact classroom participation and family engagement. For example, consider differences in individualist or collectivist perspectives.
• Encourage and provide opportunities for students to share examples of relevant content that connects to their family heritages. For instance, students may:
• bring an artifact or object from home,
• share a connected book, song, or piece of art, or
• find an article/story that relates to the topic and their background.
• Invite parent/family members of students as guest speakers to share linguistic or subject area connections to their background
• Provide a wide selection of authors represented in classroom reading options and/or a variety of perspectives.

Prior Experiences/Interests

• Conduct an interest survey to inquire about the interests of students so that these interests can be incorporated into examples and related materials.
• Provide choice in reading material so that students can select according to their interest level.
• Embed probing questions throughout the lesson to include opportunities for students to reflect on their own experiences that add to their understanding or create misconceptions.
• Incorporate freewriting or journaling on various topics that allow for the teacher to better understand the perspectives of their students.
• Conduct student and/or family interviews to inquire about prior experiences (both academic/schooling and social), particularly for newcomers in understanding their home country background.

The third piece to implementing Linguistically Sustaining Practices in the classroom is using intentional, collaborative methods of instruction and resources that ensure educational access to language and content.

There are countless ways to approach intentional and collaborative instruction, but Clayton (2013) highlights a set of four effective instructional practices research has commonly identified to support EB students:

• Providing meaningful opportunities to practice using new vocabulary
• Presenting concepts both orally and in writing
• Paraphrasing students’ contributions and encouraging them to expand on their comments
• Including questions and activities that require elaborated responses in English so that students can practice expressing their ideas

Swaanson (2016) expands on this list with additional components of teaching that lead to increased engagement and greater gains by students with varied linguistic repertoires:

• Utilizing models and organizers for scaffolding as bridges from students’ current levels of understanding to the next
• Making real world connections, particularly students’ personal experiences
• Embedding higher order thinking and problem solving through all curricular components

Though these approaches and components are widely accepted as best practice, it’s important for teachers to remember that one size does not fit all. Rather, teachers must be able to adapt content, delivery, and resources in order to embrace instructional practices that meet individual students’ needs and learning styles (Wood et al., 2018). Teachers should not need to worry about going at it alone, as collaboration with other content teachers or instructional specialists can be a powerful tool to identify and implement what equal access to instruction should look like. According to Yzquierdo (2017), collaborative planning and/or a teaming model combined with an effective multi-tiered intervention process reduces failures, reduces dropouts, reduces discipline issues, and improves student success overall.

Beyond instructional approaches, another critical piece of the equal educational opportunities puzzle is quite literal: the availability of resources to students and their families who may not have reliable internet connections or access to reading or other materials outside of school. Classroom teachers can help close this gap by ensuring students are familiar and comfortable with accessing resources through the school library. As Rodriguez (2019) posits, library spaces can connect to students’ transnational backgrounds and highlight their linguistic assets.

Finally, we take the principles and foundations of Linguistically Sustaining Practices and apply them at a campus- or district-wide level, creating a broader vision and environment of belonging, educational access, and commitment to teaching methods that reflect and elevate EB students’ background and language assets and support their academic and affective needs. In creating these systems, we focus on four primary areas:

• Environment of Belonging: Create an environment that connects and includes linguistically varied students and recognizes their background experiences as assets.
• Communication: Communicate the benefits of being multilingual and multiliterate.
• Curriculum Development: Develop curriculum with attention to the language demands of students with varied linguistic skills.
• Social Connections: Ensure social connectedness through participation in student leadership, athletics, and other extracurricular clubs and activities.

Instructional and non-instructional staff, including administrators, counselors, bus drivers, food service personnel, custodial staff, school office managers, crossing guard/police/security, school nurses and psychologists, among others, all play a critical role in making sure linguistically varied students feel welcome and integrated into the school system (Yzquierdo, 2017). As such, it’s important that professional development and staff training around the ideas of Linguistically Sustaining Practices focus on ensuring every staff member who interacts with students is equipped to build, maintain, and contribute to an environment of belonging for students with varied linguistic skills . Clayton (2013) notes that essential teacher knowledge in this area includes three connected components, including knowledge of:

• Learners and their development within social contexts;
• Subject matter and curriculum goals in relation to social purposes of education; and
• Instructional practices that take into account content and learners being taught, as informed by assessment and supported by classroom environments.

Administrator Considerations:

Campus and district leaders are vital in ensuring that the bilingual and ESL programs are fully integrated into the school environment, including the programs' students and staff. This includes physical arrangements of classrooms, appropriate allocation of resources, participation of students in school-wide programs and activities, as well as comprehensive professional development for all staff on instructional practices for EB students and on the goals of the bilingual and ESL programs.

While not every staff member may be directly responsible for teaching EB students, every staff member has a role to play in creating an environment of belonging that supports both their academic and their social development. As key figures in these children’s educational lives, the attitudes held and expressed by teachers about children’s linguistic and family backgrounds are formative for the children in developing their own attitudes, both positive and negative, towards their family and linguistic heritage" (Cunningham, 2013).

However, it’s not only the staff-to-student relationships that create a welcoming educational environment. Rather, educators must also work to create an environment that connects students to one another. Building community among diverse learners is an essential element of Linguistically Sustaining Practices, creating a "mutual aid society" in which members are motivated to support one another and responsible for helping each other succeed (Gay, 2022).

As they strive to create authentic, supportive relationships both between themselves and students and among the students, teachers of students with varied linguistic skills will start to see a sense of community that promotes achievement by highlighting belonging. According to Linan and Thomas (2013), Building authentic relationships with students and promoting a classroom environment that fosters those relationships are primary responsibilities of the classroom teacher. Active reflection, building relationships and trust, and building a sense of community by both teachers and students have been found to improve the academic outcomes of students from varied backgrounds, including those learning English as an additional language

It should be noted here that building authentic relationships that celebrate a variety of student backgrounds on campus does not mean every educator needs to be well-versed in every facet of every student’s experience —this is an impossible task and one that’s more likely to become a hindrance than a help. Amthor and Roxas (2016) remind us that rather than attempting to become an expert in each student’s experience, teachers and non-instructional staff can (and should) simply create a space where they and their students are open to and curious about the varying backgrounds in the room—one where students are invited to share their own expertise on their backgrounds and perspectives.

To guide the creation of environments of belonging conducive to learning, Linan and Thomas (2013) recommend educators reflect on these four prompts:

• Do I consistently provide positive feedback to my students?
• Do I intentionally ask about or refer to the students’ families or lived experiences during instruction and during brief interactions (e.g., greetings, interpersonal interactions)?
• Do I recognize my students’ accomplishments and important life events?
• Do I share about my own life and experiences as appropriate? (p. 10)

Next, it is important that every staff member understands and can communicate the benefits of being multilingual and multiliterate, highlighting for students that their primary languages are not deficits but assets. According to Escamilla (2022), elements of effective literacy instruction in dual language education contexts include an affirming climate for linguistic variation including learning about the benefits of bilingualism and explicit efforts to create a positive experience for EB students as they learn in their home language and English.

So, what are the benefits of being multilingual? Haukås, Storto, and Tiurikova (2022) cites:

• Encourages communication among people of different generations, regions, and backgrounds
• Develops global sensibility
• Improves reading, writing, and critical thinking abilities
• Promotes academic success
• Empowers speakers to share knowledge with others
• Builds self-esteem
• Enhances the speaker’s sense of personal identity in academic, family, social, and professional settings
• Increases job opportunities after school

Educators’ recognition and celebration of these advantages can play a powerful role in students’ self-confidence, sense of belonging, and motivation to learn. Clayton (2013) notes that multiple seminal studies on teaching emergent bilingual students have found that the most effective educators of students with varied linguistic skills are those who feel being multilingual will enrich students’ lives and consider knowing a second language or multiple languages to be an asset.

An additional focus in professional development of educators looking to embrace Linguistically Sustaining Practices is the development of curriculum that takes into account the language demands of EB students. This may require the professional development facilitators, themselves, to undergo training to really understand what they’re asking of the educators in terms of teaching methods and approaches involved in linguistically sustaining practices. As Villegas and Lucas (2002) note, professional development is needed to help teacher educators model the responsive instructional qualities reflected in the revised curriculum to weave the vision throughout the teacher education curriculum and develop local capacity to implement that curriculum in ongoing and collaborative processes.

In order to create effective campus- and district-wide support systems for EB students, the development of a curriculum that includes linguistically sustaining practices must not be a disjointed effort, but a cohesive initiative guided by best practices and collaboration from the ground up. For example, disjointedefforts might mean that teachers are trained and implementing Linguistically Sustaining Practices in their classrooms, but with no accountability or systemic support, so effectiveness will vary based on teacher characteristics. Likewise, if administrators or other leaders are trained on Linguistically Sustaining Practices and dictate what should start happening in classrooms without regard for what may already be in place or for creating buy-in before accountability measures begin, the efforts will be disjointed. Key reminders when developing Linguistically Sustaining Practices-oriented curriculum include the following:

• Include classroom teachers, particularly teachers of EB students, in decision-making for adaptations to curriculum from the start.
• Incorporate all grade levels and subject areas in development and training to build investment and common understanding.
• Maintain high standards with respect to both language acquisition and academic achievement without lowering expectations for EB students.

Support for EB students doesn’t end when the bell rings. Rather, campus and district leaders can further support students’ growth by ensuring social connectedness outside of the classroom, through participation in student leadership, athletics, and other extracurricular clubs and activities.