Developing Inclusive Multilingual Family Literacy Practices

Families and teachers play important roles in children’s literacy development, but often times, immigrant, refugee, and multilingual families’ cultural and linguistic resources are not recognized or valued by schools. In turn, some educators are using community literacy programs to both acknowledge and support culturally and linguistically diverse families. However, schools continue to face difficulties designing multilingual events that fully integrate parents, their children, and educators. Too many schools design programs thinking that they will address and solve families’ deficits, rather than approaching family literacy projects as opportunities to learn about the assets that culturally and linguistically diverse families bring to school communities. Developing Inclusive Multilingual Family Literacy Practices describes one school’s attempt to create a unique, asset-based multilingual literacy project. The brief discusses the challenges that occurred, and conclude with recommendations for multilingual, community-based literacy programs.

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