Briya Public Charter School is a nationally recognized, two-generation school that has served immigrant families in Washington, DC, for more than 30 years. At Briya, students contribute to the school through participation in curriculum design and leadership-focused programming. These engagements enhance their learning and develop important skills…

Communicating with parents is a key role for teachers to foster relationships that will support student learning. This essay and discussion article focuses on a range of strategies teachers can use to promote effective communication with parents of children with special needs. The increasing prevalence of students with disabilities in our schools…

The following article is an adapted and abridged excerpt from The Language Immersion Life: A Guide for Families by Millie Park Mellgren (2017). This book features answers to the most common questions Dr. Mellgren was asked as an elementary immersion principal. The volume features commentary and data gleaned from surveys given to hundreds of former…

This Advice provides important information on the national context and describes best practice to support senior leaders, practitioners, and education authorities in evaluating and planning for improvement in Gaelic Education. It is based on evidence from inspections, reviews and validated self-evaluation, covering all sectors of Gaelic Education…

The engaging profiles of "English Learners at Home and at School" offer access to a deeper and broader understanding of the lived experiences of English learners and their families. Such knowledge is essential for all educators in order to anticipate the needs of, and best support, English learners. In this highly readable volume, Joyce…

This report summarizes Austin Independent School District elementary principals' comments from a December 2017 discussion about the process for choosing bilingual and English as a second language programs for their schools in the 2018-2019 school year.

In this article I introduce a framework that centers indigenous educational sovereignty in university-school partnerships. Developed from collaborative work with Indigenous Maya families who are migrants from Yucatan, Mexico, the framework operates from an understanding that Indigenous parents have knowledge that is important for their children to…

Special education programs are increasingly serving students with disabilities who are English language learners and their families. Facilitating bilingualism is an effective practice and aligns with culturally responsive special education service provision. It is critical for special educators and service providers to learn about bilingualism,…

Over the past century in the U.S., stronger parental involvement in children's education has been encouraged and, more recently, codified into state teaching standards. Despite this, fully engaging parents as equal and respected partners has remained elusive. The quest seems particularly perplexing when attempting to enhance participation of…

The author recalls his long ago work with an immigrant student that the school system declared to have a learning disability. Instead, it was the system that was unable to learn how to connect with the child and his family, a task that simply required listening and a walk across the street.

The goal of the Family Science Night (FSN) described in this article was to involve culturally and linguistically diverse families in school life so that students would be more vocal, successful, and interactive in science class. The project would also demonstrate to the students that their teacher valued their input in the classroom. The setting…

The service-learning Spanish translation course (Spanish 315: "Spanish in the Business World") taught at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne in the fall of 2010 and spring of 2012 provided an ideal context for the students to connect with the Hispanic community in our geographical region. Once the connection through service…

This article focuses on the administration of disciplinary exclusion (expulsion) from school. It identifies a number of social boundaries between people that negatively affect students subject to permanent exclusion, to the extent that they can be seen as constituting incidents of institutional racism. For example, the high statistical currency of…

Within the context of a growing pluralism in school communities, the need for educational structures that encourage access and opportunity for students and families who have traditionally been marginalized is an urgent priority. The purpose of this article is to articulate a conceptual framework for school leaders that can promote such structures.…

Families of culturally and linguistically diverse pupils often do not participate fully in their children's school-based education. The purpose of this article is to introduce taxonomies as a means to examine and improve school practices and levels of responsiveness to families whose home language is not English, so that families feel more…