"Best Practices in Working with Linguistically Diverse Families" by Blanca E. Araujo

     This article discusses the importance of using best practices for teaching students who come from many different walks of life who speak a range of different languages. One of these practices is to incorporate "funds of knowledge." Funds of knowledge are the information that is learned from the students' by interactions at home. These can include resiliency, strong work ethic, cooking, care taking, and other valuable knowledge that is learned at home. The article talks about hoe beneficial it is for teachers to incorporate the students' home environment with their school environment. Using cultural resources leads to better partnerships between parents, students, and schools regardless of background.
     The next important practice is incorporating culturally relevant teaching. The article says that successful teachers promote native language instruction. Teachers need to be conscious of culture and ethnic differences and personal biases. One suggestion they use to promote this is by bringing in families  to classrooms. Teachers need to be careful to not view students and families through mainstream lenses because when this happens, teachers often see weaknesses as opposed to individual strengths of the students.
     The third best practice to working with linguistically diverse families is communicating with these families. Not being able to connect with parents and let them know standards, expectations, and ways to help gives way to miscommunications and lead to stereotyping. To create a place where students and families feel comfortable and understand what their students are learning, teachers should send emails, newsletters, and invitations in the students' native language.
     Teachers should also seek and extend assistance for families. Helping and getting help from linguistically diverse families builds bridges between classrooms, schools, teachers and families.
     While reading this article, a few questions came to mind. One of which was where do teachers find the resources to be able to translate classroom articles into multiple different languages. How can teachers use linguistically diverse parents as volunteers and class helpers if they cannot speak the language? But overall, this article was very helpful and let me see different ways to involve the parents of linguistically diverse students.