Amplifying Multilingual Voices and Learning in k-12 Education

All Multi-lingual Learners and English Language Learners in New York City bring with them cultural, linguistic, and intellectual resources and the right to high-quality public education.  It is our responsibility as a public system to welcome and support them by assessing, affirming, and sharpening their academic identities and strengths through integrated and/or bilingual education programs in social studies settings.

This instructional resource, featuring Project Based Learning (PBL) therefore, capitalizes on the premise that language instruction is more effective when taught in the service of inclusive content knowledge, language literacy, and twenty-first-century skills (e.g., analytical reading and writing). It is also important to point out that the instructional goal of teaching and learning history and civics while learning a new language is not to turn students into acculturated thinkers and homogeneous users of a language discourse (e.g., academic language). Instead, the goal is to teach and assess analytical language to support students in using their reasoning and critical voices and to sharpen their own socio-emotional, academic, linguistic, cultural, and civic identities.