Educators face new challenges in "superdiverse" classrooms where multiple languages are spoken

Teachers of English learners find it challenging to communicate in classrooms where students come from a variety of language and cultural backgrounds. Some children may speak Spanish at home, while others speak Vietnamese, Punjabi or Arabic. However, learning can improve by incorporating students' languages in classrooms, increasing teacher access to dictionaries and books in the home languages of their students and encouraging families to participate in class activities, such as parents recording themselves reading books in their home languages for inclusion in a classroom library, where students can listen to the recordings. That is the conclusion of a new report by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research and policy organization in Washington, D.C. It is the second in a series exploring superdiversity, defined as classrooms where more than five languages are spoken. The first report in the series explores superdiversity in Head Start programs and private and public preschools in Boston, Mass.