Teaching Multilingual Students Through Culture and Language: A Teacher’s Guide to Self-Discovery Using Semiotics in the Elementary School Classroom

This book serves as a professional development guide designed for elementary school teachers to help them center multilingual and bilingual students’ language and culture in the classroom by recognizing and harnessing their students’ assets through semiotics and self-discovery. Its purpose is to promote compassionate education, fostering empathy and connection to students’ identities in response to the known problem of student disengagement and the challenges in teaching reading and writing.

The guide showcases planned and tested modules to facilitate student success in diverse learning environments, and each module includes resources, sample lesson plans, and hands-on experiences designed to help students find joy in learning. Emphasizing strategies intended for learners with varied abilities and interests, this book focuses on students’ identities and cultures as they are related to race, language, heritage, and semiotics. It is an ideal resource for in-service elementary school teachers interested in incorporating culturally responsive teaching practices into their classrooms, as well as for preservice teachers who want to focus on students’ cultures, languages, and assets. Teachers, students, and the student community share the joy of knowledge together through this guide.

Tala Michelle Karkar-Esperat is Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education and Technology at Eastern New Mexico University. Her research is focused on preservice teachers’ literacies, online literacies, coaching of teachers, and pedagogical literacy practices through multiliteracies, new literacies, and semiotics.