
Community Resources
Explore research, insights, and tools to help build thriving, student-centered community schools.
How to Leverage Newcomers’ Full Linguistic Toolbox to Support Deeper Learning
This resource offers practical strategies to help teachers embrace and leverage newcomer students’ full linguistic abilities. By incorporating translanguaging into everyday instruction, educators can create more inclusive, engaging, and multilingual classrooms where all students can thrive.
Strategies to Strengthen Immigrant Students’ Confidence, Connectedness, and Civic Engagement
This resource offers practical strategies to help immigrant and newcomer students build confidence, feel connected, and engage in civic life. It guides teachers in creating inclusive, empowering classrooms where all students can lead, contribute, and thrive.
Multicultural citizenship education as resistance: Student political development in an anti-immigrant national climate
Amid a rising tide of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, this study highlights how middle school teachers used multicultural citizenship education as a form of resistance. By affirming students' cultural identities, fostering critical awareness, and encouraging civic action, educators empowered immigrant-origin youth to see themselves as full members of a democratic society.
Engaging Newcomer Students in Deeper Learning
Newcomer students bring powerful cultural and linguistic assets into the classroom, yet too often instruction focuses narrowly on English acquisition. This piece offers six strategies to “teach up” to newcomers—centering inclusion, rigor, and relevance through culturally responsive teaching, translanguaging, and community-building practices that benefit all students.
Defining “American-ness” in the Context of Immigration: a case study of Helping Hands Elementary
How do children define what it means to be American in a time of growing diversity? This study explores fourth and fifth graders' views in a high-immigrant community. Despite the school's diversity and multicultural values, most students still saw “American” as white, U.S.-born, and English-speaking—though some offered a more inclusive vision. The findings highlight the need for schools to take a more active role in teaching a pluralist, inclusive model of Americanness.
11 Strategies to Identify and Integrate Newcomers’ Funds of Knowledge
This resource helps teachers uncover and build on newcomer students’ everyday knowledge and cultural strengths. With 11 practical strategies, it supports more inclusive, affirming classrooms where all students can thrive.
Futuro Brillante: A Model for Newcomer Education
Discover how Futuro Brillante provided hope and education to over 3,000 unaccompanied minors through trauma-informed practices and collaboration, offering valuable lessons for creating safe, inclusive spaces for vulnerable students.
Centering Multilingual Families in California's Community Schools
Learn how California’s Community Schools Partnership Program leverages family-school partnerships to center multilingual families, foster cultural inclusivity, and create transformative educational outcomes for students and their communities.