Immigrant Students and Literacy

Book excerpt: This powerful book demonstrates how culturally responsive teaching can make learning come alive. Drawing on his experience as a fifth-grade teacher in a multiethnic school where children spoke over 14 different home languages, the author reveals how he created a language arts curriculum from the students’ own rich cultural resources, narratives, and identities. Illustrating the challenges and possibilities of teaching and learning in a large urban school, this book: Documents how a culturally engaged pedagogy improved student achievement and increased standardized test scores.Examines the literacy practices of children from immigrant, migrant, and refugee backgrounds, and includes powerful examples of their voices and writing.Provides an invaluable model of reflective practice, including a wide array of student-centered strategies, to generate powerful learning experiencesDemonstrates a way for teachers to tap into the various forms of literacy students practice beyond the borders of the classroom. “Campano illustrates what it takes to be a teacher with heart and soul, not simply one who succumbs to the increasing calls for higher test scores and standardized curricula. . . . There are many lessons to be learned from this gem of a book.” —From the Foreword by Sonia Nieto, University of Massachusetts at Amherst “Campano shows us what we can do—what we must all learn to do—to restore children’s full humanity to the center of U.S. literacy education.” —Patricia Enciso, The Ohio State University