When Francisco Lopez was twelve, he and his parents moved from Santiago, Brazil, to a small town in Massachusetts, where his father began working as a Portuguese professor at a university.  Accompanied by his parents, Francisco enrolled in a local middle school, where his father served as the family interpreter.

The school principal, Mr. Murtaugh, greeted them and graciously took them on a quick tour of the school.  Following the tour, Francisco took a language test to determine if he was a multilingual learner.  A week later, he began school. Surrounded by sounds in a language he did not understand and unsure where to find his classrooms, locker, or anything else in the building, Francisco pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called his mother.  “Please come get me!” he implored.  His mother grabbed her keys and hurriedly drove to the school, where Francisco anxiously waited for her, eager to escape an experience that had become overwhelming.

When his father arrived home from work and asked how Francisco’s first day of school had gone, Francisco and his mother were afraid to tell his father what had happened, fearing that he would feel they were questioning his decision to move the family so far from home.  For the rest of the week, Francisco went to school briefly and called his mother to pick him up.  Throughout the week, neither Mr. Murtaugh nor Francisco’s teachers realized that he was leaving school shortly after arriving each day.  It was not until the end of the week that Francisco and his mother told his father what had occurred.  At the end of the week, the whole family returned to the middle school to meet with Principal Murtaugh to determine how the school could better create a more welcoming and supportive transition for Francisco into his new school community (Cohn-Vargas & Zacarian, 2024, pp. 23-24).

Francisco’s experience illustrates why a culture of trust and compassion matters. In this article, we explore key foundations for building such a culture and offer three ways educational leaders can foster it by creating trusting, caring spaces at school and affirming home-school partnerships.

Consider your responses to the following questions:

• Describe two or three actions Mr. Murtaugh took to help Francisco and his family feel welcome.
• Identify two or three additional actions you would have liked Mr. Murtaugh to take.
• How do your suggestions account for Francisco’s home language and culture?

We have asked these questions of many school administrators across the United States and elsewhere. Their responses often echo what the research demonstrates: the critical importance of building and sustaining school communities in which all students know they are unconditionally cared for. A culture of care fosters a sense of safety, belonging, value, and competence, as well as the confidence to speak for oneself and advocate for others. 

School leaders play an influential role in creating a caring culture, particularly through school policies, practices, and structures. The following three strategies illustrate ways leaders can strengthen identity safety in partnership with multilingual learners, families, and educators.

Three Strategies for Strengthening Identity Safety

1. Create Welcoming Experiences for New Students and Families

Francisco’s actions may be understood, in part, as a response to entering a new school without yet experiencing the safety, belonging, acknowledgment, and sense of competence he needed. The absence of these conditions ultimately led him to leave his new school shortly after arriving each day. One of the key supports that would have helped Francisco and his parents feel welcome was a multilingual, multicultural interpreter. Yet language access alone does not ensure meaningful interaction. Developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s (1978) work underscores the significance of social interaction: we make meaning of the world by connecting what we already know and have experienced with our interactions and encounters with others. In Francisco’s case, this essential opportunity for interaction was largely absent. Without adequate language access, Mr. Murtaugh engaged primarily in a monologue rather than a dialogue with Francisco and his family.

Creating a welcoming environment for multilingual learners and their families requires a back-and-forth flow of communication that demonstrates curiosity and openness to building connections. Yet even seasoned school leaders can unintentionally limit opportunities for students and families to interact meaningfully with them.

Doing this well means creating relevant and meaningful opportunities for interaction among students, families, and educators (Zacarian & Silverstone, 2020). For example, suppose Mr. Murtaugh enlisted a multilingual, multicultural student to join the school tour. Would the student’s presence alone ensure the kind of rich interaction Francisco needed? No. Meaningful interaction does not necessarily happen by chance. We must think carefully about how to partner with students, families, and educators. It starts with creating spaces for listening.

2. Listen to Students, Families, and Educators

Listening involves meeting with individuals or groups, actively listening, observing their actions and reactions, and connecting what they say with what they do. For school leaders, this means following the conversation closely and absorbing what is being communicated without judgment or interruption. This type of active listening involves:

• Asking open-ended questions to show our genuine curiosity. For example, during the school tour, Mr. Murtaugh could have shared when school started and ended and how long classes were. He could then have asked Francisco and his family to describe a school day in his prior school.
• Paying attention to what students, families, educators, and others share by demonstrating active listening. It entails using a speaker’s name, referencing what a speaker says, extending the conversation by asking for clarification and more information, and/or collaboratively expanding what is being stated. An example comes from an interaction between Cinda Jones, a teacher of multilingual learners, and her school principal.  Cinda states: “It is difficult for me to know what students understand in English. I am trying to assign them roles they can do, such as group timekeeper and illustrator.”  In response, the school principal states: “Cinda, I, too, find it difficult to know what a student is and is not understanding. How have the roles of illustrator and timekeeper helped your multilingual learners participate and contribute?”
• Moving away from being judgmental, engaging in a monologue, and asking questions that require a one-word (e.g., yes/no) or fill-in-the-blank response. Actively listening and responding foster open dialogue and demonstrate our genuine interest and curiosity in multilingual learners, their families, and educators. These practices help create identity-safe spaces by building deeper connections and relationships.

3. Build Caring, Strengths-Based Relationships

One of the most action-oriented steps school leaders can take is to recognize and support students and families for who they are and the tremendous assets they possess. This includes sharing the strengths we observe in students with their families and creating opportunities to build on those strengths across school and home.

School leaders can strengthen these relationships across school and home when they:

• Provide teachers, specialists, and all who work with multilingual learners with examples of how students’ multiple and varied identities are expressed as strengths. For example, high school principal Mr. Stanley shared the following observations about Abdul with his U.S. history teacher: “Abdul is a careful listener with his class partners. He clarifies what he has heard and affirms what classmates have stated. I appreciate his collaborative leadership. Abdul is also an incredible illustrator. He often draws what is being shared while working with a group. His classmates seem to appreciate his ability to visualize the key ideas.  It would be great to share these many positives with his parents and honor what they do at home to support Abdul’s strengths. It is so great when we learn from students’ families!”
• Support awareness and offer tools to deconstruct, dismantle, and counteract negative stereotypes about identity. For example, share positive experiences you have observed in a classroom, cafeteria, and elsewhere, such as: “Jamille is very strong at seeing when things are unfair. For example, she noticed a classmate wasn’t participating.  I appreciated her noticing this, sharing it politely and respectfully, and encouraging classmates to make space for their peer’s participation. Jamille is a natural mediator who seeks and encourages everyone’s active participation!  It would be great to share this with her parents and learn more about what they do at home to support Jamille’s leadership and empathy.”
• Help children celebrate their social identities and experience diversity as a rich, shared resource. This begins with learning about students’ and families’ personal, social, cultural, and life experiences and interests. Genuine curiosity about who students are and what matters to their families helps cultivate safety, belonging, competence, and the confidence to share their thoughts, hopes, dreams, and questions. For example, one family’s favorite activity is taking the train to see a student’s father and uncle perform at jazz concerts. We might invite these family members to participate in a history class on the Jazz Age, drawing on their experiences to strengthen students’ connections to learning.

Building identity-safe spaces requires a culture of trust and compassion among students, families, educators, and school leaders. Welcoming new students and families, listening actively, and building caring, strengths-based relationships provide three ways educational leaders can strengthen these partnerships across school and home.

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An earlier version of this article appeared in the December 2024 issue of Language Magazine. The ideas presented here draw from Identity Safe Spaces at Home and School: Partnering to Overcome Inequity by Becki Cohn-Vargas and Debbie Zacarian.

References

Cohn-Vargas, B. and Zacarian, D. (2024). Identity Safe Spaces at Home and School.  NY: Teachers College Press.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society (M. Cole, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Zacarian, D. & Silverstone, M.A. (2020).  Teaching to Empower: Taking Action to Foster Student Agency, Self-Confidence, and Collaboration.  Alexandria, VA. ASCD.