This is 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 (the study of signs using multiliteracies) and self-discovery. The book promotes 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 examples of hands-on experiences which have been created for students to find joy in learning. Emphasizing strategies designed for learners with varied abilities and interests, the guide focuses on students’ identities and cultures as they are related to race, language, heritage, and semiotics. The book provides resources for teachers to use in their classrooms to connect with the students’ experiences, such as through music, customs and traditions, storytelling, and idioms—tangible experiences created for students to find joy in learning and sharing it. The modules showcased in this text also use examples from the Common Core State Standards for Language Arts for elementary levels, dissected for teachers through an interdisciplinary and multicultural lens.

This book guides teachers in becoming compassionate educators, teaching them strategies by providing examples of lessons to connect with their students and also specifically support bilingual and multilingual learners. It is an ideal resource for in-service elementary school teachers who are interested in incorporating culturally responsive teaching practices into their classrooms, as well as for preservice teachers who want to focus on students’ culture, language, and assets. Teachers, students, and the student community share the joy of knowledge together through this guide.