11: Culturally Sustaining Teaching Practices for Elementary Multilingual Learners: A Classroom Example

Culturally sustaining pedagogies address the multiethnic and multilingual nature of many classrooms and help sustain backgrounds and experiences of minoritized communities. These pedagogies maintain the practices of students while also expanding their repertoires. This chapter describes ways an elementary teacher has continuously supported multilingual learners (MLs) through culturally sustaining teaching practices. We draw from a qualitative case study to examine how this elementary teacher uses students’ cultural and linguistic affordances in classroom instruction. We share excerpts of classroom instruction to showcase these teaching practices. The chapter concludes with implications for teaching MLs in elementary classrooms.