Your Words Are Fire: 10 Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies to Speak the Language of Belonging and Help Students Learn, Express Ideas, and Solve Problems (Hack Learning Series)

Language — how we use it and even what we think about it — can be a barrier to our students learning at their highest levels. It’s especially tough for kids from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Despite your best efforts so all your students and their families are connected and thriving in your classroom, sometimes you miss the mark, and they feel isolated by their own languages and cultures.

Your Words Are Fire presents 10 teaching strategies that help you build the bridge between the language your students are using and the language they need for academic success, while still supporting their cultural and linguistic identity.

• Learn how language and culture are connected
• Discover the role language plays in your classroom successes and potential barriers
• Change how you listen to your students (hint: it’s with more than your ears)
• Plan explicitly around the linguistic and cultural needs of your students
• Expand vocabulary work in your classroom so you all grow and learn

Break beyond the status quo that leaves you searching for better ways to connect with your students and the languages and cultures they bring into your classroom. Empower them as they work hard to learn and succeed and teach everyone in your class the value of new cultures, dialects and ways to communicate.

Your Words Are Fire is a reminder that language, throughout the annals of history, has made an impact on every generation and leaves an indelible mark. Your classroom is no different. The words exchanged between you and your students and families are paramount to the success of our future generations.

Engage in Lissette Jacobson and Maurice McDavid’s work, and you’ll find your words – and those of every student – blazing a new trail to learning.

Lissette Jacobson: Lissette Jacobson has dedicated her career to multilingual learners, having worked with culturally and linguistically diverse students in grades K-8. She brings both classroom and administrative experience to this role. She has provided professional development in multi-tiered systems of supports (MTSS), curriculum mapping, standards-based instruction, and differentiation. Lissette's passion for education stems from her experience as a first-generation Mexican American in the public school system. She also serves as an advisory board member of the TEACH Plus Illinois Affinity Group Network. Lissette co-founded Culture, Identity, and Multilingual Advocacy (CIMA), an educational consulting company that addresses current educational challenges through a linguistically and culturally responsive lens. It is crucial for her to affirm her students' identities and elevate the status of the Spanish language. She married her college sweetheart, Brett, and has two sons, Maxwell and Miguel.

Maurice McDavid: Maurice McDavid has a wide array of experience in education. He has taught middle school history and Spanish, as well as high school world geography. Maurice moved into administration as a dean at a high school sixty miles west of Chicago. He now serves as principal of a dual language elementary school in the western suburbs. While social justice and restorative justice have always been driving factors in his work, his interest in early literacy and linguistics has grown during his current tenure. He has offered professional development in all those areas in various settings. He also served on the Illinois Diverse and Learner Ready Teacher Network and helped to author the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading (CRTL) standards. Maurice is married to his high school sweetheart, Samantha, and has three children, Ezekiel, Cinderella, and Zariah.Together, Lissette Jacobson and Maurice McDavid co-founded Black, Brown & Bilingüe, a podcast dedicated to creating a world in which Black and Brown identities are affirmed, multilingualism and multiculturalism are nurtured, and equity is at the center of all conversations.