Create positive, culturally inclusive, welcoming schools using strengths-based practices such as newcomer welcome centers, attendance cafés, and home-language-as-asset approaches¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The brief advises schools to "use a strengths-based approach to help English learners feel seen, valued, and supported," establishing classroom routines and enrichment reflecting students' interests. Specific strategies include creating newcomer welcome centers, hosting "attendance cafés in families' home languages," running summer kindergarten-readiness camps such as Jumpstart, designing culturally and linguistically responsive lessons, using restorative circles to reduce bullying, treating home language as an asset (e.g., the Seal of Biliteracy), offering flexible schedules for students who work, and including parents of English learners in school and district decision-making bodies.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Teachers must be equipped to address and reduce anxiety in the classroom, especially for students learning a second language, with space created for peer-to-peer connection

Constraints¶

• Presented as promising practice recommendations, not as interventions evaluated in this brief

Target Learners¶

• English learners from elementary through secondary grades, including working older students and newcomers

Target Learning Goals¶

• School belonging, engagement, attendance, and language development

Related Strategies¶

• Partner with community-based organizations to deliver critical services, since districts and schools alone cannot reduce chronic absenteeism
• Build shared districtwide and schoolwide responsibility for multilingual learners' attendance through a multitiered approach with a strong foundational tier
• Supports teachers need to enact formative assessment for English learners
• Implement a tiered, prevention-first approach to reducing chronic absence that invests in positive conditions for learning
• Administrators sustain high-quality Tier 1 Core Instruction by creating conditions, structural supports, and a sitewide culture valuing dual-language learning
• Implement anti-bias curricular models with four goals to build culturally relevant, strength-based classrooms

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Gisela Ariza, Attendance Works; Hedy Chang, Attendance Works. (2024). Supporting Success: Attendance Solutions for Multilingual Students. WestEd. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED663795