Review of the Classroom Implications Discussed in Language and Cultural Practices in Communities and Schools: Bridging Learning for Students from Non-Dominant Groups Edited by Inmaculada García-Sánchez & Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

This review provides a summary of the classroom implications discussed in Language and Cultural Practices in Communities and Schools: Bridging for Students from Non-Dominant Groups edited by Inmaculada García-Sánchez and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana (2019). Although there are thirteen chapters in this book written by different scholars, they are related to each other and provide teachers with some research-based guidelines on how to integrate different sources of knowledge — such as students’ funds of knowledg e — into their instructions in multicultural classrooms. The review of the classroom implications discussed in this book highlights the important role of the teacher once more in providing minority students with the equitable education that they deserve. Therefore, teachers need to be familiarized with culturally responsive teaching approaches in general and, in particular, with different teaching methods and strategies of multicultural education. This will allow teachers to prepare their students to live successfully and peacefully in non-native cultural settings and societies.


Introduction 1
Multicultural education is "an idea or concept, an educational reform movement, and a process" (Banks, 2019, p. 22) which seeks the purpose of providing education with equity to all students to achieve social justice (Gordon, 1999). In multicultural settings like the United States of America, some groups of students are listed as minority groups because their number is not as great as the number of the other dominant groups. Therefore, in this case, equitable education means taking these groups of students into account by considering their differences in terms of race, culture, language, and so on as funds of knowledge to improve teaching and learning processes.
Professional literature is one way of preparing teachers by providing them with the necessary tips that they may need in their multicultural classrooms. Language and Cultural Practices in Communities and Schools: Bridging Learning for Students from Non-Dominant Groups (García-Sánchez & Faulstich Orellana, 2019) is one of the books that focuses on teacher preparation through the discussion of varying research studies. The editors of this book focus on different family, social, cultural, and religious practices to figure out the best ways that teachers can apply minority students' real-life practices to classroom instruction (See Table 1). In other words, the authors of this book try to bridge the gap between literacy practices at school and minority students' out-of-school activities. This is to improve teaching and learning processes, provide students of color with an equitable education, and prepare them to live successfully and peacefully in non-native cultural settings and societies. It is also important to know that "multicultural content can help students master basic skills essential to function in a global and flat world" (Banks, 2019, p. 6). To provide a thorough description of this book, I decided to divide it into two sections: key information and classroom implications. Karami and Johnson-Carter (2020) discussed the key information of the book, and I summarized the classroom implications from each chapter in this review (see Table 1).

Focus of the Chapter
This chapter focuses on the Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI) approach in multicultural classrooms. The ways that learning in the classroom "can more closely mirror what we see when children engage in LOPI to family and community activity" (p. 24) are outlined.

Classroom Implications
a) Responsibility assignment is one of the classroom implications of LOPI that can help students learn the subject matter better in the classroom. For example, students can volunteer to teach a portion of the subject matter, design activity, or plan an event.
b) Students must be encouraged to work with their peers productively and collaboratively in the classroom instead of copying or cheating.
c) If students consider collaboration as a "built-in exception" in the classroom culture, they will initiate and accomplish it eagerly without being externally motivated.
d) The type of collaboration in the classroom is not limited solely to verbal collaboration. Students may collaborate either verbally or nonverbally based on their family heritage and cultural roots.
e) Students continue their spontaneous help if teachers respect and value their roles and decisions as well as their autonomy in the classroom.
f) Although "small awards for simple practices or exercises" are good ideas to encourage and motivate students, their involvement "in productive and legitimate community work with others does seem to be rewarding to children" (p. 34).

Chapter
Author (

Focus of the Chapter
This chapter focuses on the important role of teachers in connecting "nature-culture relations" to human activities and classroom instruction in multicultural classrooms.

Classroom Implications
a) Scientific observation and openness to other ways of knowing helps teachers.
b) Small disagreements are productive in the classroom.
c) The movements of the whole body can be used as a resource for learning about/with the natural world.

Focus of the Chapter
This chapter explains how culturally-based practices and "culturally sustaining settings in school" can improve student-teacher and student-student relationships, how these types of activities can enhance students' interests, and how they can provide opportunities for students to take up "learning identities, STEM identities, and racialized identities" (p. 60).

Classroom Implications
One example with respect to STEM is playing games like dominoes. In fact, "the witty, humorous talk and signifying embedded" throughout the game can help teachers teach the subject matter better.
a) Teachers should create a warm atmosphere based on trust and mutual respect. This is

Review of the Classroom Implications discussed in Language and Cultural Practices in Communities and Schools: Bridging Learning for Students from Non-Dominant Groups Edited by Inmaculada García-Sánchez & Marjorie Faulstich Orellana
Page | 14 critical to foster meaningful relationships.
b) Teachers should implement learners' background knowledge and prior experiences in their teaching. This means bringing students' "unique lenses and strength" into practice.
c) Students need to feel valued and realize that their ideas are productive. "At times, this work is explicitly connected to race, culture, gender, or social class" (p. 72).

Chapter Author(s) of the Chapter Title of the Chapter 4 Enid Rosario-Ramos Jenny Sawada
"They think Detroit is just litter": Youth challenging environmental injustice through participatory research and civic engagement

Focus of the Chapter
This chapter argues that the engagement of youth from non-dominant groups in social activities helps them grow both academically and socially.

Classroom Implications
a) Educators and curriculum developers should integrate "inquiry-based and participatory learning with the goals of social justice" in school curricula (p. 89).
b) Professional development workshops for teachers not only help them update their teaching toolbox but also help them teach social justice better through learning and implementation of new teaching approaches.

Sarah Gallo Holly Link Jessica Somerville
Leveling the politicized experiences of children from mixed status families: Connections to civic education in elementary schools

Focus of the Chapter
Chapter 5 discusses ways that educators can utilize and support their students' political views and experiences in developing their critical understandings while teaching civic education.

Classroom Implications
a) Teachers can leverage "students' politicized experiences" (p. 104) through some activities such as role play, writing, and projects (Rubin, 2012).
b) Some alternative vocabulary must be chosen for words that have too negative connotations because words with negative connotations can increase fear, silence, or even exclude students from classroom participation.

Focus of the Chapter
The focus of chapter 6 is on students' language and literacy learning through the help of religious practices, such as "reading of ancient" and sacred texts (p. 108).

Classroom Implications
a) Schools can leverage students' language and literacy skills to read religious books in their "literacy standards" (p. 118). This can be done throughout the K-12 curriculum.
b) Religious practices can not only improve language skills and subskills such as vocabulary, listening, and speaking but also help students use appropriate speech in various contexts and situations.
c) The engagement of students with religious "themes and characters from religious texts" (p. 119) can help students think further and deeper.

Focus of the Chapter
The authors focus on "the figurative and metaphorical language practices" that students "employed as they engaged with religious texts" (p. 124).

Classroom Implications
a) Teachers should connect new information to students' already constructed knowledge. For example, students use metaphors in their religious practices. Teachers can point them out in their classrooms and let their students know that they have already seen these words, phrases, and sentences.
b) Teachers can focus on contextual use of language in their classrooms and teach their students different words used in different contexts.
c) "Comparing phrases across languages for nuanced meaning would be another language activity" that can be applied "in support of students' academic language development" (p. 136).

Focus of the Chapter
This chapter highlights the importance of immigrant children's already acquired language in language programs.

Classroom Implications
a) Immigrant students and teachers need to know that their home language is valuable and critical in their target language and literacy development. "A key ingredient in setting up the learning conditions for immigrant students to develop linguistic resilience is the cultivation of metalinguistic strategies in language and literacy classes" (p. 157).
b) The exploration and awareness of similarities between two languages in terms of linguistic heritage can improve language development of immigrant students. c) Teachers should include strategies for metalinguistic awareness, especially the awareness of linguistic heritage in their lesson plans. This can help teachers accomplish several goals. For example, i) The validation of immigrant students' languages and their linguistic knowledge can improve their learning.
ii) "Building on continuous, rather than on home language-school language dichotomies, is crucial in developing a sociolinguistic and culturally responsive approach to curriculum and instruction" (p. 158).
iii) Students' rich awareness of different areas of languages such as metalinguistic features and pragmatics can improve their cultural and appropriate use of a language in different settings.

iv)
Validating the "hybrid origins of languages" can fade away the "sociolinguistic inequalities" that may exist between students in the classroom and between languages of immigrants and native students.

Focus of the Chapter
The author focuses on transcultural storytelling and its effects on transcultural literary reading.

Classroom Implications
a) Teachers must be facilitators and good listeners in the classroom in order to facilitate the process of transcultural storytelling.
b) Teachers should provide students with models first. Then, teachers should help students connect them to their own lives and experiences.
c) Sometimes stories may not be clear to teachers or teachers may not be certain about the story. In fact, this uncertainty shows that teachers are willing to ask questions and listen more. This will keep teachers engaged and interested in students' stories.
d) Teachers should notice the ideas, concepts, and perspectives and highlight them to accomplish the goal(s) of the lesson.

Focus of the Chapter
This chapter discusses the effects of Spanglish or translanguaging code switching or code mixing, as a linguistic competence, in everyday talk on "specific skills highlighted in the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts" and writing portion (p. 179).

Classroom Implications
a) Teachers should see code switching or code mixing as an asset because this everyday use of language "overlaps with kinds of writing valued in schools" (p. 194).
b) Teachers should help students implement what students already possess in terms of linguistic competencies. Teachers should also try to expand students' linguistic repertoires simultaneously.

Focus of the Chapter
This chapter states that "home literacy practices conform closely with the kinds of literacies that schools hope their students will engage in" (p. 198).
Classroom Implications a) Teachers should validate and honor students' home literacy practices.
b) Teachers should let students speak about what they have done at home in terms of literacy practices. For example, words or texts that they have translated into their home language by the help of their parents.
c) Students' interaction and conversation with each other is very helpful. This can let students share their ideas and experience with each other. d) "Teachers can further support language brokers by helping them to see the complexities of the work, and the skills that they already are deploying, while enabling youth to draw from their entire linguistic repertoires" (p. 209). e) Teachers should not limit students' use of literal and accurate translation. Teachers should allow students to refer to their linguistic repertoire to enjoy the process even though it is imperfect.
f) Teachers should give students freedom to choose and work with texts; however, they can provide them with necessary support if needed.

Focus of the Chapter
This chapter discusses the importance of student engagement in classroom activities, how students can help researchers conduct research, and ways that teachers and students can learn about and with each other.

Classroom Implications
a) Teachers should keep students engaged in their classroom activities. Students' engagement as well as using their native languages in the classroom can enhance their understanding and improve the process of learning. However, the author believes that "the idea that home languages and practices could become a part of classroom learning and perhaps change what we do in classrooms needs much further consideration and attention" (p. 227).
b) Teachers should design classroom activities that can help students increase their selfawareness. This includes the awareness of their abilities, knowledge, talents, ideas, and so on.

Danny C. Martinez Elizabeth Montaño Javier Rojo
Leveraging youth cultural data sets for teacher learning

Focus of the Chapter
This chapter highlights Lee's (2007) "cultural Modeling tradition: specifically, her notion of youth cultural data sets" to investigate how they help teachers leverage "the communicative repertoires of Black and Latinx youth in schools in respectful and humanizing ways" (p. 232).
Classroom Implications a) Teachers should notice that they may not fully understand the time when students are engaged with "cultural and communicative repertoires even though both "share racial and/or ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds" (p. 245).
b) Teachers should share their knowledge and experiences with each other in teacher development sessions to improve the teaching and learning process of students from non-dominant groups.

Conclusion
To be culturally competent, teachers should be qualified and prepared in terms of knowledge, awareness, and skills (Sue et al., 1992). When multicultural education is integrated into the curriculum successfully, students can view their own cultural experiences from different perspectives, such as "the perspectives of other cultures and groups" (Banks, 2019, p. 22).
Teachers play the most important role in providing minority students with the equitable education that they deserve. Providing diverse groups of students with a system of education based on justice and equity primarily requires educators and curriculum developers to know who their students are and how similar or different they are from each other in terms of culture, language, religion, background knowledge, race, and so on. Then, teachers and educators must find ways to "integrate diversity education into the entire curriculum to implement multicultural education successfully" (Alismail, 2016, p. 139). In fact, teachers must not only "know the cultural characteristics of their students in diverse cultures", but they must be skilled enough to be able to integrate their "students' different cultures into classroom experiences" and practices as well (Alismail, 2016, p.139). Teachers also need to know that some general aspects of culture such as food, music, clothing, and so on "tend to be overemphasized inschool celebrations of diversity" most of the time, while some specific aspects such as "longstanding practices that have been handed down across generations" (García-Sánchez & Faulstich Orellana, 2019, p. 10) do not get the attention that they deserve. Therefore, the editors of this book focus on some deemphasized cultural aspects of students of color because they believe that "young people's quotidian, sustained, and meaning engagement and participation in practices" (García-Sánchez & Faulstich Orellana, 2019, p. 10) can help teachers know their students along with their cultural backgrounds well and let them plan for their classroom instructions as well (Lee, 2007).
Ideas discussed in this book are detailed descriptions of practices that can be included in today's multicultural classrooms. As stated by Banks (2019, p. 1) "theory and research in multicultural education indicate that the total school must be reformed in order to implement multicultural education comprehensively and effectively." The intersectionality of variables such as gender, ethnicity, cultural differences, religion, and language in multicultural education can influence students' behavior (Grant & Zwier, 2011). Therefore, each of these variables is influential and must be considered by teachers when teaching in multicultural classrooms.