Restoring Students' Innate Power: Trauma-Responsive Strategies for Teaching Multilingual Newcomers, by Louise El Yaafouri (ASCD, 2022)
Recently arrived emergent multilingual students (new students from outside U.S. school districts) represent a growing yet underserved school population. Compared to other student groups, they typically have less agency in making decisions that affect their lives, less control over their education and social trajectories, and less confidence in their existing pool of knowledge.
Yet according to author Louise El Yaafouri, educators and school leaders can play an active role in restoring a sense of efficacy for many recently arrived linguistically and culturally diverse newcomers. El Yaafouri's new release explores the power dynamic challenges facing newly arrived emergent multilingual students and ways to restore their autonomy and belief in their own capacities.
For emerging multilinguals to truly feel they belong in U.S. classrooms, El Yaafouri argues, educators must understand how to bring together the elements of respecting students' cultures, recognizing transition shock, and attending to SEL to create culturally responsive, trauma-diminishing learning spaces.
It's important to note, El Yaafouri says, that transition shock is underappreciated as a factor affecting immigrant students. While teachers should not take the role of a psychologist, they can foster connection, protection, and respect, and facilitate self-efficacy.
