This study aims to investigate the general practices of bilingual students’ home learning environments and to compare the variation in practices as a function of parents’ length of stay in the USA, educational levels, and household income by analyzing the results of a large-scale parental survey in an urban area in the southwestern United States, serving a predominantly Hispanic student population. The data consisted of 959 parents’ responses. The findings show that parents’ practices of engagement in students’ learning, discussions for students’ future, emotional support, students’ media consumption, disciplinary practice, and support for students’ autonomy vary in multifold ways as a function of their backgrounds. For example, while most parents, regardless of their background, were not prone to supporting children’s autonomy when deciding children’s routines at home, those with higher educational and income levels tend to more frequently participate in children’s classrooms or discuss children’s college entrance and career paths. The study discusses the implications of the findings and limitations.

Affirming culture and cultural identity in the bilingual/ESL classrooms

Language acquisition, reading comprehension, and teacher PD will be presented in this article to discuss how the three components can be helpful in supporting emergent bilinguals (EBs). Using children’s literature in mathematics classes could improve the performance of (EB) students. The most current research suggests students who engage more with language through meaningful experiences like stories have greater retention for the material they are learning while they also see the English language in action. The more interaction and exposure to the language may increase EBs performance in the class subjects of English Language Arts and Reading. One of the best ways to engage emergent bilingual students with science and mathematics while supporting language acquisition is the use of children’s literature to teach science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) concepts. The elements of a story help students learn the structure of English usage in everyday speech while giving them solid STEAM concepts they can more easily understand through the story. This strategy also allows the teacher to scaffold for EB students using the story as a building block. By selecting and pairing effective EB strategies with children’s STEAM literature, there may be an increase in student performance overall.

In this study, we explore the impact of professional development (PD) on teacher empathy and engagement with emergent bilingual (EB) students in mathematics classrooms. Advancing Inquiry in Middle Mathematics for Rural East Texas (AIMM) a two-year A PD project, targeting teachers in rural schools, aimed to shift teaching beliefs from directive to connected approaches and to increase content knowledge. Three activities are described in detail. During the tasks, teachers experienced the perspectives of EB students, fostering empathy and enhancing their instructional strategies. Pre-post data and monthly reflections demonstrated shifts in teaching practices, highlighting increased use of cognitively demanding tasks and improved teacher-student interactions. Teachers reported greater cultural awareness and understanding of EB students, attributing these changes to the empathetic experiences provided by the PD. Our findings highlight the necessity of incorporating empathy in PD to support diverse students’ emotional and cognitive needs, ultimately promoting inclusive and effective teaching practices. These findings suggest that empathy-focused PD can mitigate unproductive teaching beliefs and enhance the learning environment for all students.