Utilizing Community Cultural Wealth to Learn with Diverse Language Communities

Abstract

How to prepare teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students and families is an important aspect of teacher education as classrooms continue to diversify. Community-based approaches to teaching offer promising strategies for addressing this need. This article offers one example of an English as a Second Language literacy methods course that built preservice teachers’ understanding of and experiences with diverse language communities. Tara Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework provided a theoretical lens for the course and guided the preservice teachers’ teaching and reflections. The preservice teachers engaged in various activities that included literacy teaching, visiting places in their students’ communities, learning their students’ language, and creating narrative videos with the students and their families. The findings from this course show how the CCW framework can be a constructive method for identifying community assets when combined with a variety of activities for preservice teachers to engage with students and their families.