My student walked into class holding his stomach with one hand and gripping the strap of his backpack with the other. His face looked noticeably pale beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, and he avoided eye contact while the rest of the class moved through the noisy rituals of the morning: chairs dragging across tile floors and the low hum of desktop computers lining the back counter of the room. He hovered beside my desk for several seconds before quietly asking whether “people from the government” were allowed to come into schools. When I asked whether something had happened, he swallowed hard and told me his mother had warned him not to answer questions if anyone asked where his family came from. This made my room feel far colder than it should have in early June. The literacy objectives written neatly on the whiteboard felt insignificant and embarrassingly irrelevant next to the far more immediate lesson unfolding in the room: fear enters before instruction. 

Across the U.S., schools are attempting to teach literacy and critical thinking while many young people sit inside classrooms carrying a level of physiological fear that fundamentally interferes with learning itself. In dual language settings, this tension becomes even more acute because the very languages educators seek to celebrate can become associated with danger, surveillance, and exposure.

Across the U.S., schools are attempting to teach literacy and critical thinking while many young people sit inside classrooms carrying a level of physiological fear that fundamentally interferes with learning itself.

Children in linguistically diverse spaces hear adults discussing deportation raids at home before arriving at school the next morning. Families begin withdrawing from community events, avoiding school communication, or limiting participation in activities that once created connection. Learners who previously moved fluidly between languages suddenly become cautious about speaking at all.

Teachers cannot eliminate the political realities affecting immigrant communities. They can, however, design instruction that communicates belonging. This is how curriculum can become a shield. 

By curriculum, I mean the combination of reading selections, writing assignments, and discussion structures that shape whose stories are centered, whose voices are prioritized, and which experiences are valued. It also signals who is invited to contribute and how participation is enacted in the classroom. These curricular choices matter urgently because they either reinforce or counteract broader forces that shape students’ access and safety.

Reading Selections that Expand Perspectives

Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, professor emerita at Ohio State University, has famously described literature as windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. Students need mirrors that reflect their own experiences and affirm their identities. They need windows that help them understand lives different from their own. They need sliding glass doors that allow them to step imaginatively into another person’s experience and develop empathy across differences. 

Educators can intentionally select texts that feature migration, multilingualism, and layered cultural identities without reducing those experiences to trauma. Organizations such as We Need Diverse Books, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, and the International Literacy Association regularly highlight titles representing a wide range of linguistic and cultural experiences. Here are some of my favorite books across PreK–12 that help students expand their worldview and engage with experiences that may differ from their own.

PreK and Elementary School (Picture Books) 

• I Eat with My Hands by Brittney Caldwell
• Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez Neal
• Bela and Lily by Natasha Khan Kazi
• The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi
• Drawn Together by Minh Lê, illustrated by Dan Santat

These texts help pre-readers and young readers explore identity, family, friendships, and community while affirming that every child’s story carries value. More specifically, when my class read Alma and How She Got Her Name, students paired up to draw sketches imagining a future scene showing how the character’s name was impactful in her career; they compared sketches with a partner before any public sharing, giving quieter students a low‑risk way to participate. One of my students explained how seeing this activity made her feel more comfortable using her home name at school.

Middle School

• The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Pérez
• Front Desk by Kelly Yang
• Proud: Living My American Dream by Ibtihaj Muhammad (Young Readers Edition) 
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (Adapted for Young Readers)
• A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll

These texts transport young adults into parallel realities, prompting them to look beyond their own experiences and assumptions. With middle schoolers, I read Born a Crime aloud and after each chapter, ask students to suggest a better chapter title and name what stood out most to them. This develops inference and interpretation skills as students justify title choices. It boosts oral language and discussion skills through regular sharing. In addition, this practice increases engagement and ownership by giving students an active role in meaning-making. More importantly, these questioning routines are predictable, yet they reveal students’ perspectives and misconceptions, guiding targeted instruction and formative assessment.

High School

• Arab Women Voice New Realities edited by Roseanne Saad Khalaf and Dima Nassar
• Where I Belong by Marcia Argueta Mickelson
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
• Americanized: Rebel Without a Green Card by Sara Saedi
• I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib

These texts build critical thinking and encourage students to evaluate structures and systems and access power dynamics and privilege. Recently I’ve worked with high school students on the book The Marrow Thieves. As a warm up, I asked students to list three ways societies justify taking resources from marginalized groups. Then I assigned small groups to identify how the novel’s premise (the hunting of Indigenous people for their bone marrow) functions as an extended metaphor for real-world extraction and historical trauma. Each group prepared a two-minute précis linking a narrative event to a contemporary policy or practice that extracts from communities (for example: land dispossession, labor exploitation, or reproductive injustice). This activity required substantial thinking, and the learners had to stand squarely in their justifications.

Writing Assignments Devoid of Forced Disclosure

Assignments that offer distance, choice, and flexibility help students build critical thinking, creativity, analysis, and communication skills. They let students engage with important themes on their own terms. Examples include creating identity maps to show how experiences and relationships shape fictional characters. Students can write letters to a future self about goals and aspirations. They can analyze how belonging, exclusion, identity, or resilience appear in literature. They can conduct written interviews with historical figures and respond using research. They can develop place-based narratives about parks, libraries, museums, markets, or other public spaces. They can select independent writing topics based on personal interests rather than required family stories. When students have meaningful choices, they engage more deeply while keeping control over what they reveal about their lives. 

For writing assignment assessments, teachers can include anonymous drafts submitted without names or with ID codes so feedback targets ideas and craft rather than identity. Additionally, choice of audience lets students decide whether their work is read by the teacher, a small peer group, or the whole class. Together these practices protect privacy, increase risk-taking and revision, and scaffold students from private feedback to wider sharing as trust grows.

Discussion Structures that Foster Belonging 

Students participate more when discussion feels collaborative rather than performative. Classrooms often reward the quickest speaker or the loudest voice, but belonging grows when discussion structures create multiple entry points and give learners time to process ideas before sharing. Effective structures show that every student’s thinking has value. Try the structure SEEN: Stop and Think, Exchange Ideas with a Partner, Engage in the Discussion, Notice and Respect Different Perspectives. This structured routine makes discussions more inclusive and supports neurodiverse learners. 

Consistently using SEEN builds a classroom culture where every learner is welcomed and respected. Try a timed Stop and Think followed by an Exchange: give students two minutes to write quietly and one minute to compare notes with a partner. Over time the routine can be shortened or lengthened depending on the depth of discussion.

Before learners can fully participate, analyze literature, experiment with language, or develop confidence as readers and writers, they must first believe that their voices can exist inside the classroom without consequence.

Also by Jeannette Washington: “Strategies for Linguistic Reassurance: Inclusive Communication Practices for the Classroom“

Featured photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash.