Multicultural Educators as Cultural Brokers and Language Mediators

Abstract

With the lack of ethnolinguistic-specific resources for U.S. teachers, this essay is written for teachers working with ethnolinguistic students at schools and in the communities. In what follows, I will focus on two expanded theoretical underpinnings of becoming multicultural educators: (1) cultural brokering as a way to cross personal and professional boundaries, and (2) using languages as mediators to support the learning of ethnolinguistic students. For the second theoretical underpinning, I offer two recommendations for achieving the goals of multicultural education: (1) adopting an anthropological Funds of Knowledge approach, and (2) working our critical awareness inside out.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of this article. Also, the author would like to thank Cindy Huang for her feedback in the earlier drafts of this article.