This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first proposes the Ten Teacher Questions framework. This set of questions is designed to provide you with a generic framework for critical enquiry into all your pedagogical choices, and to connect your pedagogical knowledge to what you have learned in previous chapters. The second section provides the curriculum context structures ‒ that is, the ACARA Cross-curriculum Priorities and General Capabilities, which inform our work. The third section presents Teaching Ideas in Mathematics, The Arts and English. Our key message is not that you must implement every Teaching Idea! Instead, we hope the examples will consolidate a practical approach to harnessing the linguistic diversity of your students. We hope that you will grasp the principles which you can see at work in the Teaching Ideas, and the way that they respond to one or more of the Ten Teacher Questions.

Chapter 8 moves from the classroom to consider student experience in the school as a whole. take a critical walk through a school to observe many incidental strategies for affirming how that may be used by staff and leadership can to show how all school staff and leaders can collaboratively create a strong school cultures which is resilient against racism. The chapter includes many examples of school initiatives, teacher partnerships, involvement of families, use of school spaces, and participation in activities beyond the school.

Chapter 4 explores the non-Indigenous community languages which form the single biggest site of language learning and maintenance in Australia. For the communities and families who have established and grown these sites of teaching and learning, the languages represent long-standing investments of commitment, love, identity, and intergenerational transmission of history and culture. The community language school communities which our students attend on weekends (often located in borrowed spaces, such as churches and temples) can be a very large part of students’ emotional and intellectual development. Given the diversity of the field, the chapter provides only a sketch of the extraordinary array of community languages, but it also discusses how mainstream schools provides some students with the opportunity to learn and extend their languages. The chapter explores the options in primary and secondary schools to learn a variety of selected languages within the curriculum and invites the reader to dig into some of the inequities in school provision in different Australian states and territories.

Chapter 5 builds your understanding of the thousands of students who are adding English to their language repertoire and offers many excellent teaching strategies. The chapter does not attempt to provide detailed professional development in EAL/D pedagogy but is more concerned with how harnessing English language learning can connect with wellbeing and achievement. The two overarching goals for this chapter are that you develop empathy with English learners’ perspectives, and that you acquire a wide variety of strategies to support English learning, across the curriculum, with high expectations for all students. Chapters 3 and 4 have stressed that it is important for students to maintain and develop the languages they bring to school, as well as to add English proficiency. Strong English proficiency enables participation in all areas of Australian society and economy, and participation in global communities where English is a shared language.

Chapter 10 takes you to your own professional future. The handy ‘Twelve Principles’ summary enables teachers and school leaders to orient their teaching towards harnessing linguistic diversity for their own professional and personal development, and for the wellbeing and academic achievement of students.

Chapter 9 moves further forward into considering students’ futures, specifically linguistically diverse students, and how teachers can support the development of ‘futures thinking’ for many contexts.

This chapter focuses on the areas of Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), Health and Physical Education, Science, Technologies and Languages and we approach these areas using the critical framework of the Ten Teacher Questions. We hope that you may revisit Chapter 6 to refresh your understanding of the ACARA Cross-curriculum Priorities, and as you progress into the Teaching Ideas of this chapter.

Welcome to this book. We welcome local and international readers in both rural and urban contexts. This book is about linguistic diversity in schools and how teachers can harness multilingual resources and diverse worldviews to promote the wellbeing and achievement of all students.

Throughout the book we present examples of effective practice in classrooms around Australia, ranging from Menindee (New South Wales) to Yarrabah State School (Queensland), from Kalgoorlie (Western Australia) to the Eyre Peninsula (South Australia) and from Mallacoota (Victoria) to Tennant Creek (Northern Territory). The principles and pedagogies promoted here will also apply to multilingual classrooms and communities globally. In Australia or elsewhere, you may be training to become a teacher, or may be a graduated teacher wishing to expand your skills. Our goal is that this book will shape new ideas and perspectives on teaching practice within all schools.