Affirming, Not Assimilating: A New Approach to Supporting Multilingual Learners

In the latest episode of The Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast, hosts Anna and Shé are joined by Aylin Erengul Gregg—an international school teacher with over 15 years of experience and the creator of the LEAVES approach, a framework built around a question most schools never think to ask:

What if multilingual learners weren't the ones expected to do all the adapting?

Aylin traces the idea back to her own experience learning English abroad and to a linguist's line that stopped her in her tracks about what actually has to be true in a classroom before real language learning can happen. From there, she and the hosts dig into a distinction that sounds subtle but isn't—between a school that quietly expects students to assimilate and one built from the ground up to affirm who they already are. They trace how the first mindset shows up in ordinary, well-meaning staffroom language and what it costs students when it goes unexamined.

"Affirmation happens when we say, 'We see you. We value you. We respect you with your identity and your languages, cultural backgrounds. You're welcome here, and here are the systems that we built thinking about you.'" — Aylin Erengul Gregg

The conversation doesn't stop at naming the problem. Aylin shares the BUDS—her name for a set of small, doable classroom shifts—that any subject teacher can put to use without becoming a language specialist. What they are and why something so simple makes such a measurable difference is worth hearing her explain herself.   

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