Barbara N. Allison

Effective Teaching Strategies for Middle School Learners in Multicultural, Multilingual Classrooms.

Middle school teachers, like all educators around the nation, are encountering classrooms comprised of an unprecedented number of students from various cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Due to the influx of immigrants entering the U.S. educational system, the number of students who speak a native language other than English has grown dramatically and will account for about 40% of the school-age population by 2040 (Berliner & Biddle, 1995). If current trends continue, almost half of our nations school population will consist of members from nonCaucasian cultural groups by the year 2020 (U.S. Bureau of Census, 2000). The reality of a multicultural, multilingual student population dictates that educators, 87% of whom are Caucasian, must be prepared to interact and work with students who do not share the same language, culture, or national origin (Crandall, Jaramillo, Olsen, & Peyton, 2001; National Education Association, 2002).