Multilingual students in our classrooms

I encourage you to read my Monday Update for this week at some point, because there I talk about my own limitations in this field as well as offer some updated theory/pedagogy from the field. 

I know that in our class conversations many of you have talked about the linguistic diversity in your classrooms--some have it; some don't. It's also my sence that most of the conversation is in a deficit context--not because you see multilingual writers as less than, but that the classroom makes it nearly impossible to value their considerable linguistic skills. 

For today's post, I invite you to imagine writing assignments not managed by policy, tests or administrators, that would value and celebrate linguistic diversity in a classroom--whether you have multilingual students in the class or not. As you conceive of your idea, please identify the parts of the reading that support your idea. If there is some kind of technology (tonight's other theme) that might help you to do this, write about that as well. 

As usual, after you've posted, please read and respond to your classmates--critique, expand, change their ideas. But, remember, no groaning about what's not possible. Think only about some edenic classroom where all things are possible and the supply closet is endlessly stocked.