HOME VISITS: A WAY OF CONNECTING WITH CULTURALLY AND LINGUISTICALLY

For today’s young diverse children, the home environment plays a critical role in their cultural and linguistic development. Every family, including both native-born or newcomers to the country, has varying cultural and linguistic backgrounds and holds unique experiences, values, and beliefs towards early learning and family interactions. Home visits are an important way for understanding and connecting with culturally and linguistically diverse families. Home visits can be a vehicle for educators to learn about family households and to expand their own knowledge of their students ’ lives and cultural backgrounds (Ginsberg, 2007; Sanders, 2008). For many mainstream educators, working with families whose home language is not English can provide an exceptional challenge: they have to effectively teach students who have diverse and largely opaque literacy practices that might differ from the mainstream culture. The classroom teacher will often turn to the English Language Learner (ELL) teacher for instructional advice to gain