Many multilingual learners (MLs) and their families face significant challenges and barriers that highlight the profound impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on vulnerable students. Failing to recognize the adversities that our MLs and their families are facing can limit our ability to support them effectively. Even with knowledge, we may feel unsure how to respond in today’s challenging climate. The key question we should be asking is: How can we help multilingual learners with ACEs feel safe, welcomed, valued, capable, and empowered? Addressing this question must be a priority to support their well-being and success. A careful response is needed now more than ever.
Many challenges that multilingual learners (MLs) face distinguish them from the traditional definition used to describe students experiencing ACEs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (n.d.) defines adverse childhood experiences as “potentially traumatic events including abuse, neglect, and household challenge…such as substance abuse problems, mental health problems, instability due to family separation, or household members in jail or prison.” While many multilingual learners have experienced these phenomena, countless numbers have also experienced living in war zones, fleeing persecution, or enduring dangerous journeys to perceived safety, often without their families. Others face struggles in refugee camps, detention centers, or unstable housing situations. Additionally, many families have members with different immigration statuses and live in constant anxiety over immigration issues, while those without citizenship face even greater uncertainties. The fear of ICE raids happening nationwide has resulted in many children and families carrying little ‘red cards’ in English and their home languages. Created by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (n.d.), many hope these cards will help protect them by knowing their legal rights, especially when interacting with immigration officials. The type of trauma being faced by many MLs and their families is what scholar Kenneth Hardy (2013) describes as chronic stress that impacts one’s emotional, psychological, and physical well-being, and often spans generations.
While We Might Not Have Formal Training, We Are Not Helpless
Think back to when you were formally trained to become an educator, a specialist, an administrator, or whatever you do. How much time, as in courses, and how many books, short readings, and activities were devoted to formally studying the complexities of teaching and working with students with adverse childhood experiences? I typically ask educators this question. The most common response is that very little time and resources were devoted to studying this topic, especially as it applies to teaching MLs living with adversity and working with their families. It has forced many of us to make on-the-spot decisions about what to do and never be sure that our decisions are the right and most effective ones. What exacerbates this further is our use of a deficit-based approach. What is that?
For years, the fields of psychology, psychiatry, social work, and education looked at what could be done to solve what was perceived to be the problem, such as a student who doesn’t speak English. It led to missing or not knowing what we are missing by treating what we identified as the problem and finding a singular ‘remedy’ for it, like providing an ESL class for a half hour per day. Unfortunately, using this approach has been found to have poor results and led many professionals to feel that the experiences of MLs with ACEs are so hopeless that they will never be successful in school or in their lives.
Feeling that students’ situations are impossible also leads far too many of us to feel helpless to make a difference for our students. Having these deficit-based perceptions can also contribute to our developing burnout, or what is also known as compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress syndrome. This is especially true for many of us who feel like we are working independently without enough support from our school communities. Have you ever felt that way? The good news is that there is a lot of research that should lead us directly toward using and embracing an empathetic strengths-based stance.
We Must Change Our Focus
Instead of seeing students’ circumstances as hopeless and us as helpless, we must change our focus to using empathy and seeing the strengths that every student possesses. The first step is to listen closely, ask thoughtful questions, seek to understand the emotions behind the words, body language, and actions MLs express, stay calm, and show that we value what they and their families share. A second step is to move away from using a deficit-based stance and, as importantly, that old and very familiar positive-negative binary.
As educators, we often adopt a positive-negative mindset, focusing on what we perceive as successes and shortcomings. This approach has similar downsides to a deficit-based one. It can lead us to think and speak in ways that frame students as broken and beyond our capacity to help. Consider a teacher sharing her thoughts about student Maria. Pay attention to the teacher’s words—what does the teacher say that stands out to us?
I feel so bad for Maria. I just could not ask her to participate in today’s biology discussion. I think ICE will likely come and arrest her family. I feel terrible. The only thing I could think to do was to give her a break.
Tapping into Possibilities Instead of Perceived Impossibilities
Dr. Ken Ginsberg, medical director of Covenant House and Professor of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Pennsylvania, tells us that our students are not broken despite the many odds that they face (2015). He urges us to look at our students differently so that we can see their many strengths and assets and tap into their natural resilience to improve their outcomes in school and their lives. An example that Ginsberg uses to illustrate this critical point is his work with children who are chronically ill with significant conditions and illnesses that will impact their life and their families. While he acknowledges the effect that chronic illness has on children’s lives, such as a child who has an autoimmune disease that requires a restricted diet and frequent hospitalizations, he also points to the many strengths that the same child possesses- their brilliant self-advocacy, independence, and self-care. He underscores the vital role of recognizing and harnessing students’ strengths as a foundation for their personal and academic growth.
When we apply Ginsberg’s and the contributions of many scholars about the necessity of using a strength-based approach (Seligman, Rashid and Parks, 2006; Dweck, Walton, & Cohen, 2013; Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti, 2006, Steele, 2010; Biswas-Dienera, Kashdan, & Gurpal, 2011), we can move much more swiftly to intentionally nurturing students’ strengths. And, they have lots of them! We can also empower students to become more confident in their abilities, more competent in their skills, and more connected to their peers, educators, and communities. It means that we must move from feeling hopeless in helping our MLs to taking an empathetic, strengths-based stance.
Let’s look at an example of the same teacher we met earlier describing the same student, Maria. This time, however, she has taken time to identify Maria’s strengths, and her words draw from these in describing Maria. Notice the difference between the earlier example and this one. What stands out? How might we respond to the teacher?
Maria coped with a lot this year. She told me that she is carrying a red card that helps her to feel safe. I’ve observed her in my biology class. She is so resilient, smart, and innovative. She collaborates with other students when they are stuck following the lab directions or when they fall off the task. I assigned her the role of group facilitator in conducting science experiments. Recently, I spoke to her after class. I told her how brave and courageous she is. It was wonderful to see her smile. My reward was her response-“Thank you, I feel happy in school.”
Empathetic strengths-based interactions can help us all support students’ sense of belonging and as active contributing members of their learning communities.
Don’t Go It Alone
Shifting to a strengths-based stance not only highlights students’ inherent assets but also moves us from working in isolation to collaborating in ways that recognize and amplify their strengths, both innate and shaped by adversity. It also helps us to feel and exercise the strengths of our profession- what it is that we can do so well. It mirrors what botanists have discovered about trees: their root systems interconnect, allowing them to support and nourish each other. Likewise, students thrive in rich, nurturing systems even when the world around them feels out of control. We thrive in the same conditions. We cannot create ideal conditions or change what is happening outside our schools. However, we can work together to build a school climate and culture that empowers MLs facing adversity, honors who they are, and values all the positives they bring to our learning communities.
Embracing an empathetic strengths-based approach strengthens MLs’ endless capacity to make positive choices—whether in academics, relationships, or personal well-being—all essential for long-term success and happiness. It does not dismiss the real challenges MLs face. It acknowledges these and pays as much, if not more, attention focusing on their limitless potential. We must refuse to define MLs living with adversity by their struggles or impose limits on their growth. That happens when we shift our mindset to being beacons of hope and even inspiration.
References
Biswas-Dienera, R., Kashdan, T. B., & Gurpal, M. (2011). A dynamic approach to psychological strength development and intervention. Journal of Positive Psychology, 6(2), 106–118.
Centers for Disease Control (n.d.) Adverse Childhood Experiences. https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html
Dweck, C., Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2014). Academic tenacity: Mindsets and skills that promote long-term learning. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/manual/dweck-walton-cohen-2014.pdf
Gonzáles, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Ginsberg, K. (with Jablow, M. M.). (2015). Building resilience in children and teens (2nd ed.). Elk Grove Village, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics.
Hardy, K. (2013). Healing the wounds of racial trauma. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 22(1), 24–28.
Immigrant Legal Resource Center (n.d.). Red Cards/Tarjetas Rojas. https://www.ilrc.org/red-cards-tarjetas-rojas
Steele, C. M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi and other clues to how stereotypes affect us. New York: W. W. Norton.
This piece originally appeared in Language Magazine (May 2025). It was drawn from Zacarian, Alvarez-Ortiz, and Haynes (2017) Teaching to Strengths: Supporting students living with trauma, violence and chronic stress, and Cohn-Vargas & Zacarian (2024) Identify Safe Spaces at Home and School: Partnering to Overcome Inequity.