For over 30 years Brian Crosby taught upper elementary in Nevada. Many of his students were considered "at-risk".
Crosby says many of his students were students of poverty and for others, English was a second language.

"Often times they weren't really solid in any language," said Crosby  "Everybody just assumes that oh, they speak Spanish fluently. Well over the years you finally came to realize that really they don't have Spanish fluently either."

Crosby who also runs the "Learning is Messy" blog, says he would have his students come to teacher-parent conferences.

"By doing that, we'd also get into conversations about how we could communicate. In some cases, they [parents] spoke almost no English."

Crosby says sometimes they would come up with a plan to communicate with an older sibling or an aunt that was bilingual.

"We could tell it paid off because they [parents] would show up after school because they wanted to see the assignments that we were doing or the Social Studies projects we had on the wall," Crosby said.

Listen to the full conversation with Brian Crosby on Episode 38.
Other Show Notes
Tech workers in Silicon Valley are sending their kids to a $28,000-a-year private school that shuns technology
The District of Columbia schools chancellor resigned on Tuesday after support for him, including from the mayor, collapsed in recent days over the disclosure that he had arranged to have his daughter transferred to a coveted high school.

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