Teaching Beyond Spoken Words

This book presents strategies to help educators understand, communicate with, and support their multilingual nonspeaking children.

We often tell parents and caregivers to carry over specific skills and strategies that are taught to their children in classrooms and provider sessions, but rarely, if ever, do we encourage educators to carry over strategies that are occurring in the child’s family and community.

Centered on case studies of four families of nonspeaking bilingual children, this book demonstrates the vibrant communication systems families create to navigate daily life together. Each chapter includes teaching tools and blueprints for collaborating with students and families to best support bilingual nonspeaking learners—and all children—through expansive classroom communication.

Teaching Beyond Spoken Words includes graphic organizers and lesson materials for incorporating multimodal, multilingual communication practices into preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school classrooms and learning spaces.

Book Features:

• Centers the communication practices of bilingual nonspeaking children to rewrite how everyone communicates in the classroom.
• Offers a roadmap for expanding perceptions of communication, bilingualism, and meaning-making to improve learning for all students and educators.
• Includes “Teaching in Action” materials with every chapter to help readers enact communicative justice in their own learning communities and classrooms.

Lilly Padía is an assistant professor of raciolinguistic justice in early childhood teacher education at Erikson Institute in Chicago.

“Lilly Padía offers strategies rooted in empathy, creativity, and openness—not just for educators, but for anyone who cares about the dignity and potential of every child.”
—From the Foreword by Mariana Souto-Manning, president, Erikson Institute

"Teaching Beyond Spoken Words is a thoughtful and compassionate guide for educators looking to embrace the diverse ways nonspeaking multilingual children communicate and learn. By centering familial, communal, and relational wisdom, Lilly Padía offers practical tools to create inclusive, supportive, and joyful learning environments where every child feels seen, heard, and valued."
—María Cioè-Peña, assistant professor, Educational Linguistics Division, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education

“In Teaching Beyond Spoken Words, Lilly Padía brilliantly illuminates the often-overlooked lives of bilingual nonspeaking children, advocating for a transformative approach to communication in educational settings. Through rich narratives, insightful case studies, and practical teaching strategies, Padía invites readers to reflect on their own biases and perceptions while equipping them with the tools necessary to create more equitable classrooms. The integration of family and community voices reinforces the importance of collaboration and understanding, reminding us that true educational equity cannot be achieved without actively engaging with the lived experiences of students and their families.”
—David I. Hernández-Saca, associate professor, Dept. of Special and Inclusive Education, University of Northern Iowa

“Written with remarkable clarity and accessibility, this groundbreaking book introduces critical theories about language and disability, offering thought-provoking questions and practical tools for educators and researchers. Padía challenges assumptions about communication, offering a 'pedagogy of perception' that respects and honors communicative practices, regardless of use of speech.”
—Jennifer Phuong, visiting assistant professor, Swarthmore College

“This insightful, groundbreaking book disrupts some of our fundamental ideas, such as who we think of as bilingual, and where the locus of expertise lies. Through careful and caring work with bilingual nonspeaking students and their families, Lilly Padía shows how we can teach our most vulnerable students and that, when we do, everyone benefits.”
—Tatyana Kleyn, professor, Programs in Bilingual Education and TESOL, The City College of New York