Providing social-emotional and academic supports to SLIFE: What every teacher needs to know

Recent trends of migration have contributed to the growing number of Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE) in our K-12 classrooms in the United States and worldwide. Simultaneously, the visibility of SLIFE in academic publications from around the world (i.e., Custodio & O’Loughlin, 2017; DeCapua et al., 2020; Pentón Herrera, 2022) contributes to a general understanding of best practices on what this population needs and how teachers can best help them. In this article, we rely on recent and relevant available publications, as well as personal experiences, to recommend essential social-emotional and academic considerations that teachers and stakeholders should know to support SLIFE effectively. The social-emotional considerations shared include social and emotional needs, cultural dissonance, connections to programming and services, and interpersonal relationships. The academic considerations shared are programming, first language (L1) literacy instruction, appropriate scaffolding, oscillating target language (L2) literacy instruction, and authentic learning beyond the school walls.