This powerful book demonstrates how culturally responsive teaching can make learning come alive. Drawing on his experience as a fifth-grade teacher in a multiethnic school where children spoke over 14 different home languages, the author reveals how he created a language arts curriculum from the students' own rich cultural resources, narratives, and identities. Illustrating the challenges and possibilities of teaching and learning in a large urban school, this book: documents how a culturally engaged pedagogy improved student achievement and increased standardized test scores; examines the literacy practices of children from immigrant, migrant, and refugee backgrounds, and includes powerful examples of their voices and writing; and provides an invaluable model of reflective practice, including a wide array of student-centered strategies, to generate powerful learning experiences. It also demonstrates a way for teachers to tap into the various forms of literacy students practice beyond the borders of the classroom.