In international schools, we spend enormous amounts of time helping multilingual students develop the English they need to access the curriculum. But what happens when the language of the classroom is not the language of belonging, family, or identity?

For multilingual students, language is more than a tool for learning. It is the language of family, identity, emotion — and, as one of my students put it, “the language of the soul.” Asking students to leave their Home Language at the door is akin to asking them to leave a limb.

This has real implications for mental health. We, as educators, see it all the time, and emerging research is beginning to corroborate our experiences. Research suggests that Home Language is associated with fewer emotional and behavioral difficulties among multilingual learners, especially adolescents (Kilpi-Jakonen & Kwon, 2023).

Therefore, this session will explore how translanguaging, intentional Home Language goals, and explicit multilingual identity practices can become powerful tools for supporting language learning and mental health — not by replacing English, but by expanding the linguistic resources students can use to think, connect, and express themselves.

Participants will explore practical ways to build multilingualism into everyday teaching, pastoral care, and school culture, and consider a fundamental question: What if supporting a student’s mental health starts with making space for all of their languages, not just the one we teach in?