ABSTRACT
Where do you belong? This seemingly simple question can be answered very differently by children of different cultures. However, this can be especially difficult for the immigrant child population. Additionally, since the place we live can act as a significant marker of identity, determining how we are connected to place can also affect our sense of culture and belonging. In this chapter, we consider the varying levels of place attachment and explore how arts-based pedagogical practices and children's literature can help to enhance students’ identities and voices through place-based multimodal textual narratives. We find that children's literature, multimodal storytelling, and hands-on activities aided students in expressing their agentic voices, and resulted in classroom trust with them feeling safer and more included in their classroom community.
