With the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States, Dearborn, Michigan has a unique quality that preserves its residents’ Arab roots despite pressure to follow dominant cultural norms in the U.S. As a space that is both Arab and American, the Third Space (Bhabha, 1990; Gutiérrez, 2008) created by Arab Americans in the Dearborn community has greatly shaped the educational experiences for students in the school district. Particularly, the Dearborn Public Schools (DPS) have long catered to their Arabic-speaking students, the third most common home language spoken by students in the United States. However, the extent to which the district’s inclusive policies have shaped daily classroom practices for these students offers opportunities for deeper analysis. Guided by Critical Multilingual Awareness (García, 2017) and the three components of translanguaging pedagogy (stance, design, and shifts; García, 2009; García et al., 2016), this embedded case study explores district educators’ beliefs and practices regarding multilingualism across the Dearborn Public Schools, questioning: (1) What are the beliefs and perceived practices of district educators who work with Arabic-speaking students regarding teaching and learning in multiple languages? (2) How are teachers’ beliefs and perceptions about multilingual practices reflected in their classroom practices with Arabic-speaking students? Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with nine district educators, a teacher questionnaire (MULTITEACH; Calafato, 2020), and classroom observations of sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade ELA lessons with follow up teacher interviews. The findings revealed a divide between social and academic use of Arabic. District educators underscored the city’s long-standing support for Arab American communities, such as halal food offerings, districtwide holiday acknowledgments, and multilingual family communications. Yet, within mainstream ELA classrooms, Arabic rarely surfaced as a recognized academic resource. Teachers described feeling unprepared or constrained by standardized testing, curricula emphasizing English-only proficiency, and their own limited Arabic skills. Although many expressed openness to leveraging students’ home languages, they lacked consistent institutional guidance on how to embed Arabic into lesson planning or spontaneous instruction. Consequently, no direct translanguaging activities were documented in classroom observations. Instead, English uniformly dominated each lesson, even though the vast majority of students came from Arabic-speaking backgrounds. Taken together, Dearborn’s history of responsive community engagement suggests that embracing Arabic academically is a logical extension of the district’s overall inclusivity. Strengthening teacher training, promoting co-teaching models, and revisiting curriculum expectations could help sustain genuine multilingual learning spaces. By systematically bridging school policy with instructional practice, Dearborn Public Schools can model how U.S. districts might transform from English-centric norms to truly multilingual ecologies (García & Menken, 2015; García & Sánchez, 2015). Ultimately, this study underscores both the possibility and complexity of elevating a socially valued home language into a fully recognized academic tool.
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