Multilingual Students; Multilingual Teacher

What language do your students speak at home? And what language do you use for instruction?

Our friend Zoltan Barabas teaches a Bible club in Transylvania. Instruction in school is in Romanian.

Some households in this Rroma village speak mainly Romani, some Romanian, some Hungarian. All of them use a mixture. 

This situation is very familiar to Zoltan. Though he was born in Romania, his first language is Hungarian. He teaches most of the Bible club in Romanian, but the "central truth" and the memory verse are always given in Romani. (See ashunledevles.eu.org for examples of this dialect in three different orthographies, including Hungarian.) 

This past week, the children played a Davar Start Game called Count At Home. First they played the game in Romanian. When finished they had counting together, they repeated the game with numbers in Romani. 

Zoltan explained, "Some kids are not so fluent in Romani; some are more fluent in Romanian. All instruction at school is in Romanian. That's the reason to explain it first in Romanian. Then we did it in Romani to put it clearly in their head in Romani. Especially for kids who are fluent in Romani. They can think about math and numbers in both languages."

Zoltan added that this reinforces the value of both languages. "I use myself as an example to reinforce that the mother tongue is important. Hungarian is my first language. But I do most of the lesson in Romanian. Sometimes I talk with adults (who happen to be in the house where the children's club meets) in Hungarian because they are more fluent in that language. I reinforce that it is okay to use Romanian and that the mother tongue (Romani) is important." 

"Personal example always best teacher," he concluded.

How would you handle this situation?