Cultural discontinuity refers to the lack of cohesion between two or more cultures. Upon entry into school, differences in the functional use of language among culturally and linguistically diverse children have been found to account for the discontinuity they experience. Because children come to school socialized to language in culture-specific ways, the discourse structure and communication styles used by many children from culturally and linguistically diverse populations is incongruent with that of the teacher's style of interaction. This discontinuity between home and school language socialization patterns can have a negative impact on academic achievement. In this paper we delineate some of the issues that illustrate the incongruence between home and school cultures and their implications for teachers.