The purpose of this article is to re-conceptualize the role of the monolingual teacher in mainstream K-12 classrooms in the United States who work with students who are mostly multilingual and transnational. The proposed role for monolingual teachers is to incorporate at least some of the resources available in students' native languages, even if they do not have a working knowledge of those languages. To illustrate how this can be achieved the authors showcase two practical activities that can be used in mainstream classrooms to spark discussions about multilingualism and multilingual literacy. The activities are designed to promote the maintenance of students' native tongues and to provide an instructional resource to foster continued development of their first language.