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This chapter reviews the federal and New York state policies and approaches to programming that set the stage for the work of CUNY-NYSIEB (City University of New York-New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals). It provides a blueprint for the project's collaboration between a state education department, a university system, and K-12 schools that worked to change practices to educate emergent bilingual students. The chapter outlines the vision as well as the two nonnegotiable principles that served as anchors for the work within different schools in a highly diverse state. Then there is an overview of the resources the CUNY-NYSIEB team has produced over the years and how this work has and continues to impact the education of emergent bilingual students on a global scale.

CUNY-NYSIEB (City University of New York-New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals) brought together bilingual education and TESOL faculty from various colleges from The City University of New York (CUNY). This chapter focuses on the transformative shifts in these faculty's own understanding of bilingualism and the changes that they implemented in their teacher education programs through their participation in CUNY-NYSIEB. This chapter starts by describing how discussions on translanguaging theory and pedagogy allowed faculty to unpack the linguistic oppression of policies, programming, and practice in bilingual education and TESOL. Next, it focuses on the ways in which by taking a translanguaging stance they were able to create spaces that capitalize upon students' fluid and dynamic linguistic resources and lived experiences, as well as to work with prospective and practicing teachers to shape curriculum and programming that is responsive to and honors their students' languaging practices. The chapter discusses the tensions students from these teacher education programs encounter when schools hold static and rigid conceptions of language, and the need for college faculty to continue to grapple with these tensions. Finally, it describes the ways in which faculty collaborate beyond their specific programs in order to push the boundaries and create learning environments where emergent bilingual languaging practices become the norm.

Undocumented students and their families are in the crossfire as the Trump administration has taken an aggressive stance to criminalize, deport, and degrade them. Through the testimonios of three undocumented immigrant college students and graduates, this article sheds light on their memorable moments in high school and college to extract lessons for K–12 and higher education educators. The lessons include how to prepare teachers to make immigrants and current immigration issues visible in the curriculum, ways to create safe spaces for undocumented students to be understood and advocate for themselves, and the critical role of counselors in determining students’ college-going futures.

Undocumented families' rates of repatriation to Mexico from the United States have risen throughout the Obama administration, and this trend will likely increase under Donald Trump. This study describes the experiences of Mexican-born youth who grew up in the United States and are back in Mexico. While these children are participants in their families' migration, their input is rarely sought in decisions to leave or return to a country. This article shares transborder students' voices on their struggles to find their identities as Mexican, American, or some combination of the two. They reflect on their schooling experiences across countries, and how these challenges are compounded when they are new to learning in Spanish or indigenous languages in Mexico.

In recent years there has been growing awareness about a sub-group of students labeled Long-Term English Language Learners (LTELLs). Our study seeks to show how students who fall within the LTELL category see themselves through the lens of their lived experiences as (emergent) bilinguals, students, family/community members and transnational individuals. Countering discourses which frame these students as deficient, we apply the discourse of partiality framework as a lens through which to better understand how these students perceive themselves via their languages, ethnic-connectivity and academic trajectories. We argue that the discourse around the label can be understood as a racial project that serves to perpetuate white supremacy through the marginalization of the language practices of communities of color. We conclude by exploring how schools can take a broader view of this population to create positive learning opportunities that build on who they are and how they see themselves.

“Why they got it so good? They only speak one language and only know one place, right? We all [immigrant youths] have to know three or four. Or five. Can you explain that to me?” (p. 8). Lisa Patel...

Amidst the debates surrounding teacher quality and preparation programs, the edTPA (education Teaching Performance Assessment) has emerged to assess future teachers through a portfolio-based certification process. This study offers the perspective of three faculty members who participated in an experimental configuration of edTPA implementation for student teachers in Childhood Bilingual Education, Bilingual Special Education, and TESOL in a large teacher education program. This article highlights implications of the edTPA for bilingual education and TESOL students and faculty. The findings reveal how the edTPA does not directly address teaching bilingually and the resulting ramifications of teacher candidates’ clinical experience and preparation to work with emergent bilinguals.

Joy. It’s not a buzzword or common term heard in educational discourse or policy these days. While we hear about standardized testing, accountability, evaluation, Common Core standards, and general...

Centering the voices of immigrant youth, this qualitative study seeks to understand how students navigate living and learning in a new country, as well as the meaning they assign to their experiences. Areas of importance to immigrant youth, including the disruption of family and the sociopolitical context of education, are explored. While the realities immigrant students confront in schools are often problematic, they also exert agency, and examples of the adolescents' fervent commitment to their education are also shared, alongside the challenges they face, to provide a more accurate and robust portrait of these students. Drawing from the students' experiences, the authors discuss the implications of this work for educators and policy makers. The article ends with a call to educators to stand in solidarity with their immigrant students to provide understanding, as well as critical and rigorous learning contexts that prepare them to reach their full potential.

The Garifuna are an Indigenous, Afro-Latino group in Honduras whose distinct cultural, ethnic, and linguistic background has been unacknowledged and frequently misunderstood on a societal level and, consequently, in the schools that serve them. This study argues for the utility of a cultural mismatch approach, one applied primarily to U.S. settings, but which can be extended fruitfully to the Latin American context generally, and for Garifuna populations specifically. Through a comparative case study of 2 Garifuna communities, this study examines student, teacher, and administrator attitudes and perceptions toward culture, race, and language. Then a corresponding analysis of practices within 2 divergent schools is offered: One setting illustrates how a cultural mismatch between students and educators plays a significant role in the formation of an irrelevant education; the second setting demonstrates how mutual respect, caring, and culturally embedded teaching practices result in a relevant pedagogy for G...

This study examines a lesser-known population of students, called ‘long-term English language learners’ (LTELLs) in the USA, who now comprise one-third of all English language learners in New York City secondary schools. A major finding from our research, which explores the characteristics and educational needs of this student population, is that the students' prior schooling has been subtractive, posing significant challenges for their academic literacy acquisition. Having attended school in the USA for seven years or more, LTELLs have experienced programming that has not provided sufficient opportunities to fully develop their native language literacy skills, in spite of research which states that such opportunities are correlated with school success. LTELLs thus arrive in high school with limited academic literacy in English or their native languages, in spite of their oral bilingualism, posing difficulties for them in all subject areas. As part of a three-year research project, we conducted q...

The United States has seen a tremendous growth in dual-language programs over the last decade. This rapid growth brings up questions about the congruency between labels and implementation. Our experiences observing some of the programs and listening to teachers talk about the programs in New York City led us to propose that many of the self-designated dual-language programs stray from even the minimal guidelines for such programs. Our study investigated this, and within this paper we will juxtapose those programs that are congruent with the minimal standards with those that are less faithful to the model in order to gain a better understanding of how schools and districts can work to create dual-language programs that foster an authentic transformation of the instructional environment.

One does not have to look far to see that immigration has once again found its way into the national spotlight. Many of the issues are not new. Media sources continually tell us that immigrants are...

In an effort to better prepare pre-service candidates to work with all students and to respond to the current collaborative team teaching trend within New York City public schools, the authors who are professors of bilingual education and inclusive education/disability studies, respectively, combined their student teaching seminars in bilingual education and childhood education, in order to: (1) provide a model of co-teaching as well as an experience and perspective of being a student in a classroom with two teachers; (2) provide pre-service candidates with ongoing access to the expertise of two professors during their student teaching experience; (3) engage pre-service teachers in critical conversations about identifying and resisting deficit constructions of both emergent bilingual students and students with disabilities; (4) engage in a self-study of teaching practice within this collaborative context; (5) consider how well our respective programs currently prepare pre-service teachers. The Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices approach gleaned data from the co-instructors’ weekly reflective journals and student evaluations to reveal multiple benefits of a collaborative classroom context for pre-service teachers as well as the professors. These benefits included a rethinking of academic structures, spaces for interconnectedness across fields, and increased professor and student learning. The findings challenge teacher educators to consider whether or not a traditional approach to teacher preparation truly offers pre-service teachers the tools to serve diverse students. The authors call on schools of education to transgress traditional academic boundaries to adequately prepare pre-service teachers for the 21st century classroom.

If, as Garcia (2009, p. 5) states, “bilingual education is the only way to educate children in the twenty-first century,” then all teachers must be prepared both to advance the plurilingual competencies of students, as well as teach students with different home language practices and bilingual abilities. Keywords: bilingualism; language teaching; multilingualism