Where Our Paths Crossed

This chapter presents the case of two Latina teachers who worked with Latinx and emerging bilingual students. Their funds of identity are analyzed, and the professional development program is described, including ways it influenced the teachers' ideological clarity and sense of agency. While their experiences were different in many ways, Summer and Ximena's paths crossed through their shared experiences in the professional development program, and they became vocal advocates for language as resource and language as right perspectives in education. This chapter demonstrates the potential in professional development for teachers working with emerging bilinguals and immigrants, how teachers can move towards advocacy work and leadership by examining their own journeys and funds of identity.

Preparing and Enriching Linguistically and Culturally Responsive Educators Through Professional Development

This chapter examined a cohort of 12 in-service teachers' and three administrators' views in regards to areas of successes, challenges, and priorities in working with immigrant and refugee students and their families as a result of three professional development (PD) sessions that were offered as part of a federal grant-based research project. Qualitative data included field notes through participant observation of group discussions, informal conversations with the participants, PD activity materials, online reflective surveys after each PD session, a background and demographic checklist, and a final questionnaire of overall learning. The results showed the participants' growing sensitivity towards their students' and families' contexts, including academic and social supports, with a desire to promote and implement more linguistically and culturally responsive strategies within their practices and school districts.

Translanguaging Pedagogy to Support Bi/Multilingual Students' Language Learning in Social Studies

This qualitative case study investigates how Mrs. Vega, a high school social studies teacher, supported her emergent bi/multilingual immigrant students' development of academic, content-based language learning in a U.S. Government class. Drawing upon data collected as part of a larger ethnography and using translanguaging pedagogy as a theoretical frame, this chapter centers Mrs. Vega's translanguaging stance, design, and shift. Findings demonstrate the multiple and varied ways Mrs. Vega's pedagogy supported her students' already-present linguistic and cultural abilities in support of their disciplinary learning. Implications are provided for theory and practice.

Moving Towards Translanguaging

Emerging bilinguals at US schools are generally subject to programs that are inadequate for their learning needs. It is crucial to find teaching models through which they can develop their academic language skills. This chapter presents the program Learn from the Experts, a partnership between a university and a high school, that fosters collaboration between Spanish and English learners. In this program, which follows the translanguaging pedagogy, Spanish learners from the university meet to collaborate with Spanish heritage English learners from the high school in lessons designed to develop each of the participants' skills in the language they are learning. The chapter also presents pedagogical changes made to the program resulting from the program team's reflection. It contributes to the development of models that support emerging bilinguals' language learning through collaboration with more experienced speakers without compelling speakers of minoritized languages to distance themselves from their languages and cultures.

New Roles for ESP Lecturers

The pressure on multilingual scholars to disseminate research outcomes through the medium of English has generated the need for programs which prepare them to perform at internationally accepted standards. The task of helping researchers refine their academic literacies entails new responsibilities for language professionals in university departments. This chapter will explore the new roles taken on by English for Specific Purposes (ESP) professionals in Romania within the framework of an MA program designed to enhance communication and research competences of faculty in economics and business. The methodological approach adopted in this study comprises narratives and field notes provided by ESP professionals involved in setting up and delivering the MA program. The findings suggest that responding to the needs of a demanding teaching situation and engaging in interdisciplinary interactions provide both challenges and professional development opportunities for language teaching academics.

Preparing Preservice Teacher Candidates for Educating Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners

Over the past 30 years, the ethnic and racial representation of students in P-12 grades across the United States has shifted, with increasing number of students coming from households where a language other than English is used. Despite increase in the number of English language learners in recent years, many education stakeholders are of the position that the academic learning of culturally and linguistically diverse students has not been addressed effectively. Teacher preparation programs therefore are compelled to reimagine their curriculum for preparing teachers to educate diverse learners.This chapter describes a teacher preparation course focused on preparing preservice teachers to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students in secondary school grades. Culturally and linguistically relevant practices drawn from course assignments and clinical experience are described as approaches for preparing teachers to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students, specifically the English language learners.

Increasing Retention of Linguistically-Disadvantaged College Students in South Africa

This chapter discusses a two-week pre-semester course in English academic language skills to improve learning outcomes of second and additional English language speaking students at a historically Black university in South Africa, a country that faces tremendous challenges with educational inequities. Prof. Venicia McGhie created and organized the program, and Dr. Denise C. Mussman taught the course content. This chapter reports on and discusses the challenges that cause many students to fail or dropout of higher education studies, the curriculum of the pilot course, assessment results, and written feedback from students on which lessons helped them most. The smaller class size, speaking activities, and explicit lessons on grammar and writing all contributed positively to the self-efficacy of the students.

Distributing Leadership Within Rural Schools

Along with the immigration throughout the US, rural schools have experienced changes in demographics and need to adapt to meet the needs of diverse students. Addressing this issue, this chapter argues that rural schools in the US might benefit from distributed leadership (DLS) to meet the needs of school personnel and better understand emergent bilingual (EB) students. The authors highlight that DLS is likely to promote student-centered pedagogy (SCP) when the values of democratic education are adhered to. They first map out the recent research on rural schools with EB students and address the common challenges through big ideas from DLS. Then, they argue why DLS is functional in grappling with these challenges and discuss how rural schools can implement DLS efficiently. Lastly, they present pedagogical implications for professional development with a focus on deliberative democracy and share recommendations for future research.

How to Be Interculturally Responsive to Your English Language Learners' Writing Needs

The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of intercultural responsiveness (IR) in conjunction with taking an extensive inquiry into the three IR components. The knowledge of and strategies for cultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity, and cultural responsiveness are presented to edify and cultivate teachers of English language learners. With the foundational background of IR, educators will then be able to support their ELLs while they learn the writing process. It is understood from seminal research that all students that are learning to write will proceed within a prescribed sequence; additionally, the language learners will follow phases of second language acquisition (SLA) in their own progression. This chapter will review the phases of SLA, the five-step writing process resulting in recommendations that will benefit ELLs, and enhancements in pedagogy for teachers to subsist their instructional practices.

Going Beyond Academics

Teaching culturally diverse students and immigrant communities requires the purposeful implementation of instructional strategies that are able to meet diverse learning needs. The whole child approach to teaching and learning allows educators to look at students as individuals and view their diverse characteristics as assets to learning as opposed to limitations. The presence of the achievement gap between culturally diverse students and those from immigrant communities presents unique needs that interfere with the possibility of post-school success opportunities. Recognizing the whole child in learning has been proven as an effective strategy for successfully engaging students in the classroom and supporting them in their postsecondary development. The purpose of this chapter is to allow educators of culturally and linguistically diverse students to learn about how they can embrace the diversity of their students and their families by building meaningful relationships that take into consideration the whole child.