I came to the US at the age of five; I only spoke Russian and never received any English language support services. Instead I was always pulled out for reading “remediation,” and I grew up convinced I was not smart. It wasn’t until I learned how bilingual education leverages home language literacy that I realized I wasn’t the problem. Instead, the way the system educated - or neglected to educate - emergent bilingual students was at fault.
The erasure of my home language from my schooling led me on a path of educating and advocating to make bilingual education the rule in schools, rather than the exception. This inspired me to co-author an accessible book for bilingual educators across grade levels and languages.
Teaching in Two Languages: A Guide for K-12 Bilingual Educators
My first book, co-authored with Sharon Adelman Reyes, was a resource for teachers across bilingual programs, to support their teaching in and through two languages. It included examples from my dissertation about how Chinese, Haitian, Russian, and Spanish bilingual teachers in New York City approached bilingual and multicultural education.
Once my first book came out, I had the opportunity to speak about it with members of the New York State Association for Bilingual Education (NYSABE). I began to work with NYSABE, realizing that through collaboration and organization, we can push for large-scale policy changes for bilingual students and educators.
New York State Association for Bilingual Education
In 2014-15 I had the honor of serving as the President of NYSABE. The organization brings together educators, families and communities to advocate, network, lead, disseminate information and provide professional development. The annual conference theme during my presidency was “Building Bridges: Bilingual Education Across Borders.” We focused on bridging geographic, educational, and generational borders in our field.
During my time with NYSABE, I became part of a like-minded team of professors, doctoral students, administrators, and teacher leaders. Together as CUNY-NYSIEB (New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals), we worked from the theory of translanguaging, which has been taken up in profound ways in schools in New York, the United States, and internationally.
The City University of New York - New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilingual
My involvement in CUNY-NYSIEB exposed me to translanguaging, a theory that centers the dynamic linguistic practices of bilinguals without regard for how society categorizes or creates boundaries around named languages. One outcome of my work in CUNY-NYSIEB, which worked with school to enact translanguaging pedagogy, was the edited book Translanguaging with Multilingual Students: Learning from Classroom Moments with Ofelia García.
While CUNY-NYSIEB worked directly with schools in New York State, translanguaging was becoming recognized as a valid approach across the global (in spite of being the norm for multilingual communities). As a Distinguished Fellow of the CUNY Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) I met Leketi Makelela, who invited me to collaborate with educators around this concept in South Africa.
Translanguaging Across Borders
I had the opportunity to work with teachers in rural Limpopo, South Africa. The nation has 11 official languages, but its schools are often monolingual spaces. During our time together, teachers began to open the doors to their students’ full linguistic repertoires. This video shows a collaborative poem by teachers, who use a word or phrase to describe translanguaging.
