Disrupting linguistic inequalities in US urban classrooms: The role of translanguaging

This chapter argues that doing bilingualism in schools from the bottom-up has the potential to open up multilingual spaces in what are officially monolingual classrooms. Focusing on two U.S. classroom case studies-one a primary classroom where students are Karen speakers; the other, a secondary classroom where all students are recently arrived immigrants speaking 15 different home languages-the chapter describes how the teachers’ leveraging of students’ translanguaging disrupts the English-only hegemony of the classroom. Translanguaging pedagogical practice is thus described as adhering to four principles: A school-wide multilingual ecology, the educators’ stance as caring and co-learners, an instructional design of relationships, and a commitment to students’ deep engagement with learning.