Art as a Way of Talking for Emergent Bilingual Youth

"This wonderful book brings together an insightful array of perspectives on how to creatively, thoughtfully, and fully engage emergent bilinguals in their educational journeys. An important resource for our field!"

--Carola Suárez-Orozco, University of California-Los Angeles, USA

"In this important new book, the contributors demonstrate why access to art must be central to the educational opportunities provided to emergent bilinguals, and they provide examples for how this is being done in schools and classrooms across the country. For educators, parents and community advocates, this book will be an invaluable resource and guide for how to use art to inspire and motivate some of our most neglected students."

--Pedro A. Noguera, University of California-Los Angeles, USA

"In this book, educators will discover many important tools and ideas for emergent bilingual learners as well as for all students. This new book is an important resource for all of us!"

--Linda Nathan, Executive Director of Center for Artistry and Scholarship and Founding Headmaster of Boston Arts Academy, USA"Too frequently, discussions about emergent bilingual students focus on remediation and perceived deficits. This anthology provides a powerful counter­narrative by examining how the arts, integrated into Pre­K-12 classrooms,can help emergent bilingual students lift their voices while honoring and including their home languages in instruction. The articles in this book provide windows into classrooms and programs in which photography, theater, collage, illustration, digital arts, and spoken word bring curriculum and student stories to life."

-Rethinking Schools

"Art as a Way of Talking for Emergent Bilingual Youth is an edited volume whose chapters offer important guides, tools and ideas for immigrant bilingual learners and their teachers in PreK-12 schools. The book inspires and motivates educators to honour students’ home languages and cultures through the arts…. Whether in programmes for Art Educators or TESOL and Bilingual scholars, Art as a Way of Talking for Emergent Bilingual Youth is a perfect book to engage pre- and in-service teachers and scholars in discussions of the relationship between creativity, the arts and language education for all."

--Visual Inquiry: Learning and Teaching Art, Volume 8 (1) 2019

"The way the book is structured makes it perfect for school inquiry complete with guiding questions and great ideas for arts based instruction that hones in on connecting with student’s native culture and families… An interesting collection filled with articles perfect for school based inquiry [and] a great resource for ideas that support connecting with bilingual students and families both in and out of the classroom."

--Boston Union Teacher, Volme 51 (8) 2019

"With its approachable suggestions for practice, this book speaks directly to classroom teachers. The diverse array of short chapters is also a boon for teacher educators looking to challenge their preservice teachers to think deeply about liberating possibilities in educating emergent bilingual students, and researchers will appreciate the scholarly work contained in this volume as well. "

--Grace Cornell Gonzales, University of Washington, Bilingual Research Journal

"Each project described in this important collection builds on students’ funds of knowledge to create collaborative art projects that honor students’ cultural and social capital….This is a wonderful resource for the K-12 classroom, and it can be especially useful to those who teach courses for Heritage Language Learners at the university level, given that students have historically not been asked to share their lived experiences in the classroom as a source of knowledge."

--Journal of Folklore and Education (2020: Vol. 7)