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.