Art as a Way of Talking for Emergent Bilingual Youth: A Foundation for Literacy in PreK-12 Schools

This book features effective artistic practices to improve literacy and language skills for emergent bilinguals in PreK-12 schools. Including insights from key voices from the field, this book highlights how artistic practices can increase proficiency in emergent language learners and students with limited access to academic English. Challenging current prescriptions for teaching English to language learners, the arts-integrated framework in this book is grounded in a sense of student and teacher agency and offers key pedagogical tools to build upon students’ sociocultural knowledge and improve language competence and confidence. Offering rich and diverse examples of using the arts as a way of talking, this volume invites teacher educators, teachers, artists, and researchers to reconsider how to fully engage students in their own learning and best use the resources within their own multilingual educational settings and communities.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Bienvenidos Section I: Walk the Talk: Breathing Life into Theories with Families, Schools, and Communities 2. Heritage Languages as a Valuable Asset for Multilingual Children in US Schools and Beyond: We Can’t Afford to Lose Them! 3. Preparing Ideologically Clear Bilingual Teachers to Recognize Linguistic Geniuses 4. Inclusive Teaching for Bilingual and Multilingual Learners: Collage as Ornithology 5. Family Art Backpacks: Building Family-School Connections Through Art and Story Section II: In the Heights: Lifting Potential, Expanding Possibilities 6. Seen from Within: Photography, Culture, and Community in a Dual-Language School 7. Meeting the Needs of and Giving Voice to Linguistically Diverse Children through Multimodal and Arts-Based Assessments 8. Picturebook Illustrations: Powerful Pathways for Literacy Learning and Language Acquisition 9. Constructing Stories Using Language and Digital Art: Voices of Multilingual Learners Section III: Lift Every Voice: Democratic Practice Before, During, and After School 10. ¿Qué caja? What box?: Inclusivity, Assessment, and the Political Possibilities of Preschool Drama 11. Telling Stories of Challenge and Triumph: Emergent Bilinguals Claim the Curriculum through Spoken-Word Poetry, Hip Hop and Video 12. Storier Warriors: New Waves of Indigenous Survivance and Language Revitalization 13. Youth Voices from In and Out of the Classroom: Emergent Bilingual Learners, Graphic Novels, and Critical Multiliteracies Afterword by Wayne Au

About the Author :
Berta Rosa Berriz is an Instructor of Creative Arts and Learning at the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University, USA. Amanda Claudia Wager is an Assistant Professor of Bilingual/TESOL Education at the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University, USA. Vivian Maria Poey is an Associate Professor and Director of the M.Ed. in Art, Community and Education program at the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University, USA.

Review :
"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)