Bilingual Community Education and Multilingualism

This is a bold and political book. It asks us to rethink narrow and isolating categories which segregate the energy and efforts of our bilingual communities and the education of our children. It is a book about the education of all our children and describes the potential of multilingualism in our nation states. It is a joyful and hopeful book. It describes the parents and teachers as the real leaders in bilingual community education and shows the relevance of their efforts for our children, communities and nations in a globally networked world. It is a realistic book. It does not shy away from describing our responsibility to support these bilingual community endeavours, describing imperatives for collaboration across educational contexts in the exchange of expertise. This excellent and accessible book takes New York City as the starting point for introducing a rich variety of case studies, as authors describe the extensive efforts of bilingual community educators. Multilingual neighbourhood, community and city educational practices are shown to be connected to much larger diasporic plural networks, making a positive contribution to global markets and world politics. -- Angela Creese, University of Birmingham, UK The importance of this book cannot be overstated in an era of unprecedented human mobility and intercultural contact. The reconstruction of language teaching and bilingual development elaborated by Ofelia Garcia and her colleagues over the past five years is expanded into the sphere of community-based language teaching. The authors reject the monoglossic orientation characteristic of most forms of language teaching and bilingual education in favour of a heteroglossic orientation that reconceptualises language teaching as the development of dynamic and intertwined communicative resources among emergent bilinguals. These ideas entail immense implications for policy-makers and language teachers in both school and community contexts. -- Jim Cummins, University of Toronto, Canada This is an important work by leading and emerging scholars, which provides a fresh look at bilingualism in the United States. The collection moves us beyond the stigmatizing depreciation of bilingualism that has dominated the national discussion for the past three decades. Ofelia Garcia and her colleagues have succeeded in elevating our appreciation for the worth of living languages within the contexts of how they function in families and communities, beyond the more limited focus on heritage. -- Terrence G. Wiley, President Center for Applied Linguistics, and Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University, USA The volume as a whole is more than an accumulation of the impressive collaborative work Garcia and her colleagues have carried out in New York City over the last few years. It is a reconceptualization of bilingual education for the twenty first century. The studies included in the book have wide-ranging implications for policy-makers and educators. -- Li Wei, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK * Language Policy (2015) 14:285-287 * Overall, Bilingual Community Education forwards a compelling argument for examining how public schools and community language education programs can foster effective relationships that nurture global citizens with a critical awareness of the power of language. Through offering a range of studies in widely spoken languages-Spanish, Yiddish, Japanese, Russian, Bengali, Hindi, Sikh, Persian, Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew and Korean-the editors demonstrate how language education is beginning to incorporate heteroglossic frameworks for acknowledging transcultural identities.In comparison with other studies on the subject of language education, Bilingual Community Education offers a wider spectrum of analysis for a particular geographic region and attends to the differing motivations for communities in establishing language education programs. -- Irene Jagla, University of Arizona, USA * Critical Multili

Ofelia Garcia is Professor in the PhD programs of Urban Education and of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among her most recent books are: Bilingual Education in the 21st Century; Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Vols. I & II; Educating Emergent Bilinguals; and Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times. Zeena Zakharia is Assistant Professor in the Department of Leadership in Education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her recent publications consider the interplay of language policy, collective identity, and human security in schools, during and after violent political conflict. These interests stem from over a decade of educational leadership in war-affected bilingual contexts. Bahar Otcu is Assistant Professor at Mercy College, New York. Her research interests include bilingual education, applied linguistics, language policies and ideologies, discourse analysis, and pragmatics. Her recent publications include a co-authored book chapter titled Developmental Patterns in Internal Modification Use in Requests and an article titled Heritage Language Maintenance and Cultural Identity Formation.

INTRODUCTION: Organization, Content and Purpose of the Book: Ofelia Garcia, Zeena Zakharia and Bahar Otcu PART I: CONCEPTUALIZING BILINGUAL COMMUNITY EDUCATION Ofelia Garcia, Zeena Zakharia and Bahar Otcu: Bilingual community education: Beyond heritage language education and bilingual education in New York PART II: COMMUNITIES EDUCATE THEIR OWN BILINGUAL CHILDREN Community Organizations: Dynamic Bilingualism in Community Education Carmina Makar: Building communities through bilingual education: The Case of Asociacion Tepeyac de New York Ruhma Choudhury: Raising bilingual and bicultural Bangladeshi-American children in NYC: Perspectives from educators in a Bengali community program Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher and Anup P. Mahajan: Salaam! Namaste!: Indian and Pakistani community-based efforts towards mother-tongue maintenance Supplementary Bilingual Community Schools: Innovations and Challenges Jeehyae Chung: Hidden efforts, visible challenges: Promoting bilingualism in Korean-America Naomi Kano: Japanese community schools: New pedagogy for a changing population Bahar Otcu: Turkishness in New York: Languages, ideologies, and identities in a community-based school Maria Hantzopoulos: Going to Greek school: The Politics of religion, identity and culture in community-based Greek language schools Informal Community Education: Alternative Pathways to Bilingualism Busi Makoni: Community-based initiatives and Sub-Saharan African languages in the Big Apple Roozbeh Shirazi and Maryam Borjian: Persian bilingual community education among Iranian-Americans in New York City Bilingual Community Day Schools: Changes and Continuities Zeena Zakharia and Laura Menchaca Bishop: Towards positive peace through bilingual community education: Language efforts of Arabic-speaking communities in New York Sharon Avni and Kate Menken: Educating for Jewishness: The teaching and learning of Hebrew in day school education Rakhmiel Peltz and Hannah Kliger: Becoming Yiddish speakers in New York: Burgeoning communities of bilingual children PART III: COMMUNITY-PUBLIC SCHOOL ALLIANCES FOR BILINGUALISM Laura Ascenzi-Moreno and Nelson Flores: A case study of bilingual policy and practices at the Cypress Hills Community School Jane F. Ross and Fabrice Jaumont: Building bilingual communities: New York's French bilingual revolution Isabelle Barriere and Marie-Michelle Monereau-Merry: Trilingualism of the Haitian diaspora in NYC: Current and future challenges Tatyana Kleyn and Beth Vayshenker: Russian bilingual education across public, private and community spheres Wen-Tsui Pat Lo: Mandarin-English bilingual education in New York City: A case study of supplementary education in the Chinese community PART IV: BILINGUAL RESOURCES FOR A GLOBAL FUTURE: RECOMMENDATIONS Maureen T. Matarese: Beyond community: Networks of bilingual community support for languages other than English in NYC Ofelia Garcia: American multilingualism for a global future: Recommendations for parents, educators and policy-makers