Ryan W. Pontier

This chapter examines the systemic barriers faced by multilingual learners (MLs) in U.S. schools and highlights the essential role of interdisciplinary collaboration in fostering equitable, culturally, and linguistically relevant practices for enhancing academic, career, and social-emotional development. The chapter demonstrates how monolingual expectations can obscure students’ strengths, hinder academic performance, and negatively affect social‑emotional well‑being. The chapter reviews the historical roots of monolingual policies, the persistent shortage of multilingual educators, and the deficit mindsets that contribute to inappropriate educational placement and inadequate social-emotional learning (SEL) support for MLs. This chapter emphasizes the importance of multilingual approaches by including accurate assessment practices, family engagement grounded in reciprocal partnerships, and the implementation of translanguaging pedagogy. The chapter further explores how interdisciplinary collaboration and a culturally responsive multi‑tiered system of supports can address academic, behavioral, and mental health needs across tiers. Finally, it offers recommendations for school counselors and school psychologists to promote academic, career, SEL, mental health, and family‑community strategies that affirm students’ linguistic identities and dismantle institutional barriers.

Shifting attitudes and requirements for refugee and visa applications in Canada, executive orders on immigration and language policies in the United States, and legislation against Critical Race Theory have contributed to changing the educational landscape of North America (Banerjee et al., 2025; Bumgardner et al., 2025; Government of Canada, 2025; Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2024; The White House, 2025; World Population Review, 2025). This paper draws on four multilingual educators’ personal stories, narratives, and reflective inquiries as language learners to explore layered identities in education. Shelley K. Taylor introduces how linking race, language and identity work through stories help us relate, learn, and change (Wink, 2017). Next, her four co-authors share their individual stories, beginning with Ryan Pontier. He shares his bilingual journey in which he contrasts his situated experiences with those of his students while highlighting the importance of translanguaging and equitable educational practices for multilingual students. Ryuko Kubota challenges normative expectations of "native-like" proficiency and advocates for justice-affirming education. David Schwarzer examines the historical use of languages in English Language Teaching, evolving attitudes towards multilingualism, and making space for translingualism as a linguistic phenomenon, a pedagogy, and an ideology. Lastly, Melissa Rivera Screven discusses the fluidity and hybridity of language use among multiply-marginalized multilingual families, showcasing a translingual-vision approach for the future of English language teaching. These narratives provide insights into how race, languaging and identities shape educational experiences, and emphasize the importance of a gradient array of diverse perspectives. This paper situates the critical need to prepare teachers to persevere in the profession and envision a more inclusive, equitable future for all learners.

In this article, we draw on a worlding perspective to examine four Latina teachers' accounts of their experiences as racialized language users and teachers of young Latine children. Data included coursework produced by these teachers during a translanguaging‐focused professional development course, as well as interviews held with them about bilingualism and bilingual education. Data were analyzed using open, axial, and focused coding. We found that although some of the Latina teachers' self‐reported practices and interactions with their students animated hegemonic patterns of language education, they mostly enacted counter‐hegemonic worlds of language use, learning, and teaching. Our findings document the ways these teachers' practices may help create flexible, borderland spaces where they challenge language ontologies often sanctioned by the school (e.g., language as a disciplinary tool) by embracing linguistic dynamism. Our findings contribute to existing research on raciolinguistic ideologies by examining how these teachers' practices and interactions countered the hegemonic one‐world‐world perspective of the white listening subject (Rosa & Flores, 2017).

This case study investigated a modern language teacher candidate’s developing translanguaging stance in a Masters-level TESOL course as she made sense of emerging tensions while drawing on her personal and teaching experiences. Data included the participant’s oral contributions to the course, the course syllabus, and student-produced artifacts. We used thematic analysis focusing on the participant’s perceptions of translanguaging as both theory and practice to analyze the data. A semi-structured interview was carried out five years later to review the impact of translanguaging on the participant’s teaching and ideology as a Spanish teacher in a dual language program. Findings uncovered five primary themes all related to the participant’s biographically related development of translanguaging stance: traditional second language acquisition theories as a concern, updating the notion of social justice, the ability to support positive identity development, contemplating translanguaging as a pedagogy, and the longevity of the biographical approach to lifelong learning. The findings highlight the importance of biographical approaches to lifelong learning in language education and suggest that teachers can foster bilingual development, establish inclusive teaching strategies, and create equitable language learning spaces by recognizing the potential of translanguaging, which may be made possible by fostering similar contexts in teacher education courses.

This conceptual article focuses on how a National Professional Development grant through the Office of English Language Acquisition in the U.S. Department of Education supported multilingual paraprofessionals' equitable access to and participation in high‐quality, ongoing professional development aimed at supporting young multilingual learners, and how they leveraged both prior and newfound knowledge and experiences during their participation. We understood that paraprofessionals had been positioned as less white, less English‐speaking, and less knowledgeable than their teacher counterparts and knew that their engagement needed to be utilized as a resource. Thus, we broadly draw on the concept of equity but specifically on the notions of funds of knowledge, translanguaging, and raciolinguistics as we document our process of working with Pre‐K–second grade paraprofessionals.

Article Co-learning, co-planning, and co-shifting to build critical (trans)language(ing) awareness: case studies from the field was published on December 6, 2023 in the journal Educational Linguistics (volume 0, issue 0).

This study explores the collaborative process that two Korean–English and one Spanish–English bilingual Early Head Start family childcare educators, two instructional coaches, and the author engaged in as they co-created intentional bilingual pedagogical approaches to support young emergent bilinguals and co-develop critical (trans)languaging awareness. Data included participant and non-participant observations; field notes; debriefing sessions between the teachers and the author, and instructional coaches and the author; informal interviews with teachers; and two Saturday meet-ups with all participants and the author. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify salient themes in the creation and implementation of practices and pedagogies that leveraged both teachers’ and children’s languaging practices as we deepened our critical language awareness. The design-based collaborative approach that involved co-learning, co-planning, and co-shifting supported our focus on critical language use, trial of different (trans)languaging practices that transgressed English hegemony, and decision-making around how to best leverage everyone’s linguistic strengths in support of children’s developing bilingualism.

This research investigates how minority students demonstrate their math self-efficacy and performance, shaped by factors such as class preparation and math teacher support. Leveraging a comprehensive US national dataset, this study aims to provide broadly applicable insights and suggestions for students from diverse racial and linguistic backgrounds. The findings underscore the substantial influence of high school students’ class preparation on teacher support, math self-efficacy, and math performance. Notably, teacher support exhibits a positive impact solely on math self-efficacy but does not extend to their math performance. Upon examination of various demographic groups, this research identifies noteworthy disparities in the effects experienced by different racial and linguistic groups. This study’s results carry practical implications for educators and practitioners, shedding light on strategies to enhance various minority students’ math self-efficacy and outcomes.