Ching-Ching Lin, Touro College, New York, New York, USA

Dear Bilingual Basics Newsletter readers,

I am proud to unveil the 2019 issue entitled “Innovative, Collaborative and Transformative Bilingualism/Multilingualism for All”, which was based on a joint Call between Bilingual Basics and Idiom (NYS TESTOL). The joint initiative was intended as an opportunity for us to reach out to a broader readership. Meanwhile,I am also inviting you to join me on a trip down memory lane and revisiting momentous milestones that we have traversed since the launch of our first issue in 2011, as it is important to contextualize the present in light of the past so that we can plan our next steps moving forward.

Risking the possibility of reducing the live history of bilingual education as a social movement to a schematic or linear development, I would venture to say that eight years’ campaign and advocacy is not long enough for a movement to gain traction for public support, or move beyond seeing bilingualism merely as a measure of remediation, and eventually reverse deficit thinking about the multilingual student population. As a result, we still can’t afford to relent our defense of securing educational equity and excellence for bilingual/multilingual learners. We may have won the debates, but we haven’t won the fight, especially in the day-to-day classroom reality where teachers’ pedagogical decision and stance can make a huge difference on student learning.

While innovative programs such as Seal of Biliteracy and Dual Language Immersion may help validate and promote bilingualism, numerous authors in the 2015 issue have quickened to warn against such complacency. For example, Sonia Nieto expressed her cautious optimism regarding “dual language education”: “because I saw that again people who were privileged were the ones who were asking for this for their children. They wanted their children to understand another language so they can become bilingual. I thought that this would take away resources away from students who really needed it.” Given the fact that dual language programs in minority communities continue to struggle with inadequate resources and insufficient materials, her call for prioritizing equity remains to be a relevant soundbite. For this very reason, it is uplifting to see bilingual education in its various forms have gained increasing acceptance and incredibility in higher education where bilingualism was traditionally slighted and undervalued (for example, see Sinnerton, Chen, Pujol-Ferran, DiSanto, Rodríguez, and Morales in this issue).

Looking back, it is perhaps instructive to think about how translanguaging continues to generate interests across diverse TESOL fields. Since the publication of García and Li’s Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education in 2014, translanguaging has been widely employed as a conceptual framework for framing the bilingual debates, as a tool to combat a persist monolingual mindset and to advocate for an enriched view of bilingualism. The 2017 issue was a welcome edition dedicated to this topic. It is worth noting that the work of authors such as Xin Chen and Lisa Sinnerton in this issue signals a more reflective take on translanguaging: rather than merely embracing it as ideological stance, they sought to examine it as a classroom practice. Guided by questions such as “What does translanguing pedagogy look like in the classroom?”, “Where is the available evidence on its effectiveness in supporting student academic success?”, their articles shed important insights on translanguaging pedagogy as a practical classroom strategy.

This current issue also marks a return to “the personal is political”. Positioning themselves as a co-learner in the knowledge construction process with their students or children, authors such as Clare Bauler, Rebekka Eckhaus, Gabriella Solano set out to understand the complexity of bilingual children’s literacy practice. Their articles help us reflect on our classroom practices and expand our knowledge base about bilingual education and pedagogy.

This retrospective lens hopefully would allow us to see the articles collected within this issue as a decade long exploration of bilingual education and with this hindsight, we might be better prepared to prioritize our next objectives, strategize and plan for future steps from here. We have come a long way, but a lot more await to be done. This realization should have prompted us to work more strategically and collaboratively, actively looking for ways to engage bilingual children’s total linguistic repertoire and unleash their plurilingual resources in order for bilingual education to be transformative for all.

Last but not least, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to each author who has responded to our call for submissions. We look forward to seeing an even more robust participation at the next B-MEIS meetings in Denver, Colorado!

Sincerely,

Ching-Ching Lin, Ed.D

Editor, B-MEIS, 2019–2020