Kate Seltzer is a coauthor with Ofelia García and Susana Ibarra Johnson of the recent book The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning. Kate teaches at the City College of New York. Before this, she worked as a high school English language arts teacher in New York City, where most of her students were bilingual.

Alsu Gilmetdinova (AG): So my first question is just about the definition of what translanguaging means. How do you see it? How different is it from codeswitching, and all the other new terms that are coming up?

Kate Seltzer (KS): I would say the biggest thing is that translanguaging has two lenses. The first describes the language practices of bi- and multilingual communities, families, individuals. It embraces the idea that in these communities, in these families, there is a very fluid way of utilizing language practices. Fluid, without a monolingual audience in which there is no rigid separation of languages. There is a fluid interconnected way of utilizing the languages of a community or a family. We see this when we work with young people. Groups of bilingual kids have a way of moving, shifting among their language practices in ways that don’t necessarily align with monolingual standards for what we think of when we think of language. The other part of translanguaging is leveraging that fluid language use in pedagogy. So, making the classroom more reflective of language practices of actual people, rather than upholding monolingual standards for languaging. I think an important aspect of that is something some people who are working in translanguaging are trying to push. Translanguaging is not a scaffold, it’s not a bridge, it’s not even a teaching method. It is a lens that can be drawn on to reimagine classrooms and to reimagine teaching and learning for bilingual students.

AG: How would you then compare translanguaging with monolingual ideologies—monolingual perspectives?

KS: A monolingual or monoglossic perspective of languaging is that languages are separate. They’re bounded entities. They are containable things. They are not necessarily linked to social practice. But taking up a translanguaging stance or a lens, says that actually what bilinguals have is one interconnected language system—a language repertoire that has lots of features, enacted and suppressed depending on context, audience, situation, and even our mood. A language repertoire that is contingent and responsive to a communicative situation, rather than the rigid separation of languages that tends to happen in monoglossic understandings of bilingual education. For example, in the United States, we see a lot of bilingual programs that are very rigid in their separation of languages and we might say that that’s actually a monoglossic way of doing bilingual education.

AG: Could you elaborate on that idea, and maybe come up with an example of a bilingual education context where translanguaging is not present?

KS: We see this a lot. Often times, teachers are the ones running these programs and they have the best intentions. This is especially true for teachers who are bilingual themselves and are teaching in a bilingual program. They have an understandable fear of losing the language, English. Because we live in the United States, and English is so pervasive, there is a fear: They say to themselves: “Well, if we let students use English during Spanish time, that’s all they’ll want to do.” What you’ll see is teachers saying to students Spanish only, no English. And there isn’t a sense of enabling students to put their languages side-by-side, compare them, and put them in conversations. This I think could be a translanguaging focus in a dual language classroom: Read two different texts or read the same text in each language and compare. But, there isn’t that real side-by-side integration of their language practices. There is an English life over here while the other language lives over there. And that’s why during English time or other language time, there’s very little interaction of the languages.

AG: Very interesting. Can you speak a little bit about the practical applications of translanguaging? How it’s enacted in the classroom, for example, by students, teachers?

KS: One of the ways I like to talk about how translanguaging can be implemented in the classroom is—when teachers loosen their grip a little bit on the product that students might be working toward. Say, for example, a research paper on a specific topic, written in English. Just because the medium of this final product is English, it does not mean that the process of creating that paper can’t be bilingual and multilingual. Students could be doing their research in multiple languages. They could write drafts in the language they’re more comfortable with in preparation for a final draft in English. They could do peer editing with a partner who also speaks their home language even if what they’re writing is in English. So there is this flexible process that can make the final product better. More importantly, this opens up the process to a bilingual approach because whenever you have a bilingual student in a classroom, their process will always be bilingual, whether or not we see it or understand it. The idea is to actively invite that bilingualism into the process—the learning process. In doing this, we can leverage some of students’ bilingualism toward an end product—whatever that end product is and whatever language it’s in.

AG: What about its use in the classroom? Do you think that monolingual teachers can translanguage?

KS: Yes, 100%, I do. My dissertation research was actually with a monolingual English-speaking teacher who took up a translanguaging lens in her English classroom. So, I think translanguaging will look different for a monolingual teacher versus a bilingual teacher who speaks the same languages as her students. Even if a teacher is bi- or multilingual, that teacher can’t possibly speak or understand all of the languages that are present in her classroom. I’ve been to schools in and around New York where there are 10 to 12 languages in one classroom. So, even bilingual teachers will not be able to help all of those students in their home language.

It is in this sense that there is more than translanguaging. Translanguaging is more than speaking the home languages of your students. A lot of it is about making space for students themselves to tap into their own home language and other language practices in order to make meaning. And so I think that means making choices about text. As a teacher, you can help by asking students to read texts that you don’t even understand. Perhaps through some research, through getting help from others and resources, you found an article on the same topic in two languages—English and another language. Just because you don’t understand that article doesn’t mean that students can’t do some comparison amongst themselves between the two.

Part of taking up translanguaging as a monolingual teacher does mean giving up some control in the process, which can be very difficult for teachers because it’s a little scary not to always know what’s going on in your classroom. But if you let go of the idea that you are the keeper of all the knowledge, you are the expert, that you know exactly what’s going on at all times in your classroom, you can bring to the surface language practices and literacies and skills and knowledge that wouldn’t necessarily come to the surface if you did not give up that control of the process. For monolingual teachers, it’s about making the space. It’s about creating the opportunity, rather than necessarily engaging in that language practice yourself.

AG: You mentioned that translanguaging implies that teachers are to cede control of the classroom, especially if they don’t know the target language of the students. Can you develop this idea a bit more?

KS: What I’ve tried to do when I’m talking to teachers—monolingual or bilingual teachers—is to put them in the position that students are in. For bilingual teachers, I often point out when they are engaged in translanguaging, they’re moving in and out of, for example, Spanish and English very fluidly. They are just making jokes, or laughing like they’re just conversing, being totally normal bilinguals in a translingual way. And so, I try to point out to them that this is something: Translanguaging is not saying that students’ knowledge of one language or the other is incomplete—which is something that a lot of teachers think translanguaging is, a sort of scaffold or this bridge. And so, there’s this idea, “well, let them translanguage until they know how to speak English.” Actually, translanguaging is the way that bilingual people—no matter what their proficiency in one or another language is—it is how they communicate. Because this is something I say to monolingual teachers—well wouldn’t it be easier to leverage the kind of languaging—to embrace and leverage the kind of languaging that’s already happening in your classroom, rather than try to police it? Wouldn’t that be a better use of our time, as educators, to look at the language practices that are already happening?

It may be difficult for teachers to think about, but I think trying to challenge their ideologies about these language practices and trying to get them to see that the way they speak is actually very similar to the way that students speak. But unfortunately, because we are teachers, and we are adults, we are imbued with more power than students are, we gauge their language—we see their language practices as lazy or incorrect or deficient; below what we want them to be doing, even when we ourselves are engaged in very similar languaging.

I think trying to get teachers to put themselves in that position is difficult work, but I think very necessary work because translanguaging is not something that can just be put into place through a few strategies. I say this as someone who has now written several things on translanguaging strategies. I do think that strategy work is important, but without the necessary shift in ideology and thinking, it’s going to get lost. Strategy work is not enough.

AG: What you are saying is that it is more about the attitude, the lenses, the stance, rather than the strategies, specific methods of curricula approaches, right?

KS: Yes. In the book that I recently cowrote with Ofelia Garcia and Susanna Johnson [The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning], we talk about something we call a translanguaging stance, which is a philosophical tool kit—a set of beliefs, a set of dispositions—that will look different for different individuals. We certainly don’t think that there is ever one stance that is like another stance. We’re all individual teachers. But, we do think that there are principles that have to be a part of the stance of a teacher who takes up translanguaging in his or her classroom.

And part of it is the simple idea that students are very much gifted language users. These are people with enormous linguistic gifts. They are not deficient or in need of remediation. They simply have language practices that do not, for one reason or another, align with monoglossic expectations in classrooms. And something like a part of one’s stance is saying, “No, these students are not deficient. These students are not less able linguistically than monolingual children. In fact, they are very gifted and we have to leverage and hone and foster those gifts in the classroom, rather than treat these students as needing something they don’t have.”

So a stance is something a teacher would adopt, hopefully, and build through his or her work. And from that stance emerges a design: a classroom design, a curricular design, an instructional design. The design is not that stable without a strong stance. This is something Ofelia and I talk about a lot—once an idea is out in the world, you can’t necessarily control how it’s taken up and used by people. But you can hope. One of the hopes is that translanguaging does not become like a teaching program. But actually that the somewhat radical and transgressive elements of translanguaging, which I believe are inherent to translanguaging, become a part of research and teaching that is aligned with the social justice message. Because translanguaging challenges a lot of oppressive language ideologies that bilinguals and monolingual students who are marginalized suffer. These are students who are very much limited by these language ideologies that render their language practices as less than.

So, by taking up translanguaging, I think we are trying to invert some of those oppressive language ideologies. And that is necessarily linked to political action. It’s linked to social justice. It’s linked to a challenging of those ideologies by students themselves—and this is what I believe translanguaging can do. Rather than saying, “Okay, you can use your home language to write this paper,” I hope there is an element also using translanguaging to challenge deficit thinking.

AG: Thank you so much. Have you seen an article by Jeff MacSwan, “A Multilingual Perspective on Translanguaging”? He offers an interesting perspective.

KS: Yes, I have it. I have to read it. I’m very interested to read it because he’s been skeptical. He has had some push back on translanguaging. I actually chaired a panel that he was on, and he had some strong words about translanguaging. I think that kind of critique is wonderful. It moves the thinking forward, so I’ll be interested to read that article.

Note: Cordial thanks are expressed to Andrés Ramírez (Florida Atlantic University, Boca Ratón, USA) for transcribing the interview

Alsu Gilmetdinova is head of the Office of International Affairs at the Kazan National Research Technical University named after A.N.Tupolev-KAI (KNRTU-KAI) in the city of Kazan, Russia. Her interests revolve around bilingual education, language policy, and TESOL.

Andrés Ramírez is assistant professor of TESOL and bilingual education at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Ratón, USA. His research focuses on the academic achievement of emergent to advanced bilinguals in K–16 contexts.