Bilingual Community Education and Multilingualism

Beyond Heritage Languages in a Global City

Edited by Prof. Ofelia García, Zeena Zakharia, Dr. Bahar Otcu

Publication date:

07 September 2012

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781847698001

This book explores bilingual community education, specifically the educational spaces shaped and organized by American ethnolinguistic communities for their children in the multilingual city of New York. Employing a rich variety of case studies which highlight the importance of the ethnolinguistic community in bilingual education, this collection examines the various structures that these communities use to educate their children as bilingual Americans. In doing so, it highlights the efforts and activism of these communities and what bilingual community education really means in today's globalized world. The volume offers new understandings of heritage language education, bilingual education, and speech communities for bilingual Americans in the 21st century.

INTRODUCTION: Organization, Content and Purpose of the Book: Ofelia García, Zeena Zakharia and Bahar Otcu

PART I: CONCEPTUALIZING BILINGUAL COMMUNITY EDUCATION
Ofelia García, 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 Asociación 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 Barrière and Marie-Michelle Monéreau-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 García: American multilingualism for a global future: Recommendations for parents, educators and policy-makers

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.