This talk takes us into the heart of "B-Club," an afterschool program that brings together the children of immigrants from diverse countries (principally Mexico and Central America) to learn and play together with undergraduate students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. I examine the ways in which participants both policed and crossed linguistic and cultural borders, and the translingual and transcultural competencies that were cultivated in this space. I use this space to reconsider language issues in bilingual and multilingual communities from a "translanguaging" perspective (García, 2009) and to imagine pedagogical possibilities for cultivating and sustaining a transcultural world.
Bio: Marjorie Faulstich Orellana is Professor of Urban Schooling at UCLA, where she also serves as the Associate Director of the Center for International Migration, and Co-Director of Faculty for the Teacher Education Program. Her first book, Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth, Language and Culture, examines the work that the children of immigrants do as language and cultural brokers. Her new (2015) book, Immigrant Children in Transcultural Spaces: Language, Learning and Love, examines children's perspectives on linguistic, cultural, and other borders as they interact in a transcultural, play-based afterschool program.
