(UN)PATTERNING OF ADULT EDUCATION FROM A CRITICAL MULTILINGUAL LITERACIES PERSPECTIVE By Lindsay McHolme A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education-Doctor of Philosophy 2023 ABSTRACT In the United States, adult education for emergent multilingual language learners (EMLL) is governed by the American Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA). The AEFLA defines literacy as an individual’s ability to read, write, and speak in English. This definition erases the multilingual and multicultural assets that adult EMLLs bring to the classroom (and to society). Furthermore, adult education curricula are designed to prepare adult EMLLs for high school equivalency, postsecondary education, and employment; rarely, if ever does curricula address adult EMLLs as whole people by including the arts, linguistic and cultural pluralism, and global citizenship. To address this problem, I employed an instrumental case study design (Stake, 1995) to explore how adult EMLLs responded to a summer book club that sought to honor their transnational assets and wisdom. To do this, the book club used diverse children’s and adolescent literature and incorporated translanguaging pedagogy (García & Wei, 2014) into the literature circle model (Daniels, 2002) as an instructional strategy for promoting critical dialogue (Freire, 2018) among participants. The curriculum objectives for this book club were based on CASAS literary analysis standards that are rarely, if ever, used in adult education classes designed for EMLLs. The critical multilingual literacies framework (España & Herrera, 2020) was used alongside critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2013) and critical narrative analysis (Souto- Manning, 2014) to juxtapose participants’ experiences with English-only ideologies that are prevalent in the US. The findings revealed that adult EMLLs responded positively to a multilingual classroom ecology that promoted translanguaging for meaning making. Participants selected reading materials based on the modality in which they attended the book club, cultural and linguistic relevance, and potential for informal family literacy practices. Even though this book club was designed to be transformative and liberatory, participants reported experiencing both the raciolinguistic chronotopes of anxiety and resistance (Flores et al., 2018). Overall, participants felt that the multilingual ecology of the book club promoted a safe and enjoyable learning environment. Therefore, I argue for an (un)patterning of adult education for EMLLs that defines literacy more broadly than English literacy and sets transmigrant and global citizenship goals rather than American citizenship goals. Copyright by LINDSAY MCHOLME 2023 For my Dad, who will remain forever in my heart. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Lucía: You have been my cheerleader, advocate, mentor, co-learner, and friend throughout this entire journey. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to write, publish, and present at conferences with you. I wore the bracelets you gave me that say, “keep writing” and “paz” as I finished writing my dissertation to remind me that I was not alone during the difficult academic moments. Thank you! Sergio, Jan, and Angela: Thank you for supporting this project and allowing me to use the Community Learning Center at the Dr. Eva L. Evans Welcome Center. Participants in this Study: I appreciate that you trusted me to try something new. You opened your hearts and lives to one another, and you were willing to be vulnerable. Your openness created such a beautiful and fun summer book club. Laura: I have learned so much from you about children’s and adolescent literature, and you have reminded me of how joyful it can be to foster literary conversations in the classroom. I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to teach TE 348 and TE 448, and to allow me the freedom to try new strategies and introduce new diverse literature into the curriculum. What I learned from you about reading and responding to literature deeply influenced this dissertation. Your book of sorrowful and beautiful poetry A Fine Yellow Dust provided solace when we lost my dad. Janine: Thank you for your thoughtfulness and friendly company, your homemade limoncello, and your contemplative book of poetry In the Corner of the Living, all of which brought me great comfort when my dad passed away during the pandemic. The quilt project I started in your arts-based research course inspired and deepened the conceptual framework for this dissertation. vi Peter: I am so glad I had the opportunity to take your course in language and identity. What I learned shaped the way I think about my dissertation findings. I am inspired by the way you collaborate with your students in research and writing, and I would like to do the same for my students in the future. Alyssa: Your TE 902 class changed my life. I am thankful for your guidance and leadership in all things social and racial justice. Your book Teaching on Days After: Educating for Equity in the Wake of Injustice guided not only the way I thought about the curriculum design and pedagogy for this dissertation, but it was a great comfort, as an educator and a student, in the wake of the tragic MSU shooting on February 13, 2023. Mom: I love you. Your unconditional love, support, and encouragement carried me through this process. Becky, Jeff, Asher, Isla, and Vada: I love all of you. You always brighten my day and your light keeps me going. Sam: I have admired your proofreading prowess, attention to detail, and your patience with me as I completed this dissertation. You have been a source of moral support, encouragement, care, and a great running partner throughout the last several years. Poetry Club, The Pudding Collective, fellow MSU CITE friends (and civilians), and others who walked alongside me as I completed this journey: Thank you for bonfires, gardening, walks, study sessions, poetry, camping, crafting, laughter, and just being there for me. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2: THE (UN)PATTERN: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ................................. 13 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND METHODS ................................................................... 38 CHAPTER 4: THE BOOK TASTING.......................................................................................... 73 CHAPTER 5: THE MULTILINGUAL LITERATURE CIRCLE ................................................ 93 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .................................................................. 124 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 140 APPENDIX A: BOOK PLANNING SPREADSHEET .............................................................. 155 APPENDIX B: PARTICIPANT BOOK SELECTIONS ............................................................ 157 APPENDIX C: LITERARY ANALYSIS CASAS STANDARDS ............................................ 164 APPENDIX D: SAMPLE QUIZLET VOCABULARY FOR MINI-LESSONS ....................... 166 APPENDIX E: BOOK CLUB PRE-SURVEY ........................................................................... 167 APPENDIX F: BOOK TASTING SURVEY.............................................................................. 170 APPENDIX G: POST-SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE ............................................................... 171 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ABE Adult Basic Education AEFLA Adult Education and Family Literacy Act BHH Book Head Heart Framework COVID-19 Coronavirus Disease of 2019 CDA Critical Discourse Analysis CNA Critical Narrative Analysis CML Critical Multilingual Literacies Framework CSP Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy DOE Department of Education EFL Educational Functional Level ELL English Language Learner EMLL Emergent Multilingual Language Learner ESL English as a Second Language NAAL National Assessment of Adult Literacy NALS National Adult Literacy Survey NRS National Reporting System NCES National Center for Education Statistics RCSD River City School District WIOA Workforce Innovation and Opportunity A ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION La paz es hija de la convivencia, de la educación, del diálogo. Peace is the daughter of coexistence, education, and dialogue. -Rigoberta Menchú Tum In 2020 just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I took a job as a part-time adult ESL teacher with River City School District (RCSD)1. Over the course of the two years I was employed at RCSD, I taught evening online ESL classes to beginner and intermediate-level adult Emergent Multilingual Language Learners (EMLLs). The classes met two times per week for three hours over Zoom. The school district provided laptops and headphones, a school district email address, and textbooks2 for each student. To ensure learners were able to take their pre- and post-tests safely from the risk of contracting COVID-19, we conducted student intakes, administered literacy assessments, and distributed materials to the students from the outdoor covered patio in the front of the school. The pandemic offered me the unique opportunity of teaching the adult ESL classes online when they had traditionally been offered in-person. The transition to online classes meant that students had to figure out how to access the technology and internet required to participate. For the first several months, many of the students in my classes participated on their phones because they did not have computers and in their cars to isolate themselves from the family distractions that were so common during the pandemic (Kaiper-Marquez et al., 2020; Mclean & Clymer, 2021; The Heroes Act, 2020). Over time, though, students were able to access the technology 1 Pseudonym for a mid-size public school district in the Midwest 2 Jenkins & Johnson (2016); Foley & Neblett (2019) 1 they needed from the school and the local library and to settle into a home/work/school rhythm with their families. The online classes provided insight into one another’s lives in ways that would not have been possible if we had been meeting in-person. For example, I often showed my students the progress I was making in my vegetable garden and shared about the artwork on my walls. My students introduced us to their families, talked about the food they were cooking for dinner, and told us about their busy work/life schedules. Many of my students were deemed “essential workers” and continued to go to work in person throughout the pandemic. On the flip side, many of my students lost their jobs temporarily because of the pandemic. Because of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommended lockdown and social distancing requirements, our classroom community became a very special part of my week, as it was some of the only human contact I had during a time of social isolation. My hope was that the community was a safe place of human connection for everyone in the class (Campano et al., 2016; Minor, 2019; Freire, 2018). Since we were going through this traumatic event in history together, I emphasized relationship building by offering a space for listening and speaking in our online classroom. For the first thirty minutes of each meeting, I made room for students to introduce themselves if there was a new student, share anything they wanted to share with each other, and to ask questions. I remember a Chin student sharing that she was worried about her family in Myanmar after the coup d'état in 2021. The classroom community cried with her and surrounded her with support, asking if there was anything they could do. Students engaged in debate about how the COVID-19 pandemic was handled by the federal government in the US and often shared what their families were telling them about how they were experiencing the pandemic in countries around the world. One student’s plans to visit 2 her family in China were canceled and another student’s paperwork to bring her husband and daughter to the US from Somalia was postponed. We learned from one another during this time of community building and the goal was to create a space for safety and healing. During these conversations, one dynamic I started noticing was the way students introduced themselves to one another. In our superdiverse (Vertovec, 2007) community of adult learners (including myself), we often shared our name, the languages we spoke, the countries we call home, and a little bit about ourselves to practice speaking and listening with one another. Although these conversations were conducted in English, I noticed that students were very proud to list the languages they spoke, but often qualified that they only spoke “a little bit” of English. To investigate this dynamic, I conducted a study in which I asked students to create language portraits (Busch, 2018) that represented their emotions about their past, present, and future linguistic repertoires. I found that many of the adult students in the class were experiencing the raciolinguistic chronotopes of anxiety, resistance, and isolation, and were in direct conflict with institutional discourses that promote “native speakerism” and monolingual English speaking as markers of fitting into the US culture and way of life (Flores et al., 2018). As I reflected on the results of the language portraits study, the students in my class began expressing a desire to read more in English, and to read books in English, but they were not sure where to start. We took a field trip to the local library to learn about resources, where to find the genres of books they were interested in, and to sign up for library cards. After that field trip, we began discussing the possibility of a summer book club, and I started looking into culturally and linguistically relevant literature that we might want to read together. My students who had children and families mentioned that they would be interested in reading children’s and young adult literature to be able to share the experience with their families. I informally gathered 3 my students’ thoughts about developing the summer book club and proposed the idea to my supervisor at RCSD. Initially, I was not planning on studying the book club we developed together; however, as I was reflecting on how we might change adult education for EMLLs considering the anxiety and stress they experienced about their English language skills due to harmful institutional discourses and negative everyday interactions, it felt imperative to offer an alternative, asset- based way of conducting adult EMLL education. I began by considering the purpose of adult education for EMLLs in the US. Sticht (1988) debated the purpose of adult literacy education and whether it, “should be pursued primarily as a functional, utilitarian means to human capital formation promoting economic development for the individual and the state, or primarily as a means of empowering socially disadvantaged adults to liberate themselves from the hegemony of the governing political and economic social groups” (p. 78). Based on my own experience, I argue that the curricula designed for adults in the US tends to address functional and utilitarian goals over liberatory ones. Furthermore, the curricula designed specifically for adult EMLLs primarily addresses English literacy and American citizenship rather than multiple literacies and global citizenship. Hoggan & Hoggan-Kloubert (2022) suggest that “Adult education in a migration society not only has the task of supporting migrants in their integration process, but also of developing a vision of a new inclusive social model, grounded in diversity and multiple belongings” (p. 10). Therefore, the purpose of my dissertation is to understand and disrupt linguistic hegemony in the curriculum for EMLL education. Peña et al. (2018) conducted a systematic literature review investigating the challenges immigrants face when continuing their education in a receiving country and reported, “not much research is found or being done on immigration (Alfred, 2015), especially in adult education 4 (Isserlis, 2008), nor specifically on undocumented immigrants in adult education (Larrotta, 2017)” (Peña, et al., 2018, p. 3). Newer studies have documented the marginalization of immigrant women in adult education (Guo, 2015; Alfred, 2010). So, this dissertation aims to address this gap in the literature, discussing immigration, intersectionality, and adult education from a Critical Multilingual Literacies (CML) framework (España & Herrera, 2020). It addresses how adult EMLLs construct their linguistic identities as they navigate these dynamics; and furthermore, explores how teachers of adult EMLLs can honor their students’ transnational and linguistic assets by implementing humanizing curricula. Defining the Label Emergent Multilingual Language Learner The National Reporting System (NRS) “is the accountability system for the federally funded adult education program, authorized by Section 212 of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA)” (National Reporting System of Adult Education, n.d.). Adult literacy programs that are held accountable by this system report literacy gains on standardized tests for two types of literacy classes: Adult Basic Education (ABE) and English as a Second Language (ESL). For the purposes of this paper, however, I will focus on one federally funded adult ESL program in the Midwest that uses the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS) as an indicator of what it calls Educational Functional Level (EFL) gains. Even though assessment data is outside the scope of this study, it is evident that the CASAS definitions and labels inform the terms the school staff uses to discuss programs and the adult learners themselves. Notably across this program, the term English Language Learner (ELL) is used for transmigrant adult learners who desire to improve their English language skills. Although the term ELL is a widely used label in adult education programs across the country, this paper alternatively seeks to honor learners’ transnational and multilingual funds of 5 knowledge by using the term Emergent Multilingual Language Learner (EMLL) (Kleyn & Stern, 2018). According to Kleyn & Stern (2018), “This label focuses, first, on language learning as a dynamic process (emergent), and second, on the students’ bi[multi]lingualism. It reminds us that language learning is an ongoing process in which students add to the linguistic resources they bring with them to become bilingual (or multilingual)” (p. 3). Therefore, the use of this label de- centers English proficiency and centers multilingual growth, viewing adult learners from an asset-based lens. Historical Background of Adult Education for EMLLs To understand where adult education for EMLLs in the US needs to go in the future, it is important to understand how it has evolved over time. The following background traces the history of adult English language education movements from the early 1900s to the present. It highlights how the push and pull of nation building, globalization, and transmigration have influenced linguistic ideologies and policies that impact English education for adult learners. This historical timeline of adult EMLL education in the US is divided by the shifting ideologies- linguistic pluralism versus English-only ideologies-represented during different eras. Settlement Houses and Adult Education as Charity Work The pendulum swing of English language education programs for adults in the United States has targeted indigenous and immigrant communities since the early 1900s. It was an era of large-scale immigration (Sticht, 1988), when groups of European immigrants settled down together in the US, developed schools, and often taught their separate home languages3 3 In this paper, the term ‘home language’ is used to refer to language(s) that an individual feels most comfortable speaking; it might or might not be the language they grew up speaking with family and community members. I avoid using the term “L1” to eliminate the assumption that an individual feels most comfortable speaking the language(s) practice they originally learned. 6 (Goldenberg & Wagner, 2015; Ovando, 2003; Gándara & Escamilla, 2017). To maintain their home languages and cultures, Polish, German, and Irish immigrant communities created parochial schools while Greek, Russian, and Jewish immigrant communities held afternoon and weekend classes (Ullman, 2010). According to Sticht (1988), “In 1900, 10.7% (6,180.069) people [were] classified as illiterate. 51.8% were Caucasians (20.8% foreign born), and 48.2% were non-white” (p. 86). To be charitable to immigrant communities, settlement houses, such as Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago supported recent immigrants by offering various programs including social gatherings and adult English education (Ullman, 2010; Peña et al., 2018; Addams, 1911). According to Addams (1911), the Hull House staged opportunities for “championship” of immigrants (p. 55). As stated in its settlement house charter, the goal of the Hull House was “to provide a center for higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago” (p. 57). Likewise, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) opened International Institutes in 1910 that assisted immigrants in finding housing, work, and English classes. Like the title of this section suggests, adult education during the early 1900s was focused on making life more comfortable for immigrants by fostering home language education (the “pluralistic approach”) and providing English classes. Americanization The “pluralistic approach” taken by the Hull House and the International Institutes “was in stark contrast to that of the public schools, where the unabashed goal was to eliminate immigrant languages and cultures in order to produce Americans” (Ullman, 2010, p. 5). During World War I, adult education turned toward what is termed Americanization (Ovando, 2003, p. 5; Sticht, 1988). Kentucky “moonlight schools” were created, beginning a nationwide movement 7 of evening classes for adults to prepare men for the draft (Sticht, 1988). In 1915, President Roosevelt sought to unify the US by speaking against what he called hyphenated Americans, or individuals who held onto more than one nation’s identity saying, “The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else” (Ullman, 2010, p. 6). For a short time from 1915-1919, the “Federal Bureau of Education funded immigrant education programs for the purpose of Americanizing the foreign-born” (Sticht, 1988, p. 87). “Americanization meant the teaching of English and civics, along with ideas about the ‘American way of life’. This meant learning the American way of childcare, cooking vegetables, and even brushing teeth. The goal was to produce ‘100 percent Americans’” (Ullman, 2010, p. 102). Additionally, the Sedition Act of 1918 made using language “that could be construed as disloyal to the US” [read: e.g., languages other than English] illegal (Ullman, 2010, p. 5). By 1920, Americanization laws were in 30 states, and the educational programs had expanded beyond schools to the workplace (Ullman, 2010). During the 1920s, “concern over the Bolshevik Revolution resulted in further action against immigration” (Sticht, 1988, p. 86). According to Sticht (1988), illiteracy decreased except in the “foreign-born” (p. 86). Nationwide literacy efforts focused primarily on American born adults during the 1930s and 1940s. The first formal research of adult literacy was conducted in the 1930s, and at this time, there was a push to professionalize teaching of adult literacy and to reform the definition of “illiteracy” (Sticht, 1988). World War II forced the military to lower its literacy requirements for inductees in the 1940s, providing literacy training for anyone functioning below what they deemed the fourth-grade level (Sticht, 1988). So, from the time of the Great Depression to the 1960s, and as a result of Americanization, anti-immigrant sentiment, and forced deportation, many immigrants migrated back to their countries of origin (Ullman, 8 2010). Crawford (2001) argues that during this time, Americans developed an English-only sentiment, perhaps because “they seldom encountered anyone speaking a language other than English.” Immigration Reform But the pendulum began to swing toward linguistic pluralism in 1965 when President Johnson signed The Immigration Reform Act which, “eliminated quotas, emphasizing family reunification and specific job categories. This change initiated the largest wave of legal and extralegal immigration in U.S. history” (Ullman, 2010, p. 6). Alongside the civil rights movement, immigrant communities, parents, and educators advocated for inclusive bilingual curricula in K-12 schools from the 1950s to the 1990s. Although this movement toward bilingual education was focused on children, immigrant parents and families began to see the possibility for taking on transnational, bilingual identities in the US. Mainstream Adult Education Simultaneously, however, mainstream adult education programs took an English-only stance. The 1964 Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) “marked the first time that federal funds were allocated explicitly for adult literacy education” (Sticht, 1988, p. 61). So, in addition to community-based programs that were already in existence, Adult Basic Education (ABE) mainstream programs were funded to provide education for adults 18 years old and older. The term English as a Second Language (ESL) emerged during this era, which framed adult learners of English from a deficit perspective, “Adults who cannot function well with the English language in the United States are generally not thought of primarily as illiterates or functional illiterates, but rather as adults who need to learn spoken and written English as a second language (ESL)” (Sticht, 1988, p. 59). In the 1970s and 1980s, concerns for employment, 9 productivity, and international competitiveness “focused the attention of policymakers and educators on adult literacy problems” (Sticht, 1988, p. 62). Sticht (1988) claims that in response to these concerns, adult mainstream literacy programs took up a “quick fix” mentality with the expectation that adults could gain years of literacy in a fraction of the time we expect children to make the same gains. Although mainstream programs were federally funded, adult literacy programs were staffed by volunteers and part-time employees (Sticht, 1988). There were also issues with the standardized testing that was tied to federal funding—the tests were not being administered correctly and adult students’ reported lack of test taking skills rendered the results invalid (Sticht, 1988). English-Only Ideologies Political discussions about designating an official common language in the US have played a role in nation building since the mid-1700s when President John Adams proposed the idea (PBS, 2005). Since adult literacy is entrenched in politics and ideology, it seems to follow the pendulum of bilingual education policy for K-12. In the 1990s, the tides turned for K-12 education toward monolingual English education. In 1998, California’s Proposition 227 required students to restrict the use of their home languages and to learn English as quickly as possible (Wright, 2019), Arizona’s Proposition 203 banned bilingual education in 2000 (Wright, 2019), No Child Left Behind defunded bilingual education in 2001, and finally, Massachusetts replaced bilingual education with English immersion programs (Ovando, 2003; Gándara & Escamilla, 2017). At the same time, the “English Plus” movement argued that bi/multilingualism (English + another language) would “advance the national interest” in an increasingly globalized economy (Crawford, 2001; PBS, 2005). More than a decade later in 2016, President Trump’s campaign message about language was, "This is a country where we speak English. It's English. You have 10 to speak English!" (Díez, 2019), even though there was still no official language written into the United States Constitution (Crawford, 2000). Globalization and Adult Education in Today’s Context The tension between prevailing Americanization ideologies that promote monolingualism and transmigrants’ multilingual realities continues to challenge the aims of English education for adult learners. More than ever before, adult learning is influenced by globalization, knowledge, society, technology, and changing demographics (Merriam & Bierema, 2014). In the context of English education for contemporary adult learners, it is important to clarify the difference between immigration and transnational migration, as the latter is afforded by globalization and technology. While ‘immigration’ refers to a permanent move from one country to another, “‘transnational migration’ refers to the multiple and circular migration across transnational spaces of migrants who maintain close contact with their countries of origin” (Guo, 2015, p. 7). So then, transmigrant individuals may consider many places ‘home’ simultaneously. “Although home remains central to the concept of diaspora, contemporary scholars are advocating that we expand the view of home to encompass new forms of mobility and displacement and the construction of new subjectivities and identities” (Alfred, 2015, p. 89). So due to globalization, transnational migrants have access to technology and transportation that allow them to maintain their ties simultaneously with more than one country, culture, and language. Adult education curricula for this population must uphold and honor this reality. Furthermore, the changing demographics of migrants in the US is significant in that many transmigrants since 1965 have come from non-Western countries in Asia and Latin America and are People of Color; whereas, before 1965, white European immigrants were the majority (Martin, 2014; Alfred, 2010). Additionally, women account for more than half of resident 11 migrants in most countries (OECD, 2021). Transmigrant women have not only faced marginalization in their countries of origin, but their intersectional identities—gender, class, and race—further marginalize them in their receiving countries (Guo, 2015). According to the US Census Bureau, net international migration peaked in 2016 (Schacter et al., 2021). After that, the Trump administration decreased transnational migration by building 400 miles of border wall between the US and Mexico to eliminate undocumented border crossings, reduced refugee resettlement by 85 percent, stripped discretionary Federal grant funding from sanctuary cities, increased visa screening, and instated Muslim travel bans, among other restrictions on migration (Trump White House, n.d.). The COVID-19 pandemic has also been an influencing factor in migration and adult education. Since 2020, travel restrictions and border closings due to the pandemic caused a record drop in migration flow (OECD, 2021). According to the National Reporting System of Adult Education (NRS), the number of adults enrolled in federally funded English literacy classes dropped from 422,505 in 2019 to 178,886 in 2020 due to the pandemic. In response, adult education programs have implemented creative solutions to make classes available during the global crisis (Kaiper-Marquez et al., 2020). In summary, the ideologies surrounding adult education for EMLLs in the US has shifted back and forth between English-only and pluralism. I argue, however, that adult education is at turning point, one that must consider the effects of globalization, transnationalism, intersectionality, and a global pandemic. This dissertation aims to address these issues by (un)patterning the current English-only curricula toward one that centers multilingualism and transmigrant experiences. 12 CHAPTER 2: THE (UN)PATTERN: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Quilting is a long-held tradition in my family that works as a guiding metaphor and framework for how I aim to deconstruct the fabric of adult literacy education for EMLLs in the US. There are thousands of traditional, geometric patterns that a quilter can follow to recreate the design of a quilt that has been made in the past. This project considers the current systems, policies, and discourses in place in adult literacy education as the equivalent of the “traditional” patterns in quilting. What I aim to do is to create something new, emancipatory, and contextualized out of the old patterns that have been followed in adult education. This conceptual framework addresses the following questions: (1) The Needle, Thread, and Machine: How are adult emergent multilingual language learner identities impacted (or not) by institutional discourses within adult education? (2) The Fabric: How has the COVID-19 pandemic shaped adult multilingual education? and (3) The (Un)Pattern: How are critical, transformational literacy practices taken up in adult multilingual education? I use the metaphor of quilt making to discuss identity as it is influenced by systemic institutional discourses and oppressions (needle, thread, and machine), the context and experience of adult education for EMLLs during the COVID-19 pandemic (fabric), and the critical transformational practices that hold possibilities for disrupting the status quo (designing the (un)pattern). The Stitching: Critical Multilingual Literacies as a Theoretical Framework Centering EMLLs’ cultural and linguistic practices, I approach this dissertation through the framework of Critical Multilingual Literacies (CML). I draw on España and Herrera’s (2020) Critical Bilingual Literacies (CBL) model for teaching bilingual Latinx students, and apply it to a super-diverse (Vertovec, 2007) community of multilingual and multicultural adult learners. Super-diversity describes not only diverse spaces that include individuals of different ethnicities 13 and many countries of origin, but also variables such as “differential immigration statuses and their concomitant entitlements and restrictions of rights, divergent labour market experiences, discrete gender and age profiles, patterns of spatial distribution, and mixed local area responses by service providers and residents” (Vertovec, 2007, p. 1025). Thus, I will use the term Critical Multilingual Literacies to honor the voices of my adult EMLL participants. CML is grounded in the same principles as CBL: (1) self-reflection on language ideologies, (2) ‘unlearning’ of notions of linguistic supremacy, (3) analysis of linguistic practices, literacies, and power, and (4) celebrating EMLLs’ linguistic practices from their perspective. According to España and Herrera (2020), CBL builds on the work of multiple scholars and educators in the field of bilingual education that address these topics: hybridity, culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), critical pedagogy, raciolinguistic ideologies, and translanguaging pedagogy. This dissertation was designed and analyzed through the lens of all these theories. In this conceptual framework, I will provide a very brief overview of each of these theories, then I will expand on relevant theories within the study themselves as they apply. Hybridity Sepúlveda (2018) describes the experience of living between cultures as a way of life that results in ‘seeing double,’ or seeing from the perspective of both cultures (p. 549). This double perspective provides immigrants a way to link to the world, self, and community in pedagogy. This border thinking is “a critical reflection on knowledge production from both the interior borders of the modern/colonial world system (imperial conflicts, hegemonic languages, directionality of translations, etc.) and its exterior borders (imperial conflicts with cultures being colonized, as well as the subsequent stages of independence or decolonization)” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 11). Similarly, Anzaldúa (1987) wrote about living in the “borderlands” as a way to discuss 14 her experiences living “in-between” nations, languages, and cultures. She deconstructs the idea of what it means to be deemed normal by the communities in power and lyrically explains how it feels to be labeled a deviant who speaks multiple languages and never fits into the oppressors’ vision for who she should become. To address this experience, she wrote, “So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity--I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself” (p. 81). Anzaldúa encourages her readers to see beyond borders and walls, to experience the world with a nimble fluidity that honors all experiences. It is the dialogue across these borders that will provide space for peace making (Menchú Tum, 2014) and social transformation. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy Culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) takes an assets-based approach to students’ home languages and cultures, and challenges teachers to encourage critical reflexivity, critiquing the dominant pedagogies that perpetuate educational injustice (Alim & Paris as cited in Paris & Alim, 2017). Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), first proposed by Ladson-Billings (1995), is a framework for honoring students’ cultural funds of knowledge. The framework includes the following tenets: (1) academic success, (2) cultural competence, and (3) sociopolitical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014). Paris (2012) deepened CRP by developing what he termed culturally sustaining pedagogy, which “seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain— linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (p. 95). This framework encourages educators to develop and honor students’ intellectual growth, fluid cultural and linguistic assets and understanding, and real-world problem solving (Ladson- Billings, 2014). The goal is toward social justice and disrupting hegemonic power structures (Paris & Alim, 2014). 15 Critical Pedagogy Critical pedagogy “addresses the democratic potential of engaging how experience, knowledge, and power are shaped in the classroom in different and often unequal contexts, and how teacher authority might be mobilized against dominant pedagogical practices as part of the practice of freedom” (Giroux, 2011, p. 5). In other words, critical pedagogy calls for teachers to engage students in democratic processes that raise up students' identities, histories, cultures, and languages. Giroux (1994) encourages teachers to provide students with the opportunity to “recover” their histories by studying their own ethnicities, challenge representations that “produce racism, sexism, and colonialism through the legacy of ethnocentric discourses and practices”, and reclaim the “diverse cultural locations that have provided them with a sense of voice, place, and identity” (p. 51). Raciolinguistic Ideologies The raciolinguistic perspective offers a lens through which to look at race and language by analyzing the dynamics of the listening subject rather than the speaking subject. As such, Flores and Rosa (2015) assert, “Linguistic purity--like racial purity--is a powerful ideological construct. We should seek to understand the perspectives from which such forms of purity and impurity are constructed and perceived rather than focusing on the form itself” (p. 162). The raciolinguistic perspective draws from Morrison’s (1998) concept of the “white gaze” and “allows us to push even further by examining not only the ‘eyes’ of whiteness but also its ‘mouth’ and ‘ears’” (Flores & Rosa, 2015, p. 151). Pioneer of the field, Nelson Flores, recommends applying the raciolinguistic perspective to all studies of language, especially those focused on racialized communities (personal communication, October 5, 2018). In sum, the raciolinguistic perspective considers how long-term English learners, heritage language learners, 16 and standard English learners are positioned within an inequitable and socially constructed system that racializes language use from the white listening subject’s perspective, whether supposed rules of language appropriateness are followed or not. For the purposes of this study, the raciolinguistic perspective calls for the de-naturalization of race and language to disrupt white supremacy in adult education. Translanguaging Pedagogy Translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014) is grounded in the understanding that multilingual learning is best achieved using the entire linguistic and cultural repertoire. Rather than viewing languages as separate entities, translanguaging draws on students’ and teachers’ linguistic funds of knowledge to scaffold growth and understanding. It can be considered a heteroglossic language ideology that challenges static language constructs that promote code-switching (switching between two named languages) and rather sees language as fluid (García, 2009). This pedagogy makes use of community resources, cultural understandings, multimodalities, and is by nature student-centered. This study was designed through the lens of translanguaging pedagogy. Translanguaging pedagogy is the development of curriculum and teaching praxis that honor and rely on students’ entire linguistic repertoires (García & Wei, 2014). The objectives of translanguaging pedagogy are: (1) differentiate and adapt, (2) build background knowledge, (3) deepen understanding, develop and extend new knowledge, and critical thinking, (4) cross-linguistic transfer and metalinguistic awareness, (5) cross-linguistic flexibility, (6) identity investment and positionality, and (7) interrogate linguistic inequality (García & Wei, 2014, p. 120). Furthermore, there is a focus on critical language awareness which incorporates the language of language- 17 minoritized students into the classroom, providing space for students to critique the larger socio- political context that de-legitimizes these linguistic practices (Alim, 2005). When students experience a learning community in which translanguaging is normalized, they develop learning strategies that rely on their funds of knowledge and a sense of pride and freedom in their linguistic and cultural identities. The experiences of students who are living in the borderlands—between nations, cultures, and languages—, as Anzaldúa (1987) describes, are normalized and honored, not marginalized and erased. Overall, the theories that ground CML can be conceptualized as multiple ways of approaching schooling and students from an asset-based perspective, honoring students’ language, culture, and knowledge. Hybridity and the raciolinguistic perspective are more theoretical ways of viewing schooling while culturally sustaining pedagogy and translanguaging pedagogy inform praxis, and critical pedagogy spans from theory to practice. Throughout this dissertation, I will use CML as a framework for understanding education for adult EMLLs. The Fabric and (Un)patterning of Adult Education for EMLLs: A Literature Review In her memoir, Guatemalan activist and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum (1984) writes about her experience as an indigenous community organizer in the midst of the Guatemalan civil war, in which her community was targeted and displaced from the land where they had always lived. In her community’s struggle to survive the violence and oppression by the Guatemalan government, Menchú Tum went to school, learned Spanish and various Guatemalan indigenous languages in addition to her home language of Quiché, and developed community organizing strategies to build relationships with other marginalized communities. The solidarity she built between communities grew into a radical and organized effort to create peace for indigenous groups in Guatemala. According to her, Menchú Tum’s own 18 story is one of coexistence, education, and dialogue, and is an exemplar for multilingual transnational communities seeking peace and prosperity. Her story highlights the transformational power of adult learning amid political trauma. As Menchú Tum demonstrates, adult learning toward social transformation in our spatiotemporal context requires an understanding of what has been done and what are the possibilities for critical hope (Duncan-Andrade, 2009) in multilingual learning communities. This study was situated during the summer of 2022, heading into the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and bringing with it a unique set of global issues. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the most significant world events in 2022 were Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, US-China tensions, climate change, inflation, COVID-19, Iranian protests over Mahsa Amini’s arrest and death in police custody, political shifts toward the left in Latin America, deepened humanitarian crises as 32 million people around the world were displaced as refugees, layered crises in Pakistan, and distress in British politics (Lindsay, 2022). This study’s super-diverse community of adult learners experienced these world issues individually and differently from one another and from me, the researcher, as we are all connected (or not) transnationally in multiple ways. To reiterate, this literature review addresses the following questions: (1) The Fabric: How has the COVID-19 pandemic shaped adult multilingual education? and (2 The (Un)Pattern: How are critical, transformational literacy practices taken up in adult multilingual education? I use the metaphor of fabric to discuss the context and experience of adult education for EMLLs in the US and the metaphor of the (un)pattern to discuss ways to disrupt the status quo through critical transformational practices that hold transformative possibilities. The Fabric: Distance Learning and Adult Multilingual Education. 19 Before the COVID-19 pandemic, adult EMLL education faced barriers such as providing childcare during classes, academic and work counseling, and transportation to and from school” (Mathews-Aydinli, 2008.) However, when the pandemic caused a widespread lockdown in the United States in March 2020, many adult literacy programs transitioned class modalities from in- person to emergency remote teaching, creating a new set of hurdles. Emergency remote teaching is defined as “a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances” (Kaiper-Marquez, 2020, p. 692). For adult education programs to continue receiving federal funding during this transition, the Higher Education Act (HEA) Title IV required distance education that supported “regular and substantive interaction between students and the instructor, synchronously or asynchronously.” (Dortch et al., 2020, p. 22). Therefore, although nearly all adult educators were unprepared for this shift, teachers pivoted to online teaching rather quickly to meet these requirements (McLean & Clymer, 2021, p. 2). This shift to online classes posed many barriers to teaching and learning such as internet accessibility, access to proper technology, digital literacy, and communication, to name a few (Miles, 2021; McLean & Clymer, 2021). Adult learners turned their attention away from their own learning goals toward tending to their own kids’ and families’ needs as they navigated online learning (Miles, 2021). In fact, McLean and Clymer (2021) posit that adults attending family literacy programs were “disproportionately harmed by the pandemic as they felt overwhelmed with keeping up with their own studies and supporting their children’s learning needs” (p. 5). Subsequently, enrollment in adult literacy classes declined during this time (Miles, 2021). To address these barriers, the Heroes Act (H.R. 6800, 116th Cong., 2020) made it possible for state grantees to allocate funding for “online services delivery of adult education and literacy activities” that would provide access to broadband services, and also “to identify and 20 disseminate to state agencies strategies and virtual proctoring tools to assess adult education participants and measure their progress in compliance with the relevant performance standards'' (Dortch et al., 2020, p. 25). It has also been suggested that since adult learners prioritize their lives and families, partnerships with the workforce and other organizations could promote higher attendance during times of crisis to meet learners’ basic needs (Miles, 2021). Miles (2021) recommends that in an emergency remote teaching situation like this one, educators might take an approach that “comprehensively fosters student-centered environments, provides professional development for teachers, promotes adult education, and builds and expands partnerships” (p. 44). Many adult educators indeed enacted creative solutions in response to the shift caused by the pandemic, holding outdoor classes and orientation sessions, delivering materials to students’ homes, transitioning to virtual classes using new online platforms, and seeking accessible and affordable technology for students (Miles, 2021; Kaiper- Marquez, 2020). Studies have shown that in designing distance learning classes for adult learners, teachers should focus on empathy and care, fostering community building among learners, focusing on adult learners’ needs, and enacting student-centered class design (Kaiper- Marquez, 2020; Miles, 2021). Additionally, in response to an emergency such as the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers of adult learners should receive professional development in digital literacy and digital pedagogies (Miles, 2021). Informal Family Literacy as a Result of Distance Education. As adult education shifted from in-person to online, educators and adult learners were exposed to a new set of challenges and supports to their learning and teaching. Suddenly, adults were learning in their homes, alongside their children who were also going to school online (Kaiper-Marquez, 2020). Adult education has always had to consider the issues of work-life balance and childcare, and 21 from my own experience teaching adult education classes, many programs have offered free childcare for parents during their in-person classes. Unlike in-person classes, though, children were at home sharing the same space as their caretakers who were taking adult education classes. Often during the pandemic, I observed that children were present in the online adult education class, sitting on their parent’s lap, requesting help with something around the house, helping with technology, and in the case of adult EMLLs’ children, translating or language brokering for their caretakers (Crafter & Iqbal, 2022). Perhaps the pandemic gave us a glimpse into what informal family literacy practices might look like. Often, adult education includes optional family literacy programming to support family literacy practices. These formal family literacy program components are: (1) adult education (AE) or English Language Learning (ELL) instruction for adult learners; (2) parent education (PE) to provide suggestions about child development and connecting to the child’s school; (3) interactive literacy activities (ILA) that provide ideas and opportunities for caregivers about engaging in activities to foster their child’s learning at home; and (4) early childhood education (ECE) in an early childhood or school-age setting (McLean & Clymer, 2021, p. 1). McLean & Clymer (2021) asserted that family literacy programs like these can address the “Covid-19 slide”, a concept they compared to the summer slide, a time when students are thought to regress in their learning because they are not in school. Of course, “research has consistently demonstrated that parent involvement enhances children’s language and print literacy development, and that shared reading is related to language, literacy and other academic skills development” (Kaiper-Marquez, 2020, p. 696-697). Shared reading between the child and caregiver, in both online and in-person programs, teaches parents how to “engage in dialogic 22 reading behavior” and increases “language, literacy, and other academic skill development” (McLean & Clymer, 2021, p. 2). To foster these types of family literacy practices, McLean and Clymer (2021) recommend that adult education teachers build relationships with caregivers, use “easily accessible” books and resources, and show parents how to access these resources. Using Children’s Literature in the Adult EMLL Classroom In a multilingual learning environment such as the one presented in this study, “easily accessible” books and resources might be interpreted as texts that can be obtained from a local library or online for free, such as children’s and adolescent literature. As a teacher of adult EMLLs, I know firsthand how difficult it is to find high interest texts that fit the English literacy levels appropriate for adult learners to supplement the prescribed curriculum that is often, “dominated by decontextualized cloze exercises, sentence-level literal reading interpretation, superficial information gab activities, decontextualized grammar lessons, and vocabulary memorization” (Kim, 2009, p. 35). The reading passages in textbooks for the adult EMLL classroom often contain short expository essays related to the chapter themes. For example, an informational text called “Paying for College'' in a unit called “Working and Saving” in Foley and Neblett (2019, p. 44) or “Explorer Conrad Anker: The Right Gear for the Job” in a unit called “Let’s Go Shopping!” in Jenkins and Johnson (2019, p. 58). There is nothing wrong with these short informational texts, but where can teachers of adult EMLLs turn for supplemental reading materials that are both age and reading level appropriate? In their discussion of multimodal design, Kress and Selander (2012) contend that educators cannot solely rely on written and oral text—such as the textbooks mentioned earlier—to create meaning and promote learning, but that designing curricula alongside learners to incorporate their own multimodal practices and interpretations is necessary in a world that is digitized and globalized: 23 In a world in which it is recognised that meaning exists in many forms, and not only in those which have hitherto been regarded as ‘canonical’, a new requirement is to develop means of recognition of the different modes – and genres – through and in which learner/interpreters express the meanings which they have made in the transformative – and transductive (see Kress, 2010) – work of interpretation. (p. 268) However, only a few adult educators and researchers of adult education have looked to children’s and adolescent literature to fill this need for multimodal texts beyond the prescribed curriculum. Overall, the research on the use of children’s and adolescent literature in the adult EMLL classroom is sparse and dated, but nonetheless, it is a promising solution. The literature that exists shows that using children’s books as “authentic reading” improves adult EMLLs’ vocabulary, reading fluency, comprehension, confidence, enjoyment of language learning, and attitudes toward reading (Kim, 2009). Kim (2009) asserts that children’s books that are both interesting and comprehensible can create very positive learning experiences for adult EMLLs that can “complement and contribute to the acquisition of practical language skills” (p. 36). To achieve what Krashen and Terrell (1983) call comprehensible input, it is important to aim for using reading materials at or slightly above the level of the readers' target language reading and vocabulary levels (Burt et al., 2003, p. 40). The key is to “carefully select texts for learners or assist them in choosing their own texts at appropriate levels of reading difficulty, focusing on the level of decoding, vocabulary knowledge, and cultural or background knowledge needed to handle the text” (Burt et al., 2003, p. 36). The following considerations emerged from the literature on selecting children’s books for adult EMLL classrooms: 1) adult learners’ goals, 2) illustrations and multimodality as literacy supports, and 3) diverse heritage and family literacies. 24 Children’s Literature that Meets Adult EMLLs’ Goals. When selecting reading materials for the adult EMLL classroom, it is important to consider adult learners’ goals for language learning (Burt et al., 2003). Finnegan (2022) argues that we cannot discuss immigrant needs, “let al.one desires or interests, without reference to a given group of migrants in a specific place in a particular time” (p. 22). Each community is a diverse population with diverse needs, experiences, and expectations for their learning. As in the case of this present study, adult EMLL classrooms can be superdiverse (Vertovec, 2007) in the way of multiple intersectional identities such as age, educational backgrounds, languages spoken, race/ethnicity, etc. What this means is that adult EMLLs’ learning goals for themselves do not always align with the objectives set out for them by the government that are then reflected in the curriculum (Mathews-Aydinli, 2008). Mathews-Aydinli (2008) recommends setting goals with adult EMLL students to address their realities and to avoid making assumptions about what those realities might be. Selecting reading materials related to the goals of learners “will improve their skills related to those goals and may also transfer to general reading ability” (Burt et al., 2003, p. 40). Children’s and adolescent literature offer educators and adult EMLLs the opportunity to access a wide variety of topics at an appropriate reading level, and they are offered in multiple genres to meet learners’ interests and goals. For example, Tomlinson and McGraw (1997) found that books about children experiencing war motivated adult learners to read. Considerations for Using Picturebooks and Graphic Novels with Adult EMLLs. Picturebooks4 [and graphic novels] have the potential to scaffold adult EMLL understanding of 4 I intentionally use the term picturebook as one word rather than picture book as two words to represent how the pictures and text work together toward meaning, as Sipe (1998) explains, “in a picturebook, the words of a text and the sequence of the illustrations contribute equally to opportunities they provide for constructing meaning. In this way, picturebooks differ from illustrated texts” (p. 66). 25 the text using illustrations (Smallwood, 1998). Adult EMLLs with less formal education may have higher “logographic” skills and draw from life experiences that could support their literacy learning as they engage with picturebooks (Bruski, 2012). When selecting picturebooks for adult EMLLs, it is suggested to consider whether adults are represented in the illustrations, if the illustrations support meaning, and whether cultural content is represented authentically (Smallwood, 1998). “For beginning English learners, pictures and graphics that accompany texts and texts with repeated and predictable vocabulary and grammatical structures are useful” (Burt et al., 2003, p. 40). According to the literature, however, explicit instruction of visual literacy is necessary when using picturebooks with adult EMLLs (Burt et al., 2003; Bruski, 2012). Literacy and visual literacy are not necessarily correlated, especially when it comes to symbols/cultural signs that are highly contextual (Bruski, 2012). “Teachers cannot assume that students from diverse backgrounds share the same visual literacy concepts” (Bruski, 2012, p. 18). Burt et al. (2003) suggests educators to guide learners in a “preview of titles, headings, pictures, and graphics to enhance comprehension of vocabulary and content” (p. 40). Furthermore, Bruski (2012) recommends explicitly teaching unfamiliar graphic devices such as arrows and shading that can cause confusion. Children’s Books and Adult EMLLs’ Heritage Literacies. Perhaps most pertinent to this study, children’s literature can act as a bridge between adult caregivers and children, strengthening individual and family literacy practices for the adult and child alike. A focus on the children’s literacy practices is outside the scope of this study; however, since it is well documented that adult caregivers deeply care about their children’s education, it is worthwhile to discuss the literature that addresses using children’s books as a tool for family literacy practices. One of the goals adult EMLLs state for attending literacy classes is the desire to help their 26 children in school (Paratore et al., 2010; Shanahan et al., 1995). Paratore et al. (2010) argue, “What does seem to be nearly universal among studies of immigrant parents is parents’ belief that education is critically important, as well as parents’ willingness to support their children in the ways about which they are knowledgeable” (p. 304). So, if parents are given the opportunity to engage with children’s books, they are likely to support their children by reading children’s literature with them. Not only does home storybook reading promote vocabulary development and bolster reading and literacy in the target language for the parent and child alike, but it has the potential to give the adult EMLL parent the confidence boost to interact with the child’s school and teachers. It also provides families with a way to further their unique literacy heritages, which is important for identity construction and belonging (Paratore et al., 2010) The Thread, Needle, and Machine: Transnational Identity and Institutional Discourses According to Bucholtz and Hall (2005), identity is the “social positioning of self and other” (p. 586). From the perspective of the relationality principle, “identities are intersubjectively constructed through several, often overlapping, complementary relations, including similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice, and authority/delegitimacy” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 598). Accordingly, Darvin and Norton (2015) describe identity as being “governed by different ideologies and possessing varying levels of capital, learners position themselves and are positioned by others in different contexts” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 46). One way to think about this is how an individual’s linguistic habitus, or speech characteristics, are positioned in relation to others. Bourdieu asserts that the linguistic habitus are influenced by an individual’s linguistic background and environment, sharing common features with other individuals in the same “socio-cultural milieu” (Grenfell, 2013, p. 67). So an individual’s intersectional identities—perhaps gender, religion, home language, immigration status, etc.—will influence 27 their linguistic habitus, and influence how and if an individual is able to achieve symbolic capital in the United States (Crenshaw, 1989; Bourdieu, 1977 as cited in Grenfell, 2013, p. 68). Symbolic capital in this case refers to “skills of linguistic, artistic, and scientific expression” that are needed to produce culture (Anyon, 1980, p. 89). Adult EMLLs work on identity construction as they learn a new language in a new culture (Mathews-Aydinli, 2008). “Strong identity is a prerequisite for transforming one’s perspective, and the role of transnational ties are essential for re-constructing one’s identity” (Jõgi & Ümarik, 2022, p. 92). As they construct and expand their identities, adult EMLLs face “overcoming affective barriers…on the road to fluency” (Tse, 1996, p. 26). Reading literature for pleasure in an adult EMLL class is one way to create a low anxiety environment (Casey & Williams, 2001; Tse, 1996; Cho & Krashen, 2001) that promotes positive changes in attitudes toward reading, promotes joy, improves confidence, and opens minds and hearts to other cultures and experiences (Kim, 2009; Tse, 1996). Tse (1996) demonstrates that although students in an Indonesian adult EFL program were apprehensive about engaging with the target language before the class started, using children’s and adolescent literature lowered anxiety and increased confidence in reading. As adult EMLLs engage with curriculum in a classroom, however, they also experience various levels of oppression and stress that are both explicit and implicit. Hidden curricula, or implicit curricula, are the unintended outcomes that benefit dominant groups and oppress minoritized groups (McLaren, 2009). In the case of this present study that is set in the context of a US midwestern public school district, monolingual English-only language ideologies exist as the hidden curriculum that is baked into the institutional discourses surrounding adult education. For example, standardized data collection around adult literacy in the US is limited to English 28 literacy, even though the US is increasingly linguistically diverse (Macías, 1994; Rivera & Huerta-Macías, 2008). The US adult literacy rates, as marked by the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) and its extension the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), measure English literacy for adults 16 years old and older living in the US (NCES, 2023) and ignore the diverse literacies and languages that transnational migrants hold. To privilege the English language in this way sends a strong message, as language is not neutral, and any view of language is ideological (Rosa & Burdick, 2016). In his structural approach, Bourdieu asserts that the “democratic school…reproduces the established structures of society” effectively promoting inequality (Grenfell, 2013, p. 53). So, when it comes to identity construction of the adult EMLL, the fact that the federal data collection system for adult literacy in the US privileges English over other languages has the potential to induce stress and promote inequalities. Appropriateness-based approaches to language education, advocating that “all language varieties are legitimate, but that some are more appropriate in specific contexts” have sought to address the disconnect between race and language (Leeman, 2005, p. 38). Subtractive approaches, which have waned in popularity, expect language-minoritized students to replace their home language varieties with standardized national languages (Cummins, 2000). Additive approaches promote the development of standardized language skills while simultaneously respecting and maintaining minoritized linguistic practices (Delpit, 2006). The overall goal of these appropriateness-based approaches is to provide language tools for students to communicate seamlessly in situations when standardized language is implicitly the “norm”. Raciolinguistic Chronotopes and Identity Construction A raciolinguistic perspective calls for an understanding of the ways in which indigenous communities and enslaved Africans have been colonized, and an acknowledgement that their 29 language varieties have been de-legitimized and often erased by the white listening subject (Rosa & Flores, 2017). The raciolinguistic perspective also seeks to understand why these languages have been co-naturalized and to find ways to denaturalize languages as a form of resistance against hegemonic constructions. As languages are co-naturalized, socially constructed narratives are formed around communities of people. The sociological term chronotope is used to explain “the ways that space, time, and models of personhood are linked in narrative frameworks" (Bakhtin as cited in Rosa, 2016, p. 107). As such, Rosa (2016) provides an example of how the minoritized language varieties spoken by the Latinx community in the United States are used to promote narratives of anxiety and resistance. Rosa (2016) cites a 2007 Camry Hybrid commercial in which a son asks his bilingual father, “Why did you learn English?” to which his father replies, “For your future.” Rosa (2016) links the father’s answer to the narrative of anxiety, in other words that “Latinos are continually framed as an emerging population of future significance” (p. 108). Whereas the more positive Latinx community raciolinguistic chronotope of resistance positions Spanish language varieties as an integral component of the past, present, and future (Rosa, 2016). Similarly, Chun (2016) uses the racialized term “ching chong” to analyze the meaning of racialized language on an axis that defines “where the meaning lies” and “when meaning happens” (As cited in Alim et al., p. 95). Chun draws on Hill’s (2008) “folk” and “scholarly” language theories to demonstrate that context, including time and space, matters in determining the meaning of an utterance. Chun argues that like the reappropriation of the meaning of the term “queer” from derogatory to more scholarly meanings, all phrases have the potential to morph and grow as contexts change. In this sense, there is the potential that Asian communities may take up “ching chong” as a resistance narrative through a contextualized raciolinguistic chronotope. 30 The (Un)Pattern: Transformational Practices in Adult Multilingual Education Mezirow (1991) writes about transformative dimensions of adult learning, building on Freire's (2018) conscientização or critical consciousness, to make a case that adult transformative learning is built on perspective transformation. According to Mezirow, perspective transformation happens when adult learners reflect on the world around them, how it shapes who they are, and then take action to transform the world. Since this present study is focused on the experiences of adult EMLL transmigrant participants, it is imperative to consider that, “migration phenomena challenge, unsettle, and disrupt the legitimacy and functionality of the (natio-racio- culturally coded) ‘Us.’ They also question the legitimacy and functionality of institutional routines such as linguistic practices or practices of collective memory” (Mecheril, 2022, p. xiv). Therefore, if the goal is providing a transformative learning experience in adult education for EMLLs situated in a migration society, then it must be “grounded in diversity and multiple belongings” (Hoggan & Hoggan-Kloubert, 2022, p. 10). Similarly, Ghiso and Campano (2013) argue that the only way to achieve solidarity in schools is to “decenter official curriculum” by considering the “importance of border thinking, involving the need to defamiliarize dominant narratives and representations of experience, such as immigration, through the critical perspectives and epistemic privilege of historically subordinated and ‘peripheral’ communities” (p. 266). This would mean that the curriculum would be “attentive to issues of power” and “radically inclusive” (Campano et al., 2016, p. 139). However, contemporary adult literacy classes for EMLLs are English literacy-centric and “are often dominated by decontextualized cloze exercises, sentence-level literal reading interpretation, superficial information gab activities, decontextualized grammar lessons, and vocabulary memorization” (Kim, 2009, p. 35). The CASAS (2008) competencies manual, which 31 is a widely used set of common core standards for adult emergent multilingual learners (EMMLs), identifies “essential life skills that […] adults need to be functionally competent members of their community, their family, and the workforce” (p. 2). The idea of prescribing standards toward developing “functionally competent members” centers whiteness (and the white listening subject) because it predetermines what is “essential” and does not address the wholeness of adult learners as individuals with cultural, linguistic, and transnational wisdom. Therefore, this study aims to disrupt the “white listening subject” (Flores & Rosa, 2015, p. 151) in the curriculum. Overall, the literature strongly suggests that critical literacy can be used toward social transformation and human rights (Campano et al., 2016). Hence, family members, educators, and the community should be involved in cognitive knowledge building (Cummins & Chow, 2006). Afterall, when considering working with immigrants, it is imperative that everyone must examine their own identities and simultaneously listen and learn from one another (Campano et al., 2016). Historically, education in the United States has too often been used to subordinate immigrant communities by suppressing students’ home languages and cultures (Au, Brown, & Calderón, 2016; San Miguel Jr., 2002). In response, immigrant [Latinx] communities have united to resist subordination, particularly in the form of advocacy for bilingual education (Colón- Muñiz & Lavadenz, 2016). Flores (2016) calls for educational reforms that promote bilingual education as social transformation. Additionally, Campano, Ghiso, and Welch (2016) center immigrant communities that promote social change through language and literacy—which they call cosmopolitan counterpublics—in their advocacy of serving and “recognizing the full humanity of those most disenfranchised” (p. 140). 32 Finnegan (2022) argues that the educational response to migration should not fall solely on migrants themselves, but that transformative learning “depends on creating collaborative democratic learning spaces in which participants act as equals (p. 23). In other words, there is a call for communities to break down institutional boundaries between “(im)migrant” and “non- (im)migrant” groups (Enciso as cited in Campano & Ghiso, 2013). To do this, West (2022) advocates for a cosmopolitan learning model in which migrants and “hosts” dialogically learn from each other, “strengthening social solidarities provides a profound rationale for adult education, above and beyond the meritocratic rhetoric of social mobility” (West, 2022, p. 57; Formenti & Luraschi, 2022). Enciso (2011) argues that student storytelling can reverse power dynamics, as the student storyteller becomes the producer of knowledge while the traditional teacher becomes the listening subject (p. 37). The literature discusses storytelling as a way for transnational students to connect and express their double perspectives. Formenti and Luraschi (2022) describe a research model they call the “sensobiographic walk” in which adult migrants go on a walk together with people from the receiving country and discuss their surroundings and experiences as a way to build solidarity and community. Using Culturally and Linguistically Relevant Children’s Literature with Adult EMLLs Cummins (2006) argues that one way to incorporate a radically inclusive curriculum is to provide home language support and student-led co-construction of knowledge. When working with adult EMLLs, it is important to select texts that represent multiple global narratives, languages, and cultures that transmigrant students might see themselves reflected in authentically. In a super-diverse community of adult learners (and I would argue in any community of learners), it is impossible to select books that reflect and represent each student’s multiple and intersectional identities. However, Bishop (1990) suggests that books can act as 33 mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors, offering learners the opportunity to see themselves and to learn about others’ experiences and orientations to the world: Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. (Bishop, 1990, p. ix) The literature advocates for using multicultural and multilingual texts to provide students with fluid access to different histories and experiences (Ghiso & Campano, 2013; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014; García & Wei, 2014). Since adult learners have so much more life experience than children, funds of knowledge, which include cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge, can be utilized toward learning (Merriam & Bierema, 2014). Marlina (2013) argues that children’s literature is relevant for adult EMLLs because it contains authentic cultural and linguistic enrichment as well as personal involvement. Condelli and Spruck Wrigley (n.d.) encourage educators of adult EMLLs to use texts that are inclusive of students’ home languages with a “connection to the outside” (p. 122). They found that when every day, practical and identifiable texts (connections to the world outside of the classroom) were brought into the classroom, adult learners improved their basic reading skills. Likewise, Burt et al. (2003) found that schema activating texts, or culturally and linguistically relevant texts, promote learning for what they call “less proficient readers” in adult literacy classes (p. 31). In addition, Beck (2022) argues that historical accounts of world events, 34 such as in historical fiction or historical non-fiction texts may be a way to engage adult learners, “this affects how historical (adult) education can be conceptualized in a plural society: Learners can relate to various accounts of past(s) and position themselves in different ways. Such positioning can be manifold, contradictory, and also conflictual” (p. 166). Reading from a Global Stance. In the case of this present study with a super-diverse community of adult EMLLs, selecting literature to represent every single participant’s intersectional identity and experience is nearly impossible. Even if it is possible to select a variety of literature that seemingly represents each individual in the community, there is no guarantee that learners will “relate” to and learn from the texts. Bradford (2007) asserts that, “there is no such thing as an innocent text,” meaning that authors, publishers, readers, and educators are inherently biased and steeped in their own worlds (p. 15). This then requires consumers to demonstrate a level of social responsibility to read and discuss texts critically (Short, 2019). Similarly, Ngozi Adichie (2007) prompts readers to avoid the narrative of “a single story” when selecting, reading, and responding to literature, and encourages us to read widely, deeply, and critically both within and outside of our own experiences. The literature emphasizes the importance of connecting literature with the culture and language practices in which they were produced, particularly when the author identifies as indigenous, as what is written (and not written) can be a form of resistance and protection (Bradford, 2007; Lake, 1990; Short, 2019). Therefore, simply selecting culturally and linguistically relevant literature is not enough to truly honor all students’ funds of knowledge in the adult EMLL classroom. It is imperative to promote “learning contexts that encourage dialogic inquiry around literature [...and…] provide a context in which readers can position themselves and the book” (Short, 2019, p. 7). 35 Literature Circles as a Transformational Practice in the Adult EMLL Classroom. Small-scale classroom interactions are key for emancipatory adult education, to both learn and unlearn in a safe community (Brown et al., 2022). Since the participants in this study had requested the opportunity to read literature together in English, my idea was to put together a summer book club, a small-scale instructional approach that can shift classroom learning from teacher-centered to student-centered, thereby meeting students’ actual needs with the potential to promote a critical dialogue toward transformation. Raphael et al. (2013) propose the “Book Club Plus” strategy that embeds book clubs into literacy instruction, offering meaningful opportunities for engaging with texts. The principles of the book club in this model are: (1) “Meaning-making through language and other symbol systems is fundamental to literacy learning” (Rafael et al., 2013, p. 263), (2) “Literacy is a cultural practice” (Rafael et al., 2013, p. 286), and (3) “Engagement, ownership, and voice in literacy learning are particularly important for young learners” (Rafael et al., 2013, p. 332). While these principles can apply to book clubs designed for adult EMLLs, this book club plus model was designed for children in the primary grades. Since this present study deals with adult EMLLs, I used the term “book club” loosely to make the program more accessible to participants; however, in combination with principles drawn from the book club plus model, I used the literature circle model as a structure for the “book club” meetings. The literature circle model was developed by Daniels (1994; 2002; 2004) as a strategy in which students choose their own reading material, read and discuss it in small groups, and then respond to it. Extensive empirical research shows that students benefit from participating in literature circles in the following ways: (1) improved reading comprehension and inferential reading, (2) increased enjoyment of and confidence in reading, (3) further developed linguistic awareness, and (4) a space for socio-cognitive development and social dreaming (Certo 36 et al., 2010; Awada et al., 2021; Chen, 2020; Cherry-Paul & Johansen, 2019; Ferdiansyah et al., 2020). That said, the research on literature circles has been done with K-12 learners, but rarely with adult EMLLs, so this study seeks to fill that gap. In addition, this study is novel because it will implement literature circles in combination with translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014). In conclusion, the literature reviewed for this study identifies ways in which the COVID- 19 pandemic shifted adult learning from in-person to online, increasing opportunities for informal family literacy practices and the benefits of using diverse children’s and adolescent literature for both parents and children. The literature discussed the importance of asset-based pedagogies that include community building, student-centered approaches, critical multilingual literacies, and multilingual orientations to teaching literacy. Overall, the literature revealed the need for more research around transformative practices in adult education designed for EMLLs. 37 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND METHODS This chapter describes the methodology and methods I carried out to learn more about how adult EMLLs respond to humanizing curriculum that goes beyond adult functional skills- based curriculum. I begin with a description of the context of the research embedded within an adult education program at a public school district, a description of the adult EMLL participants in the study, and my researcher positionality. Next, I describe my interpretivist stance toward research, the instrumental case study approach, and the methods I used to carry out the study. Finally, I discuss the limitations of the current study. Context of Research About the River City School District This study was conducted for six weeks during the summer of 2022 as a pilot program for adult EMLLs enrolled in a local midsize public school district’s adult education program. Throughout this study, I will refer to this school district as River City School District (RCSD). RCSD is in a midsized Midwestern state capital city with a population of 124,134 and a median household income of $44,765. The city’s racial demographics are 55% White, 21% Black, 13% Hispanic or Latino, 6% two or more races, 5% Asian, 1% American Indian/Alaska Native, and 0% Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. RCSD is made up of 30 total schools, serving approximately 10,136 students with 574 full-time classroom teachers, and a student-to-teacher ratio of approximately 18-to-one. Monolingual English-speaking students comprise 82.6% of the student population (NCES, 2023). There are no reported demographic statistics specifically about the adults enrolled in adult education programs at the school; however, there is information about the parents of children attending the school, and many of the participants in this study do have children enrolled in 38 RCSD. The median household income of parents whose children are enrolled in RCSD is $45,714, with a little over half living in renter-occupied homes and the rest living in owner- occupied homes. About 82% of the parents are in the labor force working in the service, management, and production industries. Most parents have completed some college or an associate degree (NCES, 2023). The RCSD adult education program offers free classes for all levels, the choice of morning, afternoon, or evening classes, and prepares learners for job opportunities, to obtain a high school completion certificate, and college readiness. In addition to English Language Skills Classes, GED, high school diploma, and career pathways programs are offered. The program uses the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS) to assess student English literacy levels and track their progress. The CASAS assessments are aligned with the English Language Proficiency Standards for Adult Education (American Institute for Research, 2016). The program receives federal and state-level Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Title II funding allocated for adult education and literacy. My Role as a Teacher at RCSD. During the 2020-21 and 2021-2022 school years, I worked as the part-time evening adult English teacher of EMLLs at RCSD. I taught all my classes online over Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This teaching experience at RCSD positioned my researcher role as both an “insider” or someone who is familiar with the space and the community, and an “observer” or someone who seeks to learn about the space and the community (Dyson & Genishi, 2005). During the time I was employed at RCSD, I was one of three adult ESL teachers, the other two being full-time instructors, one for the newcomer students and the other for the intermediate/advanced students. I taught two sections of classes in the evenings on Mondays and Wednesdays. On average, one to five students attended my 39 beginner level classes from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. and five to fifteen students attended my intermediate level classes from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Over the course of the two years that I taught for this program, the students in my classes and I developed a close-knit community of co-learners. During our community building sessions at the beginning of each class, I learned that many of the students were attending evening classes with me after working long hours as sewers, cutting machine operators, grocery store warehouse workers, and hotel housekeepers, to name a few. Students’ home lives were very much integrated with the class, largely because they were attending class virtually from their homes or in their cars (because it was the only quiet place they could find away from children and other distractions). As the days got shorter, the Muslim call to prayer sounded at dusk from several students’ homes. Often, students stepped away from class to assist their children or because there was a visitor at their front door. The classes were scheduled during dinner time, so many of my students, especially my female students, cooked dinner for their families simultaneously. Students enjoyed sharing with each other about what they were cooking, like the West African dish fufu5. Throughout the school year, many students visited their home countries, which opened more possibilities for teaching and learning from one another. For example, a mother- daughter pair of students visited their home country of Honduras, and afterward shared about visiting the island of Utila, reminiscing about how much they missed the tropical weather since moving to the US Midwest. In addition, EMLLs developed “digital literacy” skills, or “the skills associated with using technology to enable users to find, evaluate, organize, create, and 5 “fufu, also spelled foofoo, a popular dish in western and central African countries and, due to African migration, in the Caribbean as well. It consists of starchy foods—such as cassava, yams, or plantains—that have been boiled, pounded, and rounded into balls; the pounding process, which typically involves a mortar and pestle, can be laborious. Fufu is often dipped into sauces or eaten with stews of meat, fish, or vegetables. The dish reportedly originated in Ghana, where it is a staple” (Siciliano Rosen, n.d.) 40 communicate information” (34 CFR 463.3, 2023). So, we became acquainted with one another’s customs, home lives, and transmigrant experiences in a way that we otherwise would not have if classes would have been held in person. Co-constructing this Study as a Class. As a learning community, we began to discuss our linguistic identities, and I decided to observe this “small” thing (our discussions about language) and “observe it intentionally and closely over time” by collecting information about which approaches would be best suited for this present study (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p. 42). As a class, we questioned a phenomenon we were noticing that related to students’ self-perceptions of their English language skills. We noticed that although everyone in the learning community was bi/multilingual, students often introduced themselves to new students throughout the school year (because the program was on an open enrollment schedule) by saying which language(s) they spoke and then tagged on the phrase, “and a little bit of English.” What was peculiar was students provided this caveat about their English language skills even though we were all introducing ourselves and communicating in English. As we discussed this phenomenon as a learning community, my students began to acknowledge their communicative abilities in English and started introducing themselves to new students confidently proclaiming that they spoke English with no qualifiers. From this conversation, I conducted a study that described and analyzed this phenomenon, leading me to understand the effect of the raciolinguistic chronotopes of anxiety and resistance (Flores et al., 2018) in the adult EMLL classroom (forthcoming). This study considered how broader systems of cultural and linguistic injustice influence my students’ own linguistic identities. I began to reflect on the ways in which the English curriculum for adult EMLLs might have an impact on the way learners view their own linguistic identities. Afterall, the functional 41 basic-skills focused adult EMLL curricula that is traditionally used in programs like this has been developed from the top-down and does not necessarily consider the whole learner. For example, I was given two textbooks, aligned with the CASAS competencies manual (2008) as curriculum. These books, both published by National Geographic Learning, address functional basic skills such as language for school, safety at work, eating out, health, and housing (Jenkins & Johnson, 2019; Foley & Neblett, 2018). Although there is nothing necessarily wrong with these functional basic skills topics, they do not necessarily speak to the adult EMLL’s whole self. The arts are typically not addressed in textbooks and curriculum designed for adult EMLLs, especially when it is directly funded and dictated by state and federal government entities. This was not just an observation of my own, but it was a dynamic our learning community began to identify together. The students in my class shared that they were artists and musicians and loved reading in their home languages. They shared their own artwork, photographs, paintings, and favorite music videos with the class in English. This brought joy to all of us in the learning community, and I found that we were developing a new curriculum based on what students were learning from one another. Near the end of the school year, students began asking me if it was possible to read a whole book in English together as a class. Therefore, I began developing a summer pilot program for a book club with my adult EMLLs. Initially, I was not planning to study the book club, but after we began developing it together, I thought it might provide insight into a humanizing strategy for teaching adult EMLLs beyond the prescribed functional life skills-based curriculum. About Adult Literacy Programs for EMLLs in the US The RCSD adult education program is funded under the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) and WIOA Title II, so it is important to understand the purposes, 42 reporting requirements, and definitions associated with this funding, as it shapes the overall scope of curricula, assessment, and ideologies associated with them. Since the purpose of this study is to (un)pattern the current deficit-based curriculum and then to (re)pattern it to honor adult EMLLs’ transmigrant and bi/multilingual wisdom and experiences in adult education programs, it is necessary to highlight the ways in which top-down funding requirements are structured. Purpose of Adult Education for EMLLs in the US AEFLA openly states that the purpose of adult education for EMLLs in the US is “Americanization” (Ovando, 2003, p. 5; Sticht, 1988), a government-instituted purpose for adult education that has been in place since World War I. The deficit-based purpose statement implies that EMLLs need assistance in improving English language and math skills, and training in living as an “American”. The objectives are laid out in the following purpose statement: Assist immigrants and other individuals who are English language learners in (1) Improving their –(i) Reading, writing, speaking, and comprehension skills in English; and (ii) Mathematics skills; and (2) Acquiring an understanding of the American system of Government, individual freedom, and the responsibilities of citizenship. (AEFLA, 2014) One of the purposes of adult education for EMLLs is to improve reading, writing, speaking, and listening in English, with no acknowledgement of building on adult EMLLs’ existing linguistic resources or using language toward critical thinking and dialogue. The current amendment centers English, not communication, therefore erasing the utility of the linguistic repertoires EMLLs bring with them to adult education classes, framing these resources from a deficit-based perspective. Furthermore, this amendment names the learning of Americanness as one of its two purposes for the education of adult EMLLs. Although many adult EMLLs may be interested in 43 obtaining American citizenship, the assumption here is that the purpose of adult education for EMLLs is and should be a tool for assimilation and social reproduction. The design of this study’s book club curriculum (re)patterns these assumptions to draw on EMLLs’ entire linguistic repertoires as they develop their English language practices together. The curriculum is meant to encourage critical dialogue among learners about what it means to be a multilingual, liberated, global citizen, not just what it means to be an “American” according to the federal and state government. Funding and Reporting for Adult Education in the US. The US Department of Education (DOE) administers the AEFLA formula grant program to US states (WIOA Title II) so they may distribute funding to adult literacy programs such as the one described in this study (DOE, 2023). The DOE (2023) claims to (1) provide “assistance to states to improve program quality, accountability, and capacity” and (2) establish “national leadership activities to enhance the quality of adult education.” Adult education programs are required to report attendance and student achievement outcomes to WIOA on a regular basis. At RCSD, the CASAS assessment is used as a measure to report student achievement outcomes to receive funding for the program. As with most grant funded educational programs, the funders dictate the curricular agenda, shifting the focus of learning away from the learners themselves. This study is designed to shift the focus back to the adult EMLL learners, focusing on their goals and their desired outcomes. I had the freedom to do so because I developed the summer book club using funding from a separate fellowship meant specifically for graduate student research. Therefore, although I was working within the RCSD adult education program, I was not beholden to the WIOA Title II grant funding requirements. 44 Eligible Individuals for Adult Education in the US. Even the eligibility requirements for attending an adult education program funded by WIOA Title II are deficit-based. The following definition for an “eligible individual”, other than the age requirement, describes what the individual lacks and/or is deficient in academically: The term ‘‘eligible individual’’ means an individual— (A) who has attained 16 years of age; (B) who is not enrolled or required to be enrolled in secondary school under State law; and (C) who— (i) is basic skills deficient; (ii) does not have a secondary school diploma or its recognized equivalent, and has not achieved an equivalent level of education; or (iii) is an English language learner. (AEFLA, 2014) Of note, the term “English language learner” is tagged on at the end, almost as an afterthought. The former list of deficit-based eligibility criteria sends a message about the latter, whether it is meant to or not. I take umbrage with the idea that the federal government would subjectively assess and label any human “basic skills deficient”. According to the DOE, this term means the following: with respect to an individual— (A)... (B) who is a youth or adult, that the individual is unable to compute or solve problems, or read, write, or speak English, at a level necessary to function on the job, in the individual’s family, or in society. (AEFLA, 2014) EMLLs are a diverse group of people who speak multiple languages, have experiences with navigating multiple cultures, and many have achieved high levels of education. Again, this study is designed to (re)pattern the underlying assumptions here that position adult EMLLs as deficient of English to instead uphold their transmigrant wisdom and experiences. Definitions for Adult Education Programs for EMLLs in the US. The definitions described in this section are the definitions named by AEFLA that are pertinent to the current 45 study: adult education, literacy, English language acquisition program, English language learner, essential components of reading instruction, and family literacy activities (Table 1). Table 1: AEFLA Definitions that Apply to this Study Term Definition Adult Education academic instruction and education services below the postsecondary level that increase an individual’s ability to— (A) read, write, and speak in English and perform mathematics or other activities necessary for the attainment of a secondary school diploma or its recognized equivalent; (B) transition to postsecondary education and training; and (C) obtain employment. Literacy an individual’s ability to read, write, and speak in English, compute, and solve problems, at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual, and in society. English Language a program of instruction— (A) designed to help eligible individuals who Acquisition Program are English language learners achieve competence in reading, writing, speaking, and comprehension of the English language; and (B) that leads to— (i)(I) attainment of a secondary school diploma or its recognized equivalent; and (II) transition to postsecondary education and training; or (ii) employment. English Language when used with respect to an eligible individual, means an eligible Learner individual who has limited ability in reading, writing, speaking, or comprehending the English language, and— (A) whose native 46 Table 1 (cont’d) Term Definition language is a language other than English; or (B) who lives in a family or community environment where a language other than English is the dominant language. Essential Components explicit and systematic instruction in— (A) phonemic awareness; (B) of Reading Instruction phonics; (C) vocabulary development; (D) reading fluency, including oral reading skills; and I reading comprehension strategies. Family Literacy activities that are of sufficient intensity and quality, to make sustainable Activities improvements in the economic prospects for a family and that better enable parents or family members to support their children’s learning needs, and that integrate all of the following activities: (A) Parent or family adult education and literacy activities that lead to readiness for postsecondary education or training, career advancement, and economic self-sufficiency. (B) Interactive literacy activities between parents or family members and their children. (C) Training for parents or family members regarding how to be the primary teacher for their children and full partners in the education of their children. (D) An age-appropriate education to prepare children for success in school and life experiences These definitions shape the ideologies behind adult education programs for adult EMLLs. They are neoliberal in nature and promote social reproduction rather than social transformation (Labaree, 1997). For example, the definition of adult education prescribes transition to 47 postsecondary education and training to obtain employment as its objective. The issue is that this mandated objective is very narrow in scope and leaves no room for adults enrolled in these programs to set their own learning objectives that may have nothing to do with job attainment. Similarly, the definition of literacy is broadly defined as “English” literacy toward “functioning” in society, at home, and at work. This definition erases all concepts of literacy that are outside of the English language; therefore, multilingual literacies would not fall under this umbrella and are not named assets to the learning process. Overall, these definitions shape the curricula and assessment for adult EMLLs from a deficit-based perspective. Participants Knowing that the students in my classes were interested in forming a book club already, I reached out to them first to gather their ideas on when and where they would like to meet. Then, I recruited participants through snowball sampling, word of mouth, and by distributing an electronic and paper flier (see Figure 1). 48 Figure 1: Book Club Recruitment Flier Overall, ten participants (actual names have been replaced with participant-chosen pseudonyms) enrolled in the summer book club, nine of whom were women, representing seven home countries, four home languages, and ranging between the ages of 18 and 58 (Table 2). Of the ten participants, JennySue was the only participant who had never attended my English classes during the school year. Adem, Farwa, Fazina, JennySue, Lusy, and Mila participated in the book club completely online while Aurora, Barbara, Jane, and Misk all began attending the meetings in-person and then switched to online by the end of the six weeks. Due to multiple factors, not all participants attended every meeting, so I have narrowed my analysis down to six focal participants who attended most of the meetings: Aurora, Farwa, Jane, Lusy, Mila, and Misk. 49 Table 2: Participant Descriptions Participant Home Home Years in the Age Gender Modality Country Language United States Adem Yemen Arabic < 1 year 19 Man Online Aurora Honduras Spanish > 10 years 39 Woman In-person Barbara Honduras Spanish < 1 year 58 Woman In-person Farwa Yemen Arabic < 1 year 18 Woman Online Fazina Iraq Arabic 3 years 27 Woman Online Jane China Mandarin 5 years 39 Woman In-person Jennysue Colombia Spanish 2 years 53 Woman Online Lusy Yemen Arabic < 1 year 21 Woman Online Mila Tanzania Swahili 24 Woman Online Misk Egypt Arabic 2 years 23 Woman In-person Design of (Re)patterned Adult EMLL Curriculum To (un)pattern the functional basic-skills curriculum, I developed the curriculum for this study around the translanguaging pedagogy strategies for teachers: (1) attentiveness to meaning- making, (2) use and design of classroom resources for translanguaging, and (3) design of curriculum and classroom structures for translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014, p. 121-122). In this section, I will describe the design I used for the six-week book club curriculum. First, I will describe how I identified culturally and linguistically responsive literature as resources for translanguaging. Next, I will describe how I organized and facilitated an event called a “book 50 tasting” where participants were given the opportunity to choose their own literature for the book club. And finally, I will describe how I used the literature circles model as a structure to promote meaning-making and translanguaging. Identifying Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Literature for Translanguaging My goal was to choose a mix of culturally and linguistically sustaining books (Ladson- Billings, 2014; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2017) for the book tasting, or the first day of the book club. To identify books, I read through winners from the past three years of the Coretta Scott King Award, Pura Belpré Award, Robert F. Sibert Medal, USBBY Outstanding International Books List, Batchelder Award, Middle East Book Awards, Children’s Africana Book Awards, Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Literature Awards, Tomás Rivera Book Award, Walter Awards, Schneider Family Book Awards, and Stonewall Book Awards (Kristick, 2020; Osorio, 2020; Adukia et al., 2023). To keep track of the books, I created a spreadsheet with each title, author, illustrator, genre, awards, Lexile level6, and a summary (Appendix A). I found the Lexile level of each book by searching on the Scholastic BookWizard website or the book’s page on the Amazon website. In all, I identified about 60 books and sorted them by Lexile level. There were three books I had to request via MelCat because they were not available in the local library system. Next, I vetted the books through the lens of culturally sustaining pedagogy: academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness toward social change (Paris & Aim, 2017; Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014). Academic success is defined as “the intellectual growth students experience as a result of classroom instruction and learning experiences” 6 “A Lexile text measure tells you how challenging a text is to comprehend. Over 100 million books, articles and websites have Lexile text measures” (Lexile, 2019). 51 (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p.75). We know that readers are more likely to improve their reading skills when a book is high interest or schema-activating, and the vocabulary is recognizable to the reader—not too difficult or too easy (Burt, et al., 2003; Pardo, 2004). Throughout the school year, my intermediate students were able to read NewsELA articles at about a 300-600 Lexile level. For this reason, I eliminated the books with a 700 Lexile level or above. Second, cultural competence is defined as the ability to help students appreciate and celebrate the dynamic aspect of cultures of origin while gaining knowledge of and fluency in at least one other culture (Ladson-Billings, 2014, p. 75). I spent time browsing each of the books to identify whether or not translanguaging was present and made a list of these books (see Table 3 for an example). To be responsive to my students’ interests, I asked them what kinds of books they would like to read and then which kinds of books they would like to read together during our book club. Several students said they enjoy reading novels in Arabic. They also mentioned that they read manga (Demon Slayer by Koyoharu Gotouge), self-help books, stories on social media and especially on Twitter, and science books about the human body. Students showed interest in reading picturebooks7 together during the book club to practice in English before reading them to their children. Table 3: Examples of Translanguaging in Book Options Book Title and Author Example of Translanguaging Linguistic Practices The People Remember The people remember Swahili by Ibi Zoboi That the beat is from the heart 7 The term ‘picturebook’ is used instead of the term ‘picture book’ to signify the interdependence between pictures and text to form “an artistic whole” (Hintz & Tribunella, 2019, p. 192; Nikolajeva & Scott, 2000). 52 Table 3 (cont’d) Book Title and Author Example of Translanguaging Linguistic Practices And out of the heart comes the finest art. KUUMBA. Creativity My Two Border Towns by Every other Saturday, my dad wakes me up Spanish David Bowles early. “Come on, m’ijo,” he says. “Vamos al Otro Lado.” home is not a country to himself in a voice like Arabic by Safia Elhillo honey & i recognize behind the scowling face i’ve always known (p. 204) Third, sociopolitical consciousness is defined as the “ability to take learning beyond the confines of the classroom using school knowledge and skills to identify, analyze, and solve real- world problems” (Ladson-Billings, 2014, p. 75). Paris and Alim (2017) in their loving critique added the importance of “shifting a culture of power” and asked “for what purposes and with what outcomes” do we enact culturally sustaining pedagogies? (p. 5). Therefore, I asked the participants what their learning goals for the book club were before I developed the mini lessons for each meeting (Table 4). Participants were most interested in improving their speaking, 53 reading, and listening in English first, and then their writing and ability to talk about books in English. Table 4: Participant Learning Goals Goal for Book Club Number of votes Improve reading in English 8 Improve writing in English 7 Improve speaking in English 9 Improve listening in English 8 Be able to read to kids/family in English 2 Read for fun in English 6 Read for work in English 3 Be able to talk about books in English 7 To learn about new books in English 5 To make friends 5 Book Tasting and Book Talks On the first day of the book club, the objective was to build a community and to do the “book tasting” (NCTE, 2019) and book talks (Daniels & Steineke, 2004; Daniels, 1994; 2002). Students were invited to attend either online or in person, so I prepared slides with online and hard copy versions of all the materials. I also prepared three bins of books (Figure 2) loosely organized by Lexile levels. For students who attended online, I presented a selection of books that were in the book bins using Google Slides (Figure 3). 54 Figure 2: Book Tasting Bins Figure 3: Sample Book Talk Slides Participants filled out a form listing their top three book choices (Appendix B). I received the MSU Teacher Education Summer Research Fellowship, and some of this funding was used for buying books for this project, making sure each participant received three to four books of their choice. Since so many students elected to read I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott, I bought a copy for everyone. I also bought a copy of Home is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo for all the 55 intermediate level students. I used Amazon to directly send books to participants’ houses if they attended on Zoom and I sent the rest of the books to my house so I could bring them to the in- person meeting. Ultimately, we agreed as a community that we would use I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott and Sydney Smith as an anchor text for mini lessons. The intermediate level group read Catherine’s War by Juliet Billet, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger, illustrated by Claire Fauvel and the beginning level group read My Two Border Towns by David Bowles, illustrated by Erika Meza and The People Remember by Ibi Zoboi, illustrated by Loveis Wise. I noticed that the participants who attended the book talks but were not in person for the book tasting ended up choosing many of the same books; whereas those who either missed the book talks and/or were in person to look through the book bins were more likely to choose unique books. I will discuss this phenomenon in further detail in the findings. Literature Circles Model Literature circles can shift classroom learning from teacher- centered to student-centered learning, thereby meeting students’ actual needs. The literature circle model was developed by Daniels (1994; 2002; 2004) as a strategy in which students choose their own reading material, read and discuss it in small groups, and then respond to it. Extensive empirical research shows that students benefit from participating in literature circles in the following ways: (1) improved reading comprehension and inferential reading, (2) increased enjoyment of and confidence in reading, (3) further developed linguistic awareness, and (4) a space for socio-cognitive development and social dreaming (Certo et al., 2010; Awada et al., 2021; Chen, 2020; Cherry- Paul & Johansen, 2019; Ferdiansyah et al., 2020). After the book tasting event, the weekly book club was organized according to literature circle model (Daniels, 1994; 2002; 2004): (1) a short mini-lesson, (2) writing responses in 56 reading logs, (3) book club discussions led by students and their reading role responses, and (4) students assigned reading homework and reading roles. The reading logs were based on a “book, head, heart” framework developed by Beers and Probst (2017) (Figure 4). Figure 4: Book, Head, Heart Writing Prompt on Google Slides Note. Adapted from Beers and Probst (2017). Taking into account participants’ goals for the book club, one of which was to learn how to talk about books in English, I focused the mini lessons at the beginning of each book club meeting on English vocabulary and discussion around literary devices, developing lesson objectives from the CASAS standards, literary analysis category (Appendix C). Literary objectives are rarely addressed in the adult EMLL classroom, and so I included these standards as part of the (un)patterning of the traditional curriculum designed for adult EMLLs. The mini-lesson objectives addressed topics and vocabulary that supported the participants’ goal of being able to discuss literature in English—such as parts of the book, genres, and some literary elements: character, setting, point of view, and theme. I used Quizlet to teach 27 vocabulary words during the mini-lesson portion of the book club (Appendix D). The interactive Quizlet platform acted as 57 a multilingual word wall that participants could refer to throughout the week and during the book discussions. (Un)Patterning my Researcher Positionality In designing this study, I began by considering my own positionality and its potential impact on the work. I am a doctoral student studying curriculum, instruction, and teacher education with a graduate degree in literacy studies and teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). Formerly, I worked as an English teacher in urban bilingual (Spanish/English) secondary schools in both Honduras and the US Midwest. During the time of this study, I had been a teacher of adult EMLLs at RCSD for two years where this research was conducted. This extended time in the learning community before conducting this study contributed to a rich understanding of the book club (Merriam, 1988). I identify as a white bilingual (English/Spanish) woman with a passion for language learning and literature. I acknowledge that my white bilingualism and the symbolic capital that is afforded by it, might limit my objective reasoning as I consider the effects of adult education in the US and those who experience racialized bi/multilingualism, particularly the super-diverse bi/multilingual learners who participated in the study. It is not enough, however, to acknowledge my positionality without committing to an ongoing anti-racist examination of myself as a researcher, teacher, student, and human. Matías (2016) encourages white individuals to identify “how, not if” racism manifests itself in our lives. So, as I complete this study, I am committed to engaging in anti-racist growth by understanding the “abuse” of whiteness in my life (Matías, 2016) by (un)patterning a family tradition of quilting. My worldview aligns with two of the qualitative dimensions of views about the nature of research: (1) emancipation and 58 transformation and (2) situatedness. My commitment to my worldview is represented by the metaphor of (un)patterned quilt making. Emancipation and Transformation I approach this study from my worldview that “power, and particularly the imbalances of power, are central to understanding social phenomena. A key purpose of research is to emancipate and transform” (Coe, 2021, p. 2). My particular interest lies in teaching literacies in multilingual communities like Gándara (AERA, 2016). She sees a need to do research that would lend itself to teaching the “whole child” [or whole adult] and calls for ways in which research can be accessed and used by practitioners and the public to make needed changes in the education system. When doing work that seeks to emancipate and transform, it is necessary for me to consider my whiteness. I have a particular obligation to consider how my whiteness and unconscious ideas of white supremacy have influenced my own teaching practice and research in the field. Mezirow (1991) argues that reflecting on and transforming oneself is necessary when seeking to create social change, “Adaptation through transformative learning involves transforming the personal model of reality and the frame of reference” (p. 100). To interrogate my whiteness in my work, I ground my research in a raciolinguistic perspective (Rosa & Flores, 2015). More broadly, what this means is that in doing research on language learning in schools, I turn my attention to the listening subject, not the speaking subject. From a raciolinguistic perspective, I seek to interrogate not only the “eyes” of whiteness as Toni Morrison recommends, but also the “mouth” and “ears” (Rosa & Flores, 2015, p. 151). Approaching my work from this worldview is one way I can work toward emancipation and transformation without “fixing” students’ languages from my white point of view. Rather, this perspective 59 allows me to approach language from a communicative approach that values all languages as fully valid and rule governed. Situatedness Secondly, I approach this study from the worldview that “the complexity, level of interactivity, situational specificity and contextual dependence of social phenomena prevent the traditional concept of causation from being useful or appropriate” (Coe, 2021, p. 2). In other words, I believe that our intersectional identities and situatedness cannot be pinned down in a generalized study, and that we all interact with the world differently. Therefore, as a researcher, I seek to find ways that honor the whole student and my whole self. To do this, I draw from fluid approaches to language and research such as translanguaging. Translanguaging considers all of a bi/multilingual student’s languages as one “linguistic repertoire”: translanguaging is an approach to the use of language, bilingualism and the education of bilinguals that considers the language practices of bilinguals not as two autonomous language systems as has been traditionally the cse, but as one linguistic repertoire with features that have been societally constructed as belonging to two separate languages. (García & Wei, 2014, p. 2) Translanguaging is a pedagogy and a philosophy that values the fluidity of human nature, learning and society. Bakhtin (1981) theorizes the importance of fluidity in literature when he discusses the epic versus the novel. He criticizes the epic for its static understanding of human nature and its inevitable separation from real life. Whereas, according to him, the contemporary novel has the potential to mirror, speak back to and be a part of real life. He uses the terms “monoglossia” and “heteroglossia” to describe the ways in which the epic adheres to a rigid, 60 archaic understanding of language while the novel has the potential to play with language, honoring and drawing in its readers. I find Bakhtin’s fluid conceptualization of the novel intriguing and it was an important factor when developing the book club with the students in my class rather than for them. (Un)patterning: A Metaphor for Critical Reflection My grandma was the daughter of immigrants from Finland and Sweden (Northern Europe) who settled in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the early 1900s, which aligns with the history of immigration to the US (Sticht, 1988). She grew up in a bilingual Finnish/English speaking home, but only spoke English with her own children and grandchildren. Therefore, the bilingualism in our family was erased as she and her siblings assimilated into the “American” way of life. She was the only sibling out of 14 to graduate from college, after which she became an elementary teacher. After her funeral, we found piles of muslin in her basement and loads of berries and vegetables in her deep freezer, so I began natural dyeing the muslin with the produce and started making a quilt in her honor. In the process, I began learning a bit of Finnish to create a bilingual dye catalog (Figure 5). 61 Figure 5: Bilingual English/Finnish Dye Catalog Quilting relies on geometry and has a long history of traditional patterns. My goal in creating this quilt from the fabric of my family history is to honor our family and its culture while also addressing the problematic patterns of whiteness that have been and are present in the US. Hence, rather than following a traditional quilt pattern, I designed the quilt in a free hand manner to represent a series of garden plots (Figure 6). Figure 6: Finished top, batting, and backing held together with basting stitch This work was an ongoing project, as I conducted the present study. The point is to metaphorically disrupt the white supremacy that has been deeply entrenched in our family 62 history, the history of the US, and adult education in the US by acknowledging our white identities while simultaneously breaking traditionally white ways of approaching the world. In this study, I refer to this as the (un)patterning of white supremacy. Methodology I orient my approach to research from an ontological position of constructivism that leaves room for many truths, “under constructivism, reality is neither objective nor singular, but multiple realities are constructed by individuals” (Coe et al., 2021, p. 16). I would like to believe that the end goals of my research will result in the beginnings of emancipation and social transformation toward greater equity and inclusion in the world. That said, I do not believe there is one way to get there, and the only way I, as a white woman researcher and practitioner can do that, is by authentically collaborating with local communities, and letting go of some control of my research when it is necessary. Therefore, I take an epistemological position of interpretivism, a constructivist ontology that “does not see direct knowledge as possible; it is accounts and observations of the world that provide indirect indications of phenomena, and thus knowledge is developed through a process of interpretation” (Coe et al., 2021, p. 16). Research that is conducted from an interpretive view “(1) solicits and documents the multiple realities of the researchers and respondents, (2) values and attends to local context and its history, (3) recognizes that knowledge is partial, positioned and incomplete, and (4) values and celebrates subjective that these interpretations are socially constructed and influenced by the researcher’s position” (Magolda, 1994, p. 25). The fluid nature of my chosen epistemology lends itself to methodological assumptions that are “ideographic, dialectical and hermeneutical in nature” (Coe et al., 2021, p. 16). 63 Methods This bounded case study (Stake, 1995) observes and describes a six-week summer book club conducted with adult EMLLs who were enrolled at RCSD during the 2021-2022 school year. It can be categorized as an “instrumental” case study because it focuses on one summer project designed to “get insight into the question” of using transformative curricula in an adult EMLL education program in the school district (Stake, 1995, p. 3). It should be noted that the book club was not initially designed to be studied, but as a pilot program developed out of conversations with my students and their needs during the school year. My goal was to design a summer project that the school district might be able to duplicate in future years. As I began to develop the curriculum for the book club, it became clear that studying this book club would provide stronger empirical evidence to RCSD administration that the program would be worthwhile to duplicate. Therefore, this study can be considered instrumental (Barone, 2011) because its purpose is to look for insight into how adult EMLLs interact with a literacy curriculum that is designed to be liberatory rather than functional. The design is meant to test my theory that it is worthwhile to use asset-based curriculum with adult EMLLs (Stake, 1995). I. Additionally, this study also seeks to be revelatory in that this is the first study of its kind to address the use of translanguaging pedagogy with literature circles in an adult EMLL book club (Barone, 2011). Particularly in the field of adult literacy where the government-mandated purposes are related to Americanization and obtaining English proficiency skills, this study offers a humanizing and culturally responsive approach to learning alongside adult EMLLs as they draw on their existing cultural and linguistic resources and experiences toward their goals. Research Questions. In designing my research questions, I considered my goal of taking a critical stance toward improving the “conditions of learning” and embedding those 64 environmental changes in the design of the curriculum and the study (Barone, 2011). As Stake (1995) suggests, I developed the following research questions for this instrumental case study to explore an “issue”, or to gain insight into the ways a humanizing approach to adult EMLL curriculum might impact learning and identity. 1. How can texts be used to explore language learning for the whole student, beyond the prescribed functional basic-skills curriculum? 2. How do adult EMLLs navigate their own multilingual literacy, identity, and learning while participating in literature circles? Although the purposes of this study are instrumental and revelatory due to the design of the teaching context and (re)patterning of the curriculum, the open-ended research questions allow for ideas and themes to emerge organically. Data Collection Methods The data collection procedures described in this section were developed from the ontological and epistemological assumptions associated with grounded theory, that “data collection, analysis, and theory stand in reciprocal relationship with each other” (Strauss and Corbin, as cited in Waring, 2021, p. 121). During the book club, I collected multiple data sources, including pre- and post- surveys and collaborative interviews with participants, recordings of conversations during the literature circles, multimodal artifacts, and field notes to ensure in-depth understanding (Ashley, 2011). The curriculum I developed was formulated based on the data that was collected each week to create a participant-led space for inquiry at participants’ own paces. Surveys. I used the tailored design method to create and administer the surveys used for gathering information throughout this study. This design “suggests that respondent behavior is 65 motivated by the return that behavior is expected to bring” (Dillman et al. as cited in Duke & Mallette, 2011, p. 411), and since my participants were choosing their own goals and books for the book club, they were aware that their survey responses would influence the entire six-week program. During the book tasting event, I administered a pre-survey that collected participant demographic data and personal goals for participating in the book club (Appendix E). This pre- survey listed multiple goals for the book club that my students during the school year named as reasons they may want to participate in the book club. I used the results of this pre-survey to develop the learning objectives for the entire six weeks, specifically focusing on reading, writing, speaking, listening, practicing talking about books in English, and having fun. I also administered a second survey on the day of the book tasting event to determine which books participants wanted to read together. After browsing through the book bins, I asked participants to rank their top 3 book choices and to list anyone with whom they would like to be in their book club group (Appendix F). I used the results of this survey to identify the reading materials for the summer and to coordinate the book club groups. Since not everyone chose the same books in the first week, I showed the participants the results of the survey in the second week and as a group, they decided which books they would like to read together. As Duke and Mallette (2011) point out, a mixed-mode approach like the one I employed is often appropriate for a tailored design survey, ensuring participant engagement in the process of the study. With these two surveys and follow-up discussions, participants determined not only the goals of the book club, but also which books they read together and with whom they read (Table 5). 66 Table 5: Participant Book Choices Purpose Participant Book Choices Anchor Text for I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott (Author) and Sydney Smith (Illustrator) Mini-Lessons Beginner My Two Border Towns by David Bowles (Author) and Erika Meza Group Text (Illustrator) The People Remember: A Kwanzaa Holiday Book for Kids by Ibi Zoboi (Author) and Loveis Wise (Illustrator) Intermediate Catherine’s War by Julia Billet (Author), Claire Fauvel (Illustrator), Ivanka Group Text Hahnenberger (Translator) The post-survey was administered during our last meeting on week six (Appendix G) to gain an understanding of participants’ insights and reflections after having participated in the book club. The survey asked about which books participants enjoyed reading the most and the least, whether they felt their language skills improved throughout the six weeks, and what they enjoyed the most about the book club. Much like the surveys I administered during the book tasting, I carried out a mixed-mode approach. Not only did each individual participant receive a Google Form copy of this questionnaire, but we also had a collaborative discussion that addressed each of these questions. I found that the mixed-method approach was particularly important for the beginner level students who were more comfortable typing out their responses than communicating them verbally. Recordings and Transcription. Since the book club was offered in two different modalities, over Zoom and in-person, I was able to audio record all meetings using the Zoom 67 application. I chose to exclude video recording for two reasons: (1) several participants requested not to be represented visually due to religious reasons and (2) online participants attended the book club with their cameras off. Immediately following each meeting, I processed the recording and transcribed it using the Otter.ai platform. To ensure accuracy, I read through the automatically generated transcriptions and corrected any mistakes in a timely manner, usually the day of and if not, the week of the book club meeting (Stahl and Hartman, as cited in Duke and Mallette, 2011). To ensure participant confidentiality and anonymity, I replaced participant names with their corresponding pseudonyms throughout the transcriptions. Artifacts. After each book club meeting, I took screenshots and photographs of all artifacts that participants produced such as Jamboard responses, homework, collaborative discussion notes, etc. as measures of accretion or “things people have created” (Glesne, 2006, p. 67). These artifacts were collected to “raise questions for interviews [and the post-survey], support or challenge…data, [deepen] thick description [toward trustworthiness], and generate hunches or hypotheses” (Glesne, 2006 p. 69). I organized these artifacts in folders chronologically with the corresponding transcriptions and field notes. Field Notes. After reviewing the transcriptions each week, I wrote chronological field notes that allowed me to “develop preliminary categories or codes early on” (Glesne, 2006, p. 55). In my field notes, I documented setting, appearance, acts, and events by describing the in- person site, the people, everyday behavior, and talk (Glesne, 2006, p. 68). The field notes I took were descriptive and analytical in nature (Glesne, 2006). It was particularly important to capture descriptive notes of each book club meeting since our meetings were recorded by audio and not video. I focused on describing participant interactions with one another, their children, and with me. 68 Data Analysis Methods In this section, I will describe my transcription method, and the ways in which I used critical discourse analysis (CDA) and critical narrative analysis (CNA) to interpret my data. According to Stake (1995), “There is no particular moment when data analysis begins. Analysis is a matter of giving meaning to first impressions as well as to final compilations,” so throughout the study, I was careful to jot down analytical notes and coded categories and themes that aligned with my observations about institutional discourse and my theoretical framework (p. 71). Transcription. I began by transcribing all data including the book club recordings, WhatsApp text threads, and participant writing responses into parts and stanzas to promote creativity and open-ended analysis (Gee, 2010). I used España and Herrera’s (2020) critical bilingual literacies framework to identify parts, and then named the stanzas according to their topics. I found that organizing the transcription into parts and stanzas, rather than just coding it line by line gave me greater insight into how participants interacted with the lesson plans, scaffolding strategies, and intentional translanguaging moves. With instrumental case studies, the need for categorical data is important for understanding phenomena and relationships within it (Stake, 1995, p. 77). For instance, organizing the transcription into parts helped me to identify when we were (or were not) addressing the framework: (1) self-reflection on language ideologies, (2) ‘unlearning’ of notions of linguistic supremacy, (3) analysis of linguistic practices, literacies, and power, and (4) celebrating EMLLs’ linguistic practices from their perspective. It also made it clear that elements of the four parts were woven throughout the entire six-week duration of the book club. Critical Discourse and Critical Narrative Analysis. Next, I analyzed the transcription through using critical discourse analysis (CDA) which is a part of critical social analysis and 69 looks at the ideological character of discourse. In the case of this present study, I focused on the deficit-based English-only ideological discourses surrounding adult EMLL education. CDA emphasizes the study of and social realities that impede human flourishing and well-being, and researchers look for the structural and often invisible relationships between language and society, and the impact of different forms of social dominance and oppression. Fairclough (2013) proposes the following three dimensions for CDA (1) a focus on the analysis of the textual nature of the discourse, (2) the analysis of the discourse as a discursive practice produced in society, and (3) the analysis of discourse as a social practice, including the study of the ideology and hegemonic structures and practices. CDA addresses social problems, understands that discourse is a form of social action that constitutes society and culture, recognizes power relations as discursive, and highlights the ideological nature of discourse. For example, Awayed-Bishara (2015) analyzes the use of discourse to indicate identity by using discursive devices (indexical pronouns, lexical items, grammatical constructions, rhetorical techniques). CDA is used for multimodal analysis that includes multiple semiotic modalities (symbols, texts, and performance), which I applied when I analyzed multimodal reading responses and WhatsApp text threads. It can also be used for analysis of official discourses, and how they contribute to maintain the status quo and serve specific ideologies, as in this study. In the case of this study, examples of official discourses are drawn from what US presidents have proclaimed about language and the federal definitions and explanations of adult education for EMLLs that are written out in official laws. CDA highlights the power differentials that determine social practices in a classroom context. For example, Cárdenas Curiel & Durán (2020) and Awayed-Bishara (2015) use CDA to analyze dominant narratives and ideologies such as colonial constructions of language and the presentation of identity in course textbook artifacts. 70 Souto-Manning’s (2014) critical narrative analysis merges the narrative tradition with CDA. In this study, I draw on Souto-Manning’s conceptualization of CNA in which conversational narratives are positioned against institutional discourses to understand how people navigate personal and systemic dynamics through language. In this analysis, I juxtapose institutional discourses (English-only ideologies) about what it means to speak English in a multilingual community with the conversational narratives that are personal, built by our class dynamics, and institutional. Limitations of Case Study Design As a white woman researcher, I am committed to examining my own biases as I conduct my research; however, my intersectional identities and experiences in the world may limit my ability to see past own biases, and therefore, might influence the way I approach my research, from the design of the study to the analysis of the data. Merriam (1998) suggests that the length of time in the field is related to credibility, especially when identifying patterns versus anomalies. My breadth of experience teaching English to adult EMLLs and my two years of employment at RCSD bring some credibility to the research, but I should not rely on my own expertise. To address my bias, Stake (1995) suggests “member checking” or that the manuscript be reviewed by the study participants to check for inaccuracies in analysis. After the study concluded, the participants and I stayed in touch on a WhatsApp group we called “Summer Book Club”. I reached out to the participants to see if anyone would be interested in reviewing my analyses, but participants said they were too busy. So, this study relies on thick description rather than participant checking for trustworthiness. Therefore, the findings of this case study have limited generalizability, but could be “analytically generalisable” (Ashley, 2011). One advantage of the approach I took to implement this study is that I was able to work from an emic 71 perspective with a classroom community I was already familiar with. My students and I had already built a classroom community of trust and I am committed to perpetual “reflection” and “reflexivity” to “look outside” my own assumptions that I have developed while working in the community (Coe et al., 2021, p. 86). 72 CHAPTER 4: THE BOOK TASTING This chapter addresses the first research question for this study: How can texts chosen by the learners themselves be used to explore language learning for the whole student, beyond the prescribed curriculum? This chapter focuses on the book tasting event, where participants had the opportunity to preview diverse children’s and adolescent literature and then select their own reading material for the book club. To begin this chapter, I will discuss the participants’ individual book selections and the process through which the learning community identified books to read in literature circles. The second part of this chapter will analyze the influencing factors for why the individual participants made the book selections they did: (1) the modality they attended the book club, (2) connections to linguistic and cultural representation, and (3) possibilities for bonding with children and informal family literacy practices. When Texts are Chosen by Learners Themselves The goal of the book tasting event was to celebrate participants’ linguistic practices from their perspective (España & Herrera, 2020) by providing diverse linguistic and cultural representation in the book choices. Since the book club participants were a super-diverse group, the book choices in the book tasting represented linguistic and socio-cultural experiences from all over the world, not just the experiences of the participants. According to Paris and Alim (2011), “we need pedagogies that go with the flow” (p. 90) and providing student-led book selection was a way to honor this suggestion. To reiterate, culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) (Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014; Paris & Alim, 2014) combines academic success, cultural and linguistic relevance, and sociopolitical consciousness toward social change. Translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014) goes with the linguistic flow and is one way of doing CSP. The book tasting event was designed as a translanguaging strategy to 73 ensure, “the availability and production of multilingual and multimodal texts, including fiction, informational texts and reference resources” (García & Wei, 2014, p. 121). Translanguaging is an asset-based approach to multilingual education that promotes social justice. It is: an approach to the use of language, bi[multi]lingualism and the education of bi[multi]linguals that considers the language practices of bi[multi]linguals not as two autonomous language systems as has been traditionally the case, but as one linguistic repertoire with features that have been societally constructed as belonging to two separate languages. (García & Wei, 2014, p. 2) España and Herrera (2020) assert that translanguaging is a “means for social justice” because it “validates and humanizes bilingual students’ learning processes” (p. 20). As mentioned in the methods and methodology chapter, I intentionally sought out books that were not only culturally relevant, but also linguistically relevant and included translanguaging. Translanguaging disrupts the belief that nation-states were constructed around “named” languages and instead focuses on the people who are enacting their various language practices (Espana & Herrera, p. 21). For this study, it was especially important for me not only to select books that included the “named” languages represented by the super diverse group of participants, but to also find literature that represented multiple ways of communicating, so as not to make any assumptions about my participants and their knowledge, experiences, and literacy practices. Although I hand-picked the books that were represented in the book tasting event, the participants determined which books we would read and discuss together. This student-centered approach aligns with the translanguaging pedagogy goal toward “identity investment and positionality” or it is a strategy “to engage learners” (García & Wei, 2014, p. 121). Participants filled out a form listing their top three book choices (see Table 4 in Methods and Methodology 74 chapter) and they received a physical copy of each of the books they named as well as any book the group agreed to read together. We agreed as a community that we would use I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott and Sydney Smith as an anchor text for mini lessons since so many participants chose it. This picturebook is the story of a boy who stutters in school and when his dad picks him up for the day, he takes him to the water and uses the simile of a river to show the boy how beautiful and nuanced the way he speaks can be. During the book tasting, participants mentioned they were drawn to this book because of the title. For example, during one mini- lesson, students collaboratively responded to the text agreeing, “I understand how difficult it is to struggle speaking” (see Figure 7). Figure 7: Collaborative Book Head Heart Writing Response to I Talk Like a River During this collaborative conversation, I shared that “when I speak Spanish, my second language, I sometimes feel embarrassed.” Our book club community felt personally connected to the idea of thinking about our own multilingual speaking skills and the emotions that are attached to them, which made the title of our chosen anchor text so appealing. Initially, I planned to organize the literature circle groups according to participants’ prioritized book selections. However, since the book club happened during the summer, attendance was inconsistent, so on the third week when everyone had hard copies of their books and we were ready to choose literature circle groups, only a few people attended the book club 75 meeting. Since only a few participants were in attendance, we decided to create temporary literature circle groups that ended up turning into permanent groups due to unpredictable attendance and the short six-week span of the book club. The following excerpt highlights the negotiation between participants in attendance as they chose which books to read together temporarily. Excerpt 1: I change to Catherine's War 1 Lindsay So you're just going to be choosing between these three books. So which ones do you think you would like… 2 Lusy Me, I'm interested to read How to, How We Got to the Moon. 3 Lindsay So a nonfiction book. And then what is your second choice, Lusy? 4 Lusy Catherine’s War. 5 Lindsay Okay. What about you? Jane, do you have your books with you? What did you say? 6 Jane Yeah, I am interested with Home is Not a Country. 7 Lindsay Okay. Do you have a second choice? 8 Jane Second choice is Catherine’s War. 9 Lindsay Okay. Farwa, what are you interested in reading? 10 Farwa Me, it's How We Got to the Moon. Okay. And Home is Not a Country. 11 Lindsay So, I'm not sure how to divide us up since there are only three of us today. 12 Lusy I change to Catherine’s War. 13 Lindsay You want to change from which one? 14 Lusy From Home is Not 76 Initially, Lusy and Farwa, who are sisters, chose the nonfiction text How We Got to the Moon: The People, Technology, and Daring Feats of Science Behind Humanity's Greatest Adventure, as did their brother Adem. However, in the excerpt, Lusy changed her top book choice to match Jane’s second choice (line 12). As the teacher, I made an executive decision, based on the conversation between the three participants in attendance, that the intermediate level group would temporarily read Catherine’s War by Juliet Billet, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger, and illustrated by Claire Fauvel. This graphic novel, translated from French, is the story of a Jewish girl living in Paris at a children’s home during the Nazi occupation. Since the book club attendance was so unpredictable, the intermediate group continued to read Catherine’s War throughout the remaining weeks, even though my original plan was for everyone to read their first choice. That said, I knew that everyone had a hard copy of all the books they had chosen, so even if they did not read their first choice with their group members, they would be able to read it on their own or discuss the books together outside of the book club, perhaps after English classes during the school year. None of the participants from the beginning level group were in attendance on this week, but when Barbara and Mila returned on week four, they agreed on reading My Two Border Towns by David Bowles, illustrated by Erika Meza, an English/Spanish picturebook about a boy who experiences life in the borderlands between Mexico and the United States, and The People Remember by Ibi Zoboi, illustrated by Loveis Wise which is an English/Swahili picturebook that tells the history of Kwanzaa. These two books represented languages spoken by the beginner group, as Barbara speaks Spanish and Mila speaks Swahili. 77 Influencing Factors for Participants’ Book Choices In the following section, I will discuss the influencing factors for students’ book choices as they relate to linguistic practices, literacies, and power (España & Herrera, 2020). First, I will discuss the ways in which participants’ modality of attendance influenced their book choices. Second, I analyze how cultural and linguistic representation in the book choices influenced (or not) participant selections. Third, I consider how participants’ families and children impacted the book choices they made. Online Versus In-Person Attendance and its Influence on Book Selection Considering the ongoing pandemic, I was forced to implement creative pedagogical solutions to accommodate participants who were unable to attend book club in person (Miles, 2021; Kaiper-Marquez, 2020). To accommodate all my students’ modality needs, I offered hybrid attendance options for the participants to engage with the book club over Zoom or in person at the community center in the school. I found that the modality in which participants chose to attend the book tasting, online or in-person, influenced their book choices. The participants who attended the book tasting virtually—Adem, Farwa, Fazine, and Lusy—chose many of the same books. On the day of the book tasting, I presented fourteen books virtually in a book talk (NCTE, 2019), but there were over sixty hard copies of books available for in-person participants to browse through and choose from. So, although the distance learning approach allowed for participants to engage in the book club online, these participants were unable to access the full array of book choices that the in-person participants experienced. The option to participate online was not only an accommodation for participants who were worried about exposure to COVID-19, but it also allowed participants who were unable to transport themselves to the book club to attend. For example, Yemeni siblings Adem, Farwa, and 78 Lusy, chose to attend the book club online because it was more convenient for them as a family. Their extended family was moving to another city during the summer, and for them, it was much more convenient and less time consuming to participate in the book club online. However, Fazina, a 27-year-old Iraqi woman, was unable to attend in-person even though she wanted to, as she communicated to me in a text over WhatsApp (see line 16). Excerpt 2: I can't go to school 16 Fazina I can’t go to school because my husband works and I can’t drive alone. My address is [redacted for privacy]. 17 Lindsay Okay! I’ll send your books to you! Throughout the school year, Fazina had attended my online classes, so she was experienced in and comfortable with participating in English classes virtually. During the school year when her husband was available, he transported her to in-person events such as our field trip to the downtown public library, and she expressed to me that she prefers meeting in person when possible. So, although the hybrid modality of the book club made it possible for Fazina to attend, her transportation barriers limited her book options. Another reason some participants chose to participate virtually was due to lack of childcare. Mila, a 24-year-old mother from Tanzania expressed the difficulties attached to attending a book club over Zoom (see excerpt 3) because she is responsible for her kids when she gets home from work. Excerpt 3: I don't have time 18 Mila Yeah, but reading is good. But for me it's too hard because I don't have, I don't have the time to stay, to sit down and then to take the book to read, to read. Ha ha. Too hard for me because I don't have a time. I go to work at six. I start work at six 79 Excerpt 3 (cont’d) and then I leave like to finish at two to three and then I go home. When the way English, English problem when I go home. I stay with my kids. That's why sometimes I mute every time on the Zoom class. My kids make me too much noise. But if, if this these books, it is because if you have like everybody to read and then we have a test and then all the question, I give you the question but the answer it is on on book. Yeah. It is good. Maybe I can try to read, but if it is not like that, it's hard for me. Because of this, she was initially hesitant to make book choices based on the books I presented during the online book tasting. She notes that her children distract her while in a Zoom class and when she is trying to read a book. She also says that she would prefer to have everyone in the class read the same book, implying that I should make the book selection as the teacher, and then engage in a question-and-answer session using the book as a resource. I noticed that Mila felt more comfortable with the book club model when she received the picturebooks, perhaps because they were much less daunting than the books she thought we might be reading. Unfortunately, I was unable to follow up with Mila about this, so it is a conjecture at best. Conversely, those who were in person to look through the book bins were more likely to choose unique books. For example, Misk came in person to the book club meeting as we were ending our session. She chose a book that no one else chose, a book of short stories about Eid, a Muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan, that her 10-year-old son chose. Aurora, Barbara, and Jane were also at the book tasting in person, which allowed them to thumb through all the book choices, not just the ones I featured in the Zoom meeting. By physically browsing 80 the book bins, participants were able to see the diverse array of linguistic practices and literacies represented in the book choices beyond the ones I highlighted online, as evidenced in the following excerpt. Excerpt 4: You gave us some choice 19 Lindsay Okay, so my first question for you is when I shared the book choices with you on the first day of book club, um what did you think about the books that I brought? Did you think they were good ideas? Did you want a different kind of book? What were your thoughts? 20 Jane I think is a good because you choose some books from the easier step by step, you know, from the easier to to harder, just up to you. You gave us some choice. I think is a good. For example, Jane appreciated the ability to browse through the [loosely] leveled book bins to make her own book selections (line 20). As a result, their book choices deviated from those who were online and in-person alike. Overall, the amount of book choices that were available to the in-person participants was much more robust, in number of books and linguistic and cultural diversity, than for the online participants. Online participants were unable to thumb through the pages of each book and may or may not have gotten a full understanding of each book that was presented in terms of the difficulty of the text, genre (picturebook, graphic novel, poetry, informational text, etc.), and linguistic representation. Even so, the virtual book talks still offered the online participants some choice in their book club selections. If this summer book club were duplicated, I would recommend sending a full list of book choices with hyperlinks to the community WhatsApp 81 book club thread. Doing this would allow participants to not only read about each book on their own time, but it would also give them some context surrounding genre and linguistic representation, as book sellers often provide an excerpt from the book on their websites. Culturally and Linguistically Relevant Books and their Influence on Book Selection In this section I will discuss how cultural and linguistic representation influenced (or not) participant book selections. Children’s and adolescent literature author Walter Dean Myers (2014) wrote about the importance of representation in children’s and adolescent literature, describing that he felt “lifted” when he read James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” because it was the first time he had read a book by a Black man and about Black people like people he knew in real life. He claims to write for Black people who are underrepresented in children’s and adolescent literature, “to make them human in the eyes of readers and, especially, in their own eyes. I need to make them feel as if they are part of America’s dream, that all the rhetoric is meant for them, and that they are wanted in this country” (Myers, 2014). Myers points out how important it is for books to represent various experiences and identities, just as Bishop (1991) suggests the ways in which books can act as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC, 2023) “receives review copies of new books published for children and teens from most of the large U.S. trade book publishers, and a number of mid-size and smaller trade publishers, most in the U.S., some in Canada,” and tracks diversity data about these books. According to the CCBC (2023)8, it received 3,456 children’s and adolescent books in 2022. Of that number, the following were “by” Black, Indigenous and People of Color (at least one creator was BIPOC): 462 Black/African, 31 Arab, 636 Asian, 54 8 Data access on 04/23/2023 by Lindsay McHolme/Michigan State University using the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC), School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Diversity Statistics found at: [https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/books-by-about-poc-fnn/] 82 Indigenous, 371 Latine, and 13 Pacific Islander. The following were “about” BIPOC characters, subjects or topics: 491 Black/African, 31 Arab, 369 Asian, 59 Indigenous, 237 Latine, and 14 Pacific Islander. It should be noted that some books are counted in multiple categories based on their content and/or identities of characters, subjects and creator (e.g., multiracial identities). Based on these numbers, I believe there is still inequality in the availability of published diverse children’s and adolescent literature. Perhaps even more pertinent to the present study, Short (2017) claims that there is, in fact, more global literature or “books set in global cultures outside the United States” being published in the US than ever before, but that “most continue to be published by Americans about global cultures rather than as international books published first in that global culture by insiders” (p. 294). Since there is a dearth of global children’s and adolescent literature to choose from, and even less global literature that is written by “insiders”, it is crucial to seek these texts out and to include them in all educational spaces, especially multilingual classrooms such as the one in this study. Including culturally and linguistically relevant literature in the classroom is not only a culturally responsive pedagogical choice (Ghiso & Campano, 2013; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014; García & Wei, 2014), but also a translanguaging strategy that promotes identity investment and positioning (García & Wei, 2014). So, it is not surprising that participants’ book selections were often aligned with cultural and linguistic representation and relevance to their identities. Adem, Farwa, Lusy, and Fazina, all speakers of the Arabic register, chose the same three books. They expressed a desire to be in the same literature circle group to linguistically support one another, which aligns with the translanguaging strategy to design “peer grouping according to home language, to enable collaborative dialogue and cooperative tasks using translanguaging” (García & Wei, 2014, p. 83 122). However, they only selected one book representing the Arabic register, Home is Not a Country, the story of a Sudanese American girl’s coming of age. Similarly, Barbara and Aurora, a mother and daughter from Honduras selected books that include the Spanish register by way of translanguaging, My Two Border Towns, the story of a boy who crosses the border between Mexico and the US every day and We Are Not From Here, a novel about three teenagers traveling from Guatemala to the US in search of what they perceive to be a better life. Likewise, Jane, a woman from China, chose two unique books from the rest of the participants, both representing the Asian experience including translanguaging in the Korean and Urdu registers, Finding Junie Kim, a coming of age story in which the main character learns from her grandparents’ experiences during the Korean War and Amina’s Song, the coming of age journey of a teenage girl who travels to Pakistan during summer vacation and experiences negativity from her friends back in the US when she tells her story. In alignment with culturally sustaining pedagogy, participants chose books that represented their own linguistic and cultural knowledge as well as books that they saw benefiting (and dare I say transforming) their future in one way or another (Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014; Paris & Alim, 2014). Some of the literature that participants selected, however, did not outwardly “match” their cultural and linguistic identities. For example, Adem, Lusy, Farwa, and Fazina chose an illustrated nonfiction text called How We Got to the Moon: The People, Technology, and Daring Feats of Science Behind Humanity's Greatest Adventure that outlines the ins and outs of the space race to the first landing on the moon. Adem commented that this book would help him practice the vocabulary he needed for his studies in science at the community college. As mentioned before, these four participants chose the same books so that they would be able to read and discuss together, drawing from their similar linguistic repertoires that include Arabic 84 and English. Finally, many of the participants chose I Talk Like a River because they said, as EMLLs, they resonated with the sound of the title. They felt drawn to how the title implies that the embodied experience of talking can be emotional and beautiful, like nature. The fact that participants selected books that represented experiences outside of their cultural and linguistic identities is important for teachers to notice, especially when choosing curriculum and resources for a super-diverse group of students. Teachers cannot make assumptions about students’ cultural and linguistic identities nor their reading interests, but rather, they should offer text options that speak to adult EMLLs’ goals for themselves (Burt et al., 2003; Finnegan, 2022; Mathews- Aydinli, 2008). Family Literacy Practices and their Influence on Book Selection Overall, adult EMLLs’ children play a role in their book choices and their enjoyment of the literature. Paratore et al. (2010) argue that adult EMLLs who are parents not only value a good education for their children, but they also will do what they can to support their children and their learning. Formally, this is called family literacy, or “the response in practice for working with parents to improve the school achievement of children” (Weinstein-Shr, 1994). In addition to supporting school achievement, a secondary goal of formal family literacy programs is to “improve skills, attitudes, values, and behaviors linked to reading” (Nickse, as cited in Weinstein-Shr, 1994, p. 113). The implementation of formal family literacy practices is outside the scope of this study; however, it is clear from the findings around book selection that the parents in this study considered their children’s book preferences as a possibility for enacting informal “intergenerational literacy” practices where “parents or guardians work together with their children in family teams” often reading bi/multilingual books together and engaging in literacy projects that develop literacy skills for the adult and child alike (Quintero, 2008, p. 120). 85 Misk, a 23-year-old mother of three children from Egypt, had been attending my English classes online for about half a year when she signed up for the book club. She came to the first meeting with her three young children just as we were finishing the book tasting. Her oldest son, who was about ten years old, said he was excited to meet me because he had been supporting his mother’s online learning, often interpreting between the Arabic and English registers for her. As she entered the room and saw that I was the only person present, she said, “Hi, Miss Lindsay!” and removed her deep purple niqab and head scarf to reveal a warm smile. This was the first time I was able to see her face because during the school year, she attended online classes with her camera turned off. I explained the book tasting and encouraged the whole family to browse the book bins. Her oldest son found a collection of middle grade short stories called Once Upon an Eid: Stories of Hope and Joy by 15 Muslim Voices edited by S. K. Ali, Aisha Saeed, and Sara Alfageeh, and held it tightly to his chest. He was so excited to find a book of short stories that represents the Muslim holiday of Eid and translanguages with the Arabic register. In the end, Misk chose books for herself that she thought her children would enjoy, including the collection of short stories her son was proudly holding. The next week, Misk brought her kids to the book club in person again. At this meeting, I used the picturebook I Talk Like a River, our anchor text, to model how I wanted the participants to engage in the literature circles. I played a read aloud video for the book club members who were participating online and asked everyone to read along with their hard copy of the book. Misk’s children were sitting quietly and patiently on the perimeter of the room during class. Toward the end of the book, there is a double page spread (Sipe, 1998, p. 69) depicting the boy’s emotional face that folds out into a spread of the boy wading into the river with the text, “My dad says I talk like a river” (see Figure 8). 86 Figure 8: Double Page Spread and Fold Out from I Talk Like a River When Misk opened the full-page spread and fold out, she waved her kids over to get a closer look, and they all enjoyed this page together. It was a beautiful intergenerational literacy event that highlighted the importance of family literacies. Misk told me she had never seen a picturebook that opened in that way and it brought her and her children great joy. Similarly, Aurora’s children were intrigued by Catherine’s War, a graphic novel about the experiences of a young Jewish girl living in Paris during the World War II Nazi occupation. Aurora is a 39-year-old mother of three from Honduras. She has lived in the US with her bilingual (English/Spanish) American husband for about ten years. Aurora and her mother Barbara missed three weeks of book club meetings because they were traveling in Honduras, visiting friends and family. When they returned, Aurora reported about her experience reading the graphic novel (stanza 21). She explains that her children wanted her to finish reading the novel faster so they could read it. Excerpt 5: My kids like [to] read the book 21 Aurora: [It] is my first time reading a picture book. And it was funny because my kids like [to] read the book and say that, you know, “I don't know why you didn't finish this.” “Well, when I'm finished, I can share with you.” Even the kid if they don't started reading. But he liked the book because it's pictures in there and they can see the picture. It was funny. But let me, let me finish the book and I can 87 Excerpt 5 (cont’d) share with you. I can explain to you. And then you know, they see that the, the real pictures in the back and this kind of stuff, but it was, I think I like it. I like see the book and the expression in their faces. No expression but the graphics imagine in my, in my head about what is, you know, look like. She said even her younger children were curious about it because of the illustrations. She also points out that her kids noticed and were interested in the photographs in the back of the book depicting the real people the story was based on. Yang (2008) argues, “by combining image and text, graphic novels bridge the gap between media we watch and media we read. Image and text share narrative responsibility. Because of this, many teachers have found great success using graphic novels with ELL students and struggling readers” (p. 187). Aurora picked up on the value of using this graphic novel as an intergenerational text and positioned herself as a learner and a teacher to her children in this way. Participants’ Responses to their own Text Selections As mentioned in the previous section, participants recognized the linguistic scaffolding value of reading the picturebooks and graphic novels they selected. García and Wei (2014) emphasize the importance of designing a multilingual/multimodal classroom landscape that includes multilingual and multimodal texts such as graphic novels like Catherine’s War. Cárdenas Curiel and Ponzio (2021) argue that “translanguaging includes incorporation of ‘semiotic assemblages,’ referring not just to language, but also other multimodal cultural modes for communication, such as movement, music, and images” (p. 85). In the below excerpt (stanza 88 22), Aurora describes how looking at the pictures in Catherine’s War supported her understanding of the text. Excerpt 6: It's good, these graphic novels for us 22 Aurora: It's good, these graphic novels for us, for especially people with a second language, even people who no speak the language, they can see the picture and they have an a idea, a main idea what happening you know. She goes on to say that even someone who does not read a language variety at all can participate in meaning making when there are pictures. This realization for Aurora was a way for her to celebrate multilingual practices from her own perspective by acknowledging that meaning making was supported across modalities (España & Herrera, 2020). Participants also recognized the linguistic scaffolding value of reading genres like historical fiction and nonfiction that draw on their funds of knowledge (García & Wei, 2014, p. 121). In a superdiverse, multilingual classroom such as this one, funds of knowledge surrounding famous historical events can act to build meaning making together. When reading Catherine’s War together, our collective knowledge of the events surrounding World War II acted as a common language, as all the students had some background knowledge about the Holocaust. In the following excerpt (stanza 23), Aurora discusses Catherine’s War and the fact that she was already familiar with the events of World War II. She says that her funds of knowledge supported her enjoyment of the book, and she specifically mentions that the historical fiction genre is good for language learning for this reason. 89 Excerpt 7: This was real people 23 Aurora: Is good idea for for people who know, you know, as language a second language. Maybe it's good idea to read this kind of book. Especially in a specialized historical book. Because, you know, you feel more familiar with because this happened in the past. And you see oh, this was real people, you know, many many histories about WWII about Jewish people, about people suffering in this world. And yeah, and I feel more you know, more interesting what what, what is going to happen for them. On teaching the Holocaust, Beck (2022) argues that multiple stories, histories, and memories in the adult EMLL classroom can promote learning beyond the prescribed nationalistic curriculum in which, “learners can relate to various accounts of past(s) and position themselves in different ways. Such positioning can be manifold, contradictory, and also conflictual” (p. 166). In this excerpt, Aurora claims that she holds certain knowledge about WWII already, and this knowledge supports her understanding of the text, and compels her to be more invested in the plot. The story of WWII through the photographic lens of a child in France is a new “take” on the history that Aurora and the other participants already knew, “changing the way of addressing one assumed past and taking into account the processes of how knowledge about past(s) is produced, learning can unfold its transformative potential” (Beck, 2022, p. 168). So, this work of historical fiction supported meaning making by drawing on adult EMLLs’ funds of knowledge and it held possibilities for transforming the way participants approached the topic of the Holocaust and WWII. 90 Participant Reflections on Book Tasting Selections In response to the post survey question, “What are your thoughts about the books I brought to the first day of class?” participants shared the ways in which they celebrated their own multilingual assets by interacting with and selecting their own texts (España & Herrera, 2021). Excerpt 8: Learning another language through reading 24 Fazina The books were very beautiful and the stories were wonderful, I loved them 25 Barbara It is fantastic, to have the option of learning another language through reading. 26 Jane I think the teacher’s choice is very good, from easy to difficult. 27 Lusy I enjoy it but it is so easy. 28 Misk It was amazing books Jane appreciated the fact that the books were organized by level (line 26). Fazina and Misk thought the book choices were “beautiful” and “amazing” (lines 24 & 28). Barbara mentioned that having the option of learning another language through reading is “fantastic” (line 25). Overall, participants responded positively to the book tasting event and the book choices. In conclusion, since the texts for this study were chosen by the learners themselves, they can be used to explore language learning for the whole student, beyond the adult EMLL prescribed curriculum. Participants chose their books based on modality, linguistic and cultural representation, and possibilities for family bonding. Participants not only chose books based on how they see themselves in the present, but they chose books that would benefit and transform themselves and their families. Barthes (1975) theory of reading literature suggests that one might read texts of plaisir (pleasure) or texts of jouissance (bliss). Texts of plaisir are texts that reflect 91 our lived experiences, linguistically and culturally; whereas texts of jouissance push us to learn about other experiences and knowledge. Overall, the participants in this study not only chose texts of plaisir but were intentional about choosing texts of jouissance in pursuit of transforming their own lives and their families’ lives. 92 CHAPTER 5: THE MULTILINGUAL LITERATURE CIRCLE In this chapter, I will answer the following question: What new insights, if any, do adult EMLLs gain about their own literacy, identity, and learning while participating in literature circles? The first part of this chapter is organized chronologically according to the flow of the multilingual book club meetings: (1) the vocabulary inquiry mini lesson, (2) the writing responses, (3) the reading role responses, and (4) the book discussions. In this section, the findings reveal that the literature circle model, re-designed with the use of translanguaging pedagogy, allowed possibilities for participants to negotiate their own identities and self- positioning, and to enact their whole selves as learners, drawing from their transnational wisdoms and knowledges. The second part of this chapter discusses adult EMLL linguistic and cultural identity expression and positioning in response to the multilingual book club community. In this final section, the findings reveal that participants experienced the raciolinguistic chronotopes of resistance and anxiety when confronted with English-only ideologies and the “white” listening subject. ‘Unlearning’ of Notions of Linguistic Supremacy with Multilingual Literature Circles This present study sought to (un)pattern the traditional curriculum that is used in adult EMLL classrooms by using the literature circle model (Daniels, 2002) and translanguaging pedagogy (García & Wei, 2014; García et al., 2017) to center participants’ goals, transmigrant/transnational experiences and wisdoms, and cultural and linguistic assets. In the following sections, I will discuss how the incorporation of a “translanguaging corriente” or “flow of students’ dynamic bilingualism that runs through our classrooms and schools” (García et al., 2017, p. 21) influenced adult EMLLs’ linguistic identity formation and positioning. The findings reveal that: (1) direct multilingual/multimodal vocabulary instruction allowed participants to 93 draw on their linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge and to build meaning together, (2) multilingual/multimodal writing responses created a space for participants to explore, share, and celebrate their own identities, experiences, and learning, and (3) student-led dialogue around culturally and linguistically relevant literature has the potential to create a transformative classroom space. Multilingual/Multimodal Vocabulary Instruction and Funds of Knowledge A typical schedule for a one-hour literature circle discussion includes student preparation beforehand, a short mini-lesson, small-group discussions, journal writing, and a whole-group debriefing (Pollack Day et al., 2002, p. 25). For the purposes of this study, the mini lessons were focused on direct multilingual vocabulary instruction to prepare multilingual participants to be able to have a literary conversation in English with one another. In alignment with translanguaging pedagogy, I used the online platform Quizlet as a multilingual “word wall” for participants as a visual during class to differentiate and adapt instruction to students’ home languages as well as to build background knowledge and promote meaning making (García & Wei, 2014, p. 121). Quizlet is a free platform that participants can access inside and outside of class if they want to practice their vocabulary words. In the following example, participants engaged with multilingual vocabulary instruction by drawing on their own funds of knowledge. I began the conversation by sharing the word ‘poetry’ in English alongside translations in Chinese, Swahili, Spanish, and Arabic (see Figure. 9). I also included a picture from the lyrical picturebook The Giving Tree. 94 Figure 9: Quizlet Online Multilingual Word Wall: ‘Poetry’ After sharing the multilingual word wall, I asked participants if they would define poetry in any language and gave an example of a multilingual book of poetry, Home is Not a Country, one that many of them had selected during the book tasting (line 1). Excerpt 9: It can just be about life 1 Lindsay So the next type of book is poetry. In English or in your home language, what is poetry? This book Home is Not a Country [holds book up so everyone can see it] is an example of a book of poetry. What is poetry? 2 Aurora Okay, romantic. 3 Lindsay It could be romantic. 4 Aurora It can just be about life. 5 Lindsay So poetry could be romantic. It could be about life. Usually there are less words in poetry. But the words sound beautiful. And I know that English, probably compared to Arabic or Spanish or Swahili, is not as beautiful in poetry. I've heard the poetry in Arabic is just beautiful, beautiful. Chinese poetry as well, Jane. 6 Jane Yeah, yeah, Irish, but I love the Irish poet, like Irish poetry. Yeah, it's very beautiful. The words is so pretty. The melody is so good, because you know my son, he has been studying piano. Some songs from the, you know, some songs from the Irish. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, it really is a good melody, you know? 95 By prompting participants to consider how they would define poetry in any language, I attempt to “encourage translanguaging in inner speech”, a translanguaging strategy that supports meaning making (García & Wei, 2014, p. 121). Aurora suggested that poetry could be “romantic” or it could “just be about life” (lines 2 & 4). Here, Aurora displays that she has encountered the concept of poetry, perhaps in Spanish, and has a clear understanding of what it is to her, drawing on her funds of knowledge and experiences with poetry. Adult EMLLs not only draw from their linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge, but they are set apart from children because of their more extensive life experiences (Merriam & Bierema, 2014). Jane added to the conversation by saying that since her son has been learning to play the piano, she has noticed that Irish lyrics, or poetry, are “so pretty” (stanza 6). She, too, combines her life experiences as an adult with her funds of knowledge in Chinese to contribute an understanding of poetry as an aesthetic concept. This is an example of a collaborative dialogue designed to build background knowledge in translanguaging pedagogy (García & Wei, 2014). Rather than defining the word ‘poetry’ in English for participants, they developed their own understanding of the concept based on their prior knowledge and experiences, positioning themselves as experts in the concept of ‘poetry’. The next example is similar to the previous one in that I presented the term ‘classic novel’ with translations in Chinese, Swahili, Spanish, and Arabic in an online multilingual word wall format on Quizlet and included an image of the novel cover for The Great Gatsby (see Figure 10). 96 Figure 10: Quizlet Online Multilingual Word Wall: ‘Classic Novel’ In the following excerpt that is a conversation around the term ‘classic novel’, Misk suggested that the British children’s book The Secret Garden might be an example of a classic novel (line 9) and followed up by describing “the classic novel” as depicting a “simple life” and would perhaps include “drama” and “love” (line 13). Here, Misk draws on her funds of knowledge to name a classic novel title, and she is also able to describe some features of classic novels. What is of particular interest is that Misk chose a British novel (and I chose The Great Gatsby, an American novel) as an example. In this case, I missed the opportunity to prompt a discussion that would interrogate the problematic nature of categorizing a novel “a classic,” as the two novels that were named center white characters and experiences. Excerpt 10: Like, simple life or like drama 8 Lindsay Okay. A classic novel. A popular story in the United States. 9 Misk The Secret Garden. 10 Lindsay Yeah, yep. Misk, do you want to repeat what you said? So they can hear you? 11 Misk What? 12 Lindsay Yeah, you can just tell them what you said. 13 Misk Like, like, simple life or like drama, like love, like, like…[trails off] 14 Lindsay Yeah. And I think you're right, The Secret Garden is a good example. 97 Excerpt 10 (cont’d) Really, in any language, you will have your own classic novels. So in English, maybe The Great Gatsby or the older novels that everybody reads at school, right? In your own language, you will have classic novels that are important for your language. Can anyone think of an example of a classic novel in your home language? [Long pause] I think for Spanish speakers, I might say an example would be Cien Años de Soledad. 15 Barbara Gabriel García Márquez 16 Lindsay Yes, that’s an example of a classic novel. I attempted to prompt participants to think of classic novels in their home languages, but there was a long pause. I suggested that the novel Cien Años de Soledad could be considered a classic Spanish language novel, and Barbara, a Spanish speaker from Honduras recognized the title and named the author, “Gabriel García Márquez”. She was familiar with the title and the author, but there was no further conversation surrounding my suggestion. Furthermore, I was unable to come up with novels and authors off the top of my head that might be considered classics in Chinese, Arabic, and Swahili without Googling them. To build background knowledge and promote deeper meaning making, I might have grouped participants according to their home languages to have a collaborative dialogue around classic novels in their home languages and cultures (García & Wei, 2014). Afterall, “mediating background knowledge and vocabulary development [go] hand-in-hand to establish an authentic cultural context” (Cárdenas Curiel & 98 Ponzio, 2021, p. 97). If I would have done this, participants might have collaboratively built a deeper, more culturally and linguistically relevant understanding of what a classic novel is in different parts of the world. One concern that I encountered as the instructor of this multilingual book club was that I relied on Google Translate in order to provide multilingual vocabulary instruction (Figure 11). In a teaching circumstance where we might have had more time for instruction, I would have encouraged participants to find the definitions and practice them in peer groups organized by home language to “enable collaborative dialogue and cooperative tasks using translanguaging” (García & Wei, 2014, p. 122). However, since I aimed to spend only five to ten minutes per meeting on vocabulary instruction in order to make time for book discussions, I translated each vocabulary word into the home languages represented by the participants. Figure 11: Google Slides: Mini-Lesson Vocabulary Review I was hesitant to assume that Google Translate was accurate, so in the fifth week of the book club, I reiterated that I translated each of the vocabulary words into the participants’ home languages and asked if the translations were correct (stanza 17). In the following excerpt, Jane responded that she needed the translation and confirmed that it was correct (line 18). 99 Excerpt 11: I need it. It's beautiful 17 Lindsay So I have the translation of the definition of each of our vocabulary words in each of the languages that everyone speaks in our book club. I don't know if the translation is correct in Chinese. I'm sorry, if it's not, Jane, and maybe you don't need it anyway. 18 Jane I need it. It’s beautiful. In a translanguaging classroom, “the classroom is a democratic space where teachers and students juntos co-create knowledge, challenge traditional hierarchies, and work toward a more just society” (García et al., 2017, p. 50). In Spanish, “juntos” means “together”, and therefore, the juntos stance suggests that meaning making is a collaborative process. By asking for feedback from participants about the accuracy of the Google Translation, I attempted to embody a juntos stance and positioned myself as a co-learner alongside the participants. It was also a way for me to demonstrate that “students’ language practices and cultural understanding encompass those they bring from home and communities, as well as those they take up in schools. These practices and understandings work juntos and enrich each other” (García et al., 2017, p. 50). My aim was to interrogate the notion that English holds linguistic supremacy by modeling for participants that I am not an expert in their home languages and asking them for their expertise in order for us to collaboratively build meaning. Multilingual Writing Responses and Identity In the literature circle model, students write journal entries to “prepare for the discussion” and “to think through issues connected to the book and the group” (Pollack Day et al., 2002, p. 27). Daniels (2002) argues that “across the whole cycle of a literature circle, then, writing and 100 drawing are used to drive—and to record—the meaning constructed and the ideas shared” (p. 22). Traditionally, the writing and drawing done should be open-ended and personal with the goal of creating meaning for discussion (Daniels, 2002). In this study, the potential for multilingual writing is used as a translanguaging strategy to “deepen understanding, develop and extend new knowledge, [and] critical thinking” while participating in literature circles (García & Wei, 2014, p. 120). As Daniels suggests, writing and drawing, or in the case of this study, multilingual writing and multimodal responses are encouraged as part of the translanguaging corriente. For context, García (2018) explains multimodality in this way: “Human beings select an assemblage of signs (linguistic and multimodal) that they believe give the hearers [or readers] the best ‘hints’ of what is their intended meaning. These signs are sometimes linguistic (words, phonology, morphology) and sometimes multimodal (gestures, visuals, clothing, technology), and they often occur as an assemblage of signs” (as cited in Blommaert et al., 2018, p. 12). Furthermore, Cárdenas & Ponzio (2021) “recognize the importance of multimodal features for communication in the classroom and recognize language ‘as being multimodal itself,’' (p. 85). Taking this into account, I sought to encourage participants to respond in transmodal ways. In the following excerpt, I attempted to encourage the participants to respond to what they read in multilingual and transmodal ways by explaining how I might go about doing so in Spanish and English (stanza 19). Excerpt 12: You can do it in any language 19 Lindsay When you do this writing, you can do it in any language, in the language of your choice. And the reason I say that is because sometimes I can think through things for myself in English more easily than I can in my second language, Spanish. So it's easier for me to write in English first, and then think it through and then be 101 Excerpt 12 (cont’d) able to talk in Spanish. But it might be easier for you to write in English and then just talk about it in English. So you make a decision about what's easy. What's better for you? The purpose of this writing would be for you to prepare to speak about the book, okay? Cárdenas Curiel & Ponzio (2021) suggest that in a writing activity such as this one, I could have taken the opportunity to also provide “extensive linguistic and cultural scaffolding” supporting the development of “biliterate writing practices” (p. 98). So, although I encouraged the participants to write their journal responses in multilingual and multimodal ways, for the most part, they chose to write in English only. In the following examples (Figures 12 & 13). Lusy and Farwa responded in English to reading Catherine’s War through the Book, Head, Heart framework (Beers & Probst, 2017). 102 Figure 12: Lusy’s Writing Response to Catherine’s War Figure 13: Farwa’s Writing Response to Catherine’s War As mentioned in the previous chapter, Lusy and Farwa attended the book club online, so they wrote their journal responses on paper, took photos of their writing, and texted the photos to me over WhatsApp. The two participants are siblings, live in the same home, and share the same 103 home language, so I assume that they discussed the literature in Arabic before writing in their journals. Both Lusy and Farwa included some multimodal elements like hearts and stars drawn in pen and pencil to highlight points, and vertical lines used to separate different ideas. Thus, they employed multimodal expressions to clarify meaning in their English writing. The Book, Head, Heart (BHH) framework Beers & Probst (2017) prompted participants to respond in open-ended and personal ways, as Daniels (2002) suggests. The Heart component of BHH asks participants to consider two questions while reading: (1) What did I learn about me? And (2) How will this help me to be better? (Beers & Probst, 2017, p. 63). These prompts allow for adult EMLLs to reflect on their identity in relation to a piece of literature. Both participants reflected on how they related to the main character of the story, Catherine, because she is a photographer. Lusy wrote, “I feel that the character is close to my behavior” (Figure 12). Throughout the book club, I learned that Lusy was a photographer herself and deeply identified with the main character in Catherine’s War, who documented her experiences fleeing the Nazis in France with a Rolleiflex camera that was given to her by a school master. Farwa also identified with the main character’s love for photography. She wrote, “Maybe I love cameras, photoghf [sic] and children’s school like her'' (Figure 13). The graphic novel begins in Paris where a Jewish girl named Rachel lives in a children’s boarding school called the Sèvres Home. To protect Rachel from the Nazis, the teachers at the school change her name to Catherine and help her flee to safety. While at the boarding school, Rachel (Catherine) loves teaching, learning from, and spending time with her friends. So, I assume Farwa resonated with Rachel’s positive experience at this school because she mentioned during book club that she wants to be a teacher and she loves learning. It might also be the case that since Lusy and Farwa have lived in the US 104 for only a few years, as their home country of Yemen has experienced a brutal civil war, that they identify with the fact that Rachel was forced to flee her home for safety. Lusy and Farwa chose to write in English only, while including some multimodal elements, enacting “agentive work of learners as interpreters” (Kress & Selander, 2012, p. 268). By writing about how they resonated with the main character’s hobby of taking photographs, the participants were able to linguistically prepare themselves to discuss their personal responses during the book discussion. In this next section, Lusy and Farwa’s reading role responses build on their journal writing to deepen the ways in which they identified with and positioned themselves in relation to the graphic novel. Reading Roles and the Multilingual Literature Circle Another key component of the literature circle model is the option of choosing reading roles to set a “cognitive purpose for the reading and an interactive one for the group discussion” (Daniels, 2002, p. 99). The reading roles used in this present study were Connector, Questioner, Literary Luminary, Illustrator, Researcher, and Word Wizard (Daniels, 2002, p. 107-113). I adapted the role sheets from Daniels (2002) for my adult EMLL participants by translating each of the sheets into all the home languages represented by the participants in the book club (García & Wei, 2014). Then, I created a Google Jamboard for participants to respond to their reading roles in multilingual and multimodal ways, according to their agentive interpretations. In this first example, Lusy chose the Illustrator role while reading the first ten pages of Catherine’s War. She took photos of the front cover of the book and her favorite page and included them on her slide (Figure 14) also included a quote that was meaningful to her, “I love seeing the world through the viewfinder.” 105 Figure 14: Lusy’s Reading Response Role Jamboard: Illustrator Her responses align with her journal writing from the previous section, but perhaps because of the online platform and the Illustrator role, she chose to use multimodal ways of representing her ideas, in photos and text. She also revealed a part of her personal life and identity by showing her backyard and her pink coffee mug in the frame. In the following excerpt, Lusy explains the choices she made when creating her response. Excerpt 13: Me too. I love seeing the world this way 20 Lusy I chose the front cover because this is the first time I read this book, this book. And I want everyone to see and I didn't know because this is the first time and I choose that page. Page three, because, because there is a sentence she said, “I 106 Excerpt 13 (cont’d) love seeing the world through the viewfinder. And one click stops time.” I like this, these sentences. And this is why I took pictures for this. 21 Lindsay Oh, it's so beautiful. And I I love the way you took the photographs with the nature in the background and your, I think that's coffee or tea. Yeah. What does this quote mean to you? It's a beautiful quote. When you read it. What is it about this quote that makes you feel connected? 22 Lusy Ya I feel connected with this sentence because I think, “me too”. I love seeing the world this way, and I love and I love the second sentence, “one click stops time”. And yeah, it's so nice. (laughs) Yeah. I don't know how to describe it. As part of the book discussion, Lusy described her reasoning behind her reading role response choices as the rest of the book club participants viewed her Jamboard slide. She liked the lines, “I love seeing the world through the viewfinder” and “one click stops time” (stanza 20). She also explained, “me too”, to show how she related to the text (stanza 22). Although Lusy’s main point was that she related to the main character because they have similar hobbies, she was able to express a part of her identity through her photograph that depicted part of her home life. By sharing part of her identity with the other book club participants, she was able to position herself as an expert in this realm. In this second example, Farwa chose the Word Wizard role while reading the first ten pages of Catherine’s War. Initially, Farwa included the expression “ugh” and the words “seagull” and “penguin” along with the page numbers where she found the words. She also included definitions in English of the words on her slide (Figure 15). 107 Figure 15: Farwa’s Reading Response Role Jamboard: Word Wizard In the following excerpt, Farwa explains the choices she made: Excerpt 14: I don't find so much words 23 Farwa I don't find so much words. I find just to say the words. One it's, oh, page five. It's used to express disgusting or horror. Horror. And the word “seagull”. It's a popular name for a gull. 24 Lindsay Yeah, so um let's see if we can find a picture of a seagull so that you can see this animal. Oh, yeah, the bird that you usually find by the ocean or by the sea. When Farwa presented her findings during the book discussion, it opened up a collaborative and multimodal discussion about other words that participants were unfamiliar with and curious about. I added a photo of a seagull and a penguin to her board as she presented her findings to support background knowledge for participants. When I did that, other participants asked about the words rutabaga, azaleas, and the phrase “making out”. This technique of multilingual and 108 multimodal vocabulary inquiry supported participants’ cross-linguistic transfer and metalinguistic awareness (García & Wei, 2014, p. 120). The Book Discussion Paolo Freire (2018) encourages the oppressed to turn on their oppression by reflecting and acting upon the world in order to transform it. He says, “functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by the means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (Freire, 2018, p. 51). Similarly, Dr. Ernest Morrell pushes Freire’s idea further to discuss how important it is for learners to understand relationships between power and domination that underlie and inform texts. He argues the importance of, “the ability not only to read and write, but also to assess texts in order to understand the relationships between power and domination that underlie and inform those texts” (Morrell, 2002, p. 73). This is something that adult learners can do if they are given the opportunity. The following book discussion section demonstrates how adult EMLLs engage in critical dialogue when participating in a multilingual literature circle book discussion. The book discussions for this present study were preceded by journal writing and sharing reading response role Jamboards, so participants were primed for a deeper, open-ended discussion. To support participants’ meaning making as they discussed the book together, I took notes in real time on a Google Slide while sharing my screen so everyone could see it (Figure 16). By doing this, participants were able to build background knowledge and participate in the collaborative dialogue through multilingual/multimodal listening and visual resources (García & Wei, 2014, p. 120). 109 Figure 16: Collaborative Notes during a Book Discussion The collaborative notes in Figure 16 represent a fuller conversation between participants Jane and Aurora in which they reflect on power, domination, and their own identities. During the conversation, Jane mentioned that there was a sentence that gave her “deep express”: the main character saying, “I fear losing myself” (stanza 24). The two participants discussed their personal connections to the situation Catherine, the main character, was in and the emotions they would feel if their children had experienced a similar thing (stanza 25). This example shows how meaningful texts promote dialogue between adult EMLLs with the potential of social transformation. Gutiérrez (2008) suggests that the participants created a “third space” or a “transformative space where the potential for an expanded form of learning and the development of new knowledge are heightened” (p. 152). The creation of this third space allowed for Jane and Aurora to lead a critical discussion that drew on their own experiences, emotions, and empathetic responses to the story. García & Wei (2014) argue that “by exposing alternative histories, representations and knowledge, translanguaging has the potential to crack the ‘standard 110 language’ bubble in education that continues to ostracize many bilingual students, and most especially immigrants, indigenous peoples and other minoritized students” (p. 115). So even though Jane and Aurora did not use Chinese and Spanish, their home languages, in this discussion, they shared their knowledge, outside of the confines of academic expectations, to build meaning together. Excerpt 15: There is a sentence that give me deep express 24 Jane Yeah, the children in the hard time. Is hard, so I have the desire to read more pages. I read the 31 page, so you know there is a sentence that give me deep express on page 31 because you know, that some kids have to change their name. They needed to got the new name so that Catherine, here, here (shows the illustrations to everyone). Here [s]he said okay, “I fear losing myself.” 25 Aurora I think for the kid[s], [it] was horrible things for them, you know. I can't imagine my kid without me, play with other people hiding you know, and even the food they like, they miss everything. I do just just thinking my kid how horrible it was for this little kid. Basically these families you know separate from the people who you love. Oh, it was horrible. Further into their conversation, Jane and Aurora address the idea of social transformation more deeply. Jane begins by acknowledging how powerful she thinks it was that the main character was able to document her journey with the Rolleiflex camera that was given to her by a school administrator named Penguin. 111 Excerpt 16: I feel empathy for them 26 Jane When the over, when the war is over because they'll know that, “wow the picture that Catherine have is…” Penguin the leader of this is a school leader, so I want to cry (says this with great emotion, raises voice and voice gets higher). You can take the pictures if you keep the camera. Then when the war is over, you can show the pictures too. 27 Aurora But I think I feel too empathy. I feel empathy for them because they help them. If you don't, if you don't see somebody or maybe you see some men in the store hit the other woman, you at least do something, call the police and say look, this is a man beating a woman and this is like empathy. And it's like I saw a movie like that too. I see that the [inaudible] and is good for empathy for things and they have empathy for the kid to help the kid in hiding them and protect them because they give you the keys to the German, they will kill the kid. They will kill the Jewish children. And how is the way they help them and this horrible time and they became a heroes because they help the children. She sees this gift of a camera to speak to the world after the war, to tell the truth of what Catherine had experienced hiding from the Nazis (stanza 26). Aurora adds that she feels “empathy” for the characters in the story and shares that the school leaders were heroes for protecting these children (stanza 27). In this conversation, both participants expressed their emotions of empathy, distress, and inspiration to transform the world through the tone of their voices as well as through their words. Their discussion is one of solidarity and speaks to Freire’s (2018) call for us to reflect on the world, and then take action to transform it. 112 Negotiating Identity in a Multilingual Book Club as a Third Space García and Wei (2014) argue that “translanguaging is [...] a transformative pedagogy capable of calling forth bilingual subjectivities and sustaining bilingual performances that go beyond one or the other binary logic of two autonomous languages” (p. 92-93). By implementing translanguaging pedagogy, my aim was to (un)pattern the traditional adult EMLL curriculum away from an English-only focus to be linguistically and culturally inclusive and transformative. The idea was to create a third space (Gutierrez, 2008) where students “reconceive who they are and what they might be able to accomplish academically and beyond” through (1) “the ideas and practices of a shared humanity” (2) “a profound obligation to others” (3)” boundary crossing” and (4) “intercultural exchange in which difference is celebrated without being romanticized” (p. 148). In this section, I will discuss how participants responded to this third space by negotiating and positioning their identities in relation to pervasive English-only ideologies in society and the adult education classroom. I begin by describing the concept of the white gaze. In response to being asked why she does not write about white people or from the white perspective, Toni Morrison said on the Charlie Rose show, “And so our lives have no meaning and no depth without the white gaze. And I have spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.” Morrison resists the pressure to write from the white perspective or about white people, and reaffirms that it is not only valid, but important and life giving to write from and about the Black experience and perspective. This idea of the white gaze is the foundation for the raciolinguistic perspective, which applies the same logic to white listening and speaking practices. 113 According to Flores and Rosa (2015), a raciolinguistic perspective extends the white gaze to the ears and eyes of white supremacy. It scrutinizes the white speaking subject who emphasizes language practices that uphold whiteness, like Standard American English and English monolingualism. It also examines the white listening subject, who hears and interprets language practices of language-minoritized populations, like transmigrant multilingualism, as needing policing and fixing. In a nutshell, the raciolinguistic perspective analyzes the way the white listening subject perceives language by racializing it, marking it as “abnormal” or “deviant” and therefore, not acceptable. Since these racialized language practices are perceived as incorrect, they need policing or correcting from the white listening subject’s position, despite communicative effectiveness. The effects of this type of ideological raciolinguistic policing (Flores et al., 2018) are apparent in the ways adult EMLLs view their own language practices and learning, even when they develop a book club collaboratively with a learning community. Adult EMLLs regularly negotiate their linguistic identities in response to deficit ideologies in society, including the language used to define ‘adult literacy’ in the US, “an individual’s ability to read, write, and speak in English, compute, and solve problems, at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual, and in society” (AEFLA, 2014). This definition privileges English literacy, therefore infusing the objectives of federally funded adult literacy programs, curricula, and assessments designed for EMLLs with baked-in English-only ideologies. The following section will analyze how adult EMLLs negotiate their identities and position themselves within translanguaging literature circles through the lens of raciolinguistic chronotopes. The raciolinguistic chronotope is a way of thinking about how the raciolinguistic 114 perspective impacts a person’s identity. First, the concept of the chronotope comes from ‘chronos’, which means time and ‘topos’, which means space. Flores et al. (2018) propose “raciolinguistic chronotopes that co-construct race and language in ways that produce particular relationships between the past, present, and future, as a point of entry for understanding the formation of this institutional listening subject position” (p. 16). So, as I consider raciolinguistic chronotopes, the time and space in which this study was conducted¾during a pandemic, online, in the US, within a federally funded adult education program¾is considered alongside participants’ past, present, and future formations of personhood. Resistance to Monolingual English-Only Ideologies In this study, the raciolinguistic chronotope of resistance is a response to the white listening subject that promotes English-only ideologies in society and the adult education system. It is a way that participants positioned themselves as experts in their languages and cultures and upheld their identities despite the pressures to conform to the white listening subject and its conception of Standard American English as the “correct” way of speaking. Flores et al. (2018) discuss the raciolinguistic chronotope of resistance as it “positions Spanish as an integral component of the past, present and future of the Latinx community” (p. 16). This study extends Flores et al.’s (2018) chronotope of resistance to consider how institutional discourses position multilingualism as an integral component of the past, present, and future of the transnational diaspora. The following examples demonstrate how participants resist English-only monolingual ideologies by enacting their transnational and multilingual identities. One example of the raciolinguistic chronotope of resistance enacted in this study was JennySue’s response to a WhatsApp text thread I put together at the beginning of the book club. In the following excerpt, Jennysue, a 53-year-old Colombian woman, responded to my 115 message, not only in Spanish, but also using emojis (or multimodal resources) to convey meaning. Excerpt 17: !!!Hola, pudiste ordenar tus libros 27 Lindsay Hello! This is a WhatsApp group for our summer book club! I will share any reminders or links here. 28 Jennysue !!!Hola Aurora, pudiste ordenar tus libros? No me reconoce el correo. No he podido hacerlo. 29 Jane Hi Miss Lindsay, hi everyone 30 Lindsay Hello! 31 Jane How are you doing today 32 Lusy Hey everyone 33 Jane " 34 Mila Wow She addresses Aurora in Spanish, since they knew each other from the school year, asking, “!!!Hola Aurora, pudiste ordenar tus libros? No me reconoce el correo. No he podido hacerlo. [Hello Aurora, were you able to order the books? It doesn’t recognize my email. I could not do it]” (line 28). Jane also chose to use an emoji of a hand wave to communicate hello to the book club participants (line 33). Jennysue and Jane were agentive in their choices to resist English-only monolingual ideologies and sustain their own linguistic practices (from their past) in our book thread, drawing from their entire linguistic repertoires to create meaning among the community. Their intention might not have been to “resist” but in the simple act of using their most comfortable linguistic resources, they enacted resistance to English-only ideologies and 116 helped to foster a present and future space of fluid multilingualism within our superdiverse community. España and Herrera (2020) emphasize the importance of building a strong, asset-based community within the classroom by getting to know students’ “journeys” that shape their reality (p. 4). In this example, Aurora shares her journey by telling the book club participants about her summer vacation in Honduras, her home country, explaining that she did not have a reliable internet connection where she was staying in Trujillo, a town located on the northern Caribbean coast (stanza 36). Excerpt 18: Here in Trujillo there is no good connection 36 Aurora But I just say sorry because it's no good connection in Trujillo. Do you know Trujillo? Here in Trujillo there is no good connection. And while I am there helping [son’s name] to you know, to watch out for motorcycles. Yeah. It's a different compare here driving. But compare there just crazy just. Oh, man. Just what anywhere. People call me. I just helping my husband too. But how are you everyone? How are you Miss Lindsay? She begins by asking me if I know Trujillo, as she is aware that I lived in Honduras for several years. By asking this, she attempts to make a personal connection with me, as we had discussed extensively how beautiful Trujillo and the Caribbean coast are. She also explains that she was very busy while she was on vacation watching her children, visiting with friends, and helping her husband. She specifically points out the difference between driving in the US and in Honduras and claims that driving is “crazy” there compared to driving in the US. By sharing her “journey”, Aurora enacts the raciolinguistic chronotope of resistance. She shows pride in Honduras and in 117 her transnational experiences, which resists the English-only ideologies that promote one way of being American. Like Jennysue and Jane, resistance might not have been Aurora’s intention, but by sharing a piece of her cultural and linguistic past and present, she resists English-only ideologies of the white listening subject and contributes to a learning environment that envisions multilingual and transnational identities as the future of its participants. Anxiety about Monolingual-English Only Ideologies The raciolinguistic chronotope of anxiety is also a response to the white listening subject which promotes English-only and Americanization ideologies that are persistent in society and the adult education system. It is a way that participants formulated their identities, feeling a sense of rejection, like an outsider, in response to the ideals of the white listening subject’s English- only and native speakerism ideologies (Holliday, 2015). On a Vocal Fries Podcast episode (Gillon & Figueroa, 2019) addressing the “word gap”, Nelson Flores argued, “language practices of racialized communities, of low-income communities, have always been framed through a deficit lens.” This deficit discourse becomes ideological when “social analysis plausibly shows a relation between their meanings (ways of representing) and social relations of power” (Fairclough, 2013, p. 79). For example, as mentioned in the historical background for this dissertation, to promote American English-only ideologies during the first World War, President Roosevelt said, “The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else” (Ullman, 2010, p. 6). More recently, President Trump said, "This is a country where we speak English. It's English. You have to speak English!" (Díez, 2019). In these two utterances, both US presidents, leaders of arguably one of the most powerful countries in the world, promote ideologies that frame immigrants and multilingual assets through a deficit lens. 118 The raciolinguistic chronotope of anxiety “connects the language practices of racialized students with linguistic models of personhood that frame their language practices as inherently deficient and in need of raciolinguistic policing” (Flores, et al., 2018, p. 23). Applied to the Latinx community, it “positions Spanish as the past and English as the future” (Flores et al., 2018, p. 16). For purposes of this study, it positions adult EMLLs’ diverse home languages as the past and English as the future. “This disconnect between the past and the future leads to anxiety in the present with efforts to eradicate Spanish [home languages] often coupled with efforts to impose Standardized American English” (Flores et al., 2018, p. 16). This anxiety causes what Anzaldúa (1987) calls “un choque, a cultural collision” (p. 100). Anzaldúa (1987) wrote about living in the “borderlands” as a way to discuss her experiences living “in-between” nations, languages, and cultures, and asserting that, “like others having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision” (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 100). In the following excerpt, Mila experiences un choque because of the way I had designed the book club from my own cultural assumptions about how student-centered book club meetings should flow. Mila is a 24-year-old woman from Tanzania who speaks a Swahili register and has young children. In the following excerpt, she expressed her anxiety about participating in the book club, not only about whether she would have time to read an entire book in English, but how I, the teacher, might “like” or “not like” her based on the ways she engaged with the book club (stanza 37). 119 Excerpt 19: You are American and then me, I am African 37 Mila Because I don't have time to read the book. I have too much book at home. But the time to sit down and to read the book, it's too hard for me. You will know I am a married woman. And then I live with all the family now, and it's so different because you are American and then me, I am African. We have different culture. You will not like me every time I stay with my kids. Every time I see oh, no, no food the other day. Let me cook. Let me do this. Let me clean, let me do this. She asserted that she does have books and enjoys reading, but that she does not have time to read, partly because she is busy with her family. She makes it clear that her life is different from mine, particularly because of our nationalities, and therefore, I might have certain expectations for her that she feels she cannot achieve. Even though I, as the teacher, did not require students to participate in the book club in particular ways, Mila still felt anxiety about how she thought I expected her to participate. My white gaze and listening subject position caused her to feel like she needed to participate in the book club in an “American” way, however that might be perceived. As an adult learner, she makes it very clear that her past and present have been filled with books and that she identifies as someone who enjoys learning, but that the pressures of engaging in a class like an “American” limit her ability to be herself in a class. In my field notes, I reflected on how I should examine myself as a white listening subject and consider how I could be even more inclusive of transmigrant experiences in terms of classroom design around culture, family responsibilities, and access. This was a moment when I turned the spotlight on myself as a white listening subject and considered how I might have developed the book club differently and more intentionally from the perspective of my participants. 120 Farwa, on the other hand, shared some of her anxieties as a reflection after the book club had ended. Farwa is an 18-year-old woman from Yemen who speaks Arabic. Farwa wrote in the post-survey, “I can speak the language and get used to it without any fear with [im]patient people,” about her experience in the book club. She felt that the translanguaging design of the book club made it a safe space for her to practice speaking English without “fear with impatient people”. Here, she alludes to “impatient people” meaning the monolingual English-speaking people who judge and police her language practices on a regular basis. In other words, she fears the white listening subject, or the dynamic created when mainstream English speakers in the US, who are often monolingual, become impatient and judgmental of the multilingual speaking subject. She imagines herself in the future speaking English in public, but she in the present, she feels that her English causes monolingual English speakers to be impatient with her. In the book club, she felt safe from the anxiety of being judged because she was surrounded by and meaning making with multilingual colleagues. Participant Reflections on Literacy, Language, and Identity After the book club meetings were over, I sent out a post-survey to offer participants the opportunity to reflect on their own linguistic practices and to share suggestions for future book clubs. I asked: (1) In what ways did you use all your languages for the book club? (2) How did you feel about using all of your languages? and (3) What did you learn about yourself during book club? The participants responded in the following ways: 121 Excerpt 20: Without any fear with [im]patient people 38 Aurora That I can learn new words, and move the imaginatión with the message of reading. 39 Farwa A feeling of familiarity and learning something new, and it was very strange in the different meanings of languages. I can speak the language and get used to it without any fear with [im]patient people 40 Jane I feel like my English is improving during the book club’s learning. I learned vocabularies, idioms and sentences building. 41 Lusy I used it in translation. I feel lucky that I can translate the story into more than one language. I discovered that I could focus on deep sentences. 42 Misk A sense of understanding, containment and education in all ways. I can read a book in English. It is clear from participants’ post-survey responses that they self-reflected on their own language ideologies, developing confidence in their reading, speaking, and vocabulary in the English register. Misk learned that she can read a book in English, which could imply that she did not believe she could do so before the book club (line 42). She had been attending my online English classes during the school year and reading short texts from the prescribed textbooks, but we never read a novel or a short story together during the school year. Misk’s realization that she can read a book in English inspires me to incorporate literature into the curriculum taught during the school year. Aurora, Jane, and Lusy said their vocabulary expanded and they developed a deeper understanding of texts (lines 38, 40, and 41). Lusy reflected that she used translation to make meaning and noted that she felt “lucky” to be able to read across named languages (line 41). Aurora said she learned to use her imagination while reading texts in the English register 122 (line 38). Farwa, Jane, and Misk emphasized that they learned something new, and they felt their English skills improved (lines 39, 40, and 42). Farwa also mentioned that it was “strange” to see and hear so many languages, referring to the multilingual slides that were used during the mini lessons at the beginning of each book club session and the translanguaging within the texts we read together as a class (line 39). Overall, from the participants’ perspective, the book club supported their confidence in their own English literacy skills. In conclusion, the findings of this study show that when given the opportunity, adult EMLLs connect their language practices to their transnational wisdoms, emotions, and identities, opening possibilities for transformational learning. Participants enacted agentive responses to the text utilizing multimodal and multilingual ways of communicating with one another. They also showed pride in their multilingual and transnational identities, both resisting and internalizing English-only language ideologies in the institutional discourses that shape adult education for EMLLs in the US. 123 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION When I consider an ideal world for EMLLs and educators in adult educational spaces, the word “belonging” comes to mind. What is belonging? Imagine a scenario the celebrated Black author Nicki Giovanni (2009) poses in her poem “Quilting the Black-eyed Pea” in which she says if humans were to go to Mars, the trip “can only be understood by Black Americans” (p. 9). She explains that on the slave ships, enslaved peoples at first were able to imagine home, “they could look out and see signs of Home / they could still smell the sweetness in the air / they could see the clouds floating above the land they loved” (p. 10). As the ship sailed farther out into the sea, surrounded by water and sky, they were faced with questions of belonging, “Do they continue forward with a resolve to see / this thing through or do they embrace the waters / and find another world?” (p. 10-11). In other words, they face a catch-22: do they stay on the ship and remain enslaved, abused, and oppressed or try their luck jumping into the shark infested waters? As if she were discussing Gutierrez’s (2008) third space, Giovanni imagines Mars as a place where humans, if we were to travel to Mars, might have the chance to critically reconsider who we are, “We’re going to Mars because it gives us a reason to change” (p. 8). She recommends, if humans are to go to Mars, that NASA ask Black Americans how they found hope and belonging in the face of bondage and dehumanization, “How were you able to decide you were human even when everything / said you were not…How did you find the comfort in the face / of the improbable to make the world you came to your world…?” (p. 10). In these lines, she acknowledges the “critical hope” that enslaved peoples and Black Americans have enacted over time, using their material resources, and living in solidarity to seek justice in an unjust world (Duncan-Andrade, 2009). 124 A study like the present one, where the goal really is to go to Mars (a third space) to transform the education system for adult EMLLs, would benefit from listening to Black Americans as well. In the following stanza, Giovanni generously gives us the road map: And we will tell them what to do: To successfully go to Mars and back you will need a song…take some Billie Holiday for the sad days and some Charlie Parker for the happy ones but always keep at least one good Spiritual for comfort… You will need a slice or two of meatloaf and if you can manage it some fried chicken in a shoebox with a nice moist lemon pound cake…a bottle of beer because no one should go that far without a beer and maybe a six-pack so that if there is life on Mars you can share…Popcorn for the celebration when you land while you wait on your land legs to kick in…and as you climb down the ladder from your spaceship to the Martian surface… look to your left…and there you’ll see a smiling community quilting a black-eyed pea…watching you descend (p. 10-11). If traveling to Mars (or a third space), Giovanni recommends traveling with cultural items such as music, food, and religion that not only will bring happiness and comfort, but can be shared with the Martians, perhaps in an “intercultural exchange” (Gutierrez, 2008, p. 148). In my interpretation, Giovanni demonstrates the healing power of maintaining and celebrating culture and identity. Adult educators can foster “belonging” by creating a safe space for open dialogue and community building. 125 What is perhaps most pertinent to this study, though, is that in Giovanni’s imagination, the Martians receive the newcomers (humans) as a “smiling community quilting a black-eyed pea.” Black Americans traditionally eat black-eyed peas9 on New Year’s Eve as a symbol of luck and prosperity. To quilt a black-eyed pea, then, is seemingly a symbol of inclusion, belonging, and even more so, hope for the future. A quilt is a keepsake that provides comfort, and carries with it history, heritage, and care. For example, in this study, the quilt I created is made from muslin and produce from my late grandmother’s home¾artifacts from my heritage. A quilt is a memento, a keepsake, a source of comfort and bringing together. In the same way, my hope is that this study begins to unravel the old harmful patterns of white supremacy in adult education and welcomes all EMLLs to a “smiling community quilting” parts of who they are, their culture, their identity, for example “a. black-eyed pea” into the fabric of the learning space. If the pattern makers of adult education are the EMLLs themselves, then the possibilities for creating something new that reflects and honors transmigrant experiences and identities, then our quilt will bring growth and belonging. In this chapter, I will revisit my research questions and suggest implications for the education of adult EMLLs. To do this, I will discuss the possibilities for educators to foster informal family literacy practices by incorporating children’s and adolescent literature in the adult EMLL classroom. After, I will address the institutional discourses that influence adult EMLLs’ constructed identities and offer suggestions for how policy might change to influence a more inclusive curricula and assessment environment for adult EMLLs. Then, I will discuss the benefits of transformative pedagogies and provide suggestions for educators who would like to 9 “West African spiritual practices often revolved around deities who had favorite foods like black-eyed peas, which are native to the continent. The forced migration of enslaved Africans to North America and their interactions with European colonists led to a convergence of customs” (Stewart, 2021). 126 incorporate community partnerships, critical literacy practices, and student-led design. Finally, I follow with pedagogical implications for adult EMLL teaching and teacher education, considerations for policy, and future directions for research. Revisiting Findings and Implications for Educators I explored the following research questions in this study: (1) How can texts chosen by the learners themselves be used to explore language learning for the whole student, beyond the prescribed functional basic-skills curriculum? And (2) How do adult EMLLs navigate their own multilingual literacy, identity, and learning while participating in literature circles? Guided by this study’s research questions, I collected data from a summer book club that adult EMLL students in my evening classes at the River City School District requested. The book club was designed around the literature circles model that incorporated translanguaging pedagogy, opening transformative possibilities. In this section, I will frame the findings around a Critical Multilingual Literacies (CML) framework to discuss implications and provide recommendations for adult education. Adult EMLLs’ Book Choices The book tasting for this present study was designed to present “content (curriculum, texts) and methods from the perspective of the bi/multilingual learner” (España & Herrera, 2020, p. 17). To do this, the book tasting event was designed to be inclusive of online and in-person participation, as the participants expressed interest in and need for both modalities. Some participants had transportation barriers, others were concerned about COVID-19, and since the book club was held during the summer, others had hectic schedules that required them to participate online—traveling to visit family abroad, driving children to baseball games, etc. Therefore, providing modality options for participants is one method educators can use to plan 127 from the perspective of the adult EMLL. For online participants, teachers can prepare book talk (NCTE, 2019) slides that include a short synopsis of the book and an image of the book cover. To give the online participants a better understanding of each book that is presented in the book talk, the teacher can hold and flip through the hard copy of each book in view of the camera. After all books are presented online, the participants can be given the same book choice survey via an online platform that those who participated in person filled out. For participants who chose to participate in-person, the educator can check out hard copies of each of the books from the local library. A fair amount of research and planning time is required, as not all books are available immediately because they might be checked out. Since this study included books that “do” translanguaging, some of these multilingual books took longer to obtain, so educators should plan ahead in order for requests through an interlibrary loan system to have time to arrive before the book tasting. Just as in the online modality, the books should be arranged in an accessible way, by genre, theme, aesthetically, or by reading level (NCTE, 2019) for adult EMLLs to easily browse. Next, the purpose of checking out a wide variety of culturally and linguistically inclusive books for the book tasting is to “celebrate multilingual linguistic practices” (España & Herrera, 2020, p. 17). In a super-diverse, multilingual setting like the one in the present study, it is important for educators to curate a diverse set of books for the book tasting that considers intersectionality, multilingual linguistic repertoires, and transnational and indigenous wisdoms (Ghiso & Campano, 2013; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014; García & Wei, 2014; Condelli & Spruck Wrigley, 2001). To be inclusive of linguistic diversity, adult educators should consider translanguaging pedagogy while selecting books in preparation for the book tasting event. In designing classroom resources for translanguaging, García and Wei (2014) 128 recommend “the availability and production of multilingual and multimodal texts, including fiction, informational texts, and reference resources” (p. 121). In a super-diverse community of learners, it is important for the book tasting to not only “match” the teacher’s perceptions of the linguistic and cultural experiences of the participants, but also to provide book options that represent various intersectional identities and experiences, taking into account race, class, gender, ability, religion, etc. Finally, beginning by asking adult EMLLs to share their learning goals (Burt et al., 2003) is important for analyzing “linguistic practices, literacies, and power” (España & Herrera, 2020, p. 17). In my experience as an educator of adult EMLLs, a common language learning goal is to be able to support their children in school, engage with their teachers, and provide homework and general literacy support at home. The findings in this study show that adult EMLLs’ book choices are influenced by their children. The use of children’s and adolescent literature is one way to informally support the family literacy connection for adult EMLLs. Therefore, picturebooks can be used as a “connection to the real world” as adult learners navigate supporting their children’s schooling (Condelli & Spruck Wrigley, 2001). Perhaps more importantly, though, the adult EMLL’s engagement with children’s literature at home offers a space for practicing home literacies and reclaiming the power of their linguistic practices with their families. This connection also suggests the potential benefits of intergenerational bilingual classes in schools and communities (Housel, 2021). Identity and Institutional Discourse in Adult EMLL Education España and Herrera (2020) call for educators to “practice a pedagogy that focuses on all participants’ “unlearning” the notions of linguistic supremacy that uphold Eurocentric notions/racialized language hierarchies” (p. 17). To highlight the demands of linguistic 129 supremacy that is baked into assimilationist adult education programs for EMLLs, Beck and Gelardi (2022) describe the institutional pressures of learning German in a German language program designed for adult transmigrant learners: Learning the language of the so-called ‘receiving country,’ entering the labor market, and adopting culture and values are the central objectives; the non-or not- yet-integrated migrants should or must achieve them through education. The impartment of ‘basic skills’ should lead to a successful ‘integration,’ especially in the area of language, since assimilation is explicitly expected and legally fixed. (p. 33) To resist oppressive linguistic ideologies and discourses, it is important for educators of EMLLs to collaboratively create a safe space for critical dialogue among EMLLs. After participating in the present study, participants acknowledged they developed confidence in their reading, speaking, and vocabulary in the English register, and they attributed this to the low anxiety environment created by being surrounded by EMLLs with diverse multilingual and cultural resources. Adult educators of EMLLs can cultivate multilingual, low-anxiety spaces, like the one created in this study, in which adult EMLLs are free to negotiate self-positioning and “external attributions” (Beck & Gelard, 2022, p. 34). Incorporating translanguaging pedagogy into the curriculum is one way to promote positive “identity investment and positionality” (García & Wei, 2014, p. 121). A student-centered pedagogical design that allows for fluid meaning making beyond the basic life skills curriculum is paramount for providing adult EMLLs the freedom to resist harmful monolingual language ideologies. 130 Critical Literacy and Transformative Practices The goal of implementing the literature circle model was to practice an instructional strategy with transformative potential, to provide opportunities for “self-reflection on language ideologies while engaging with texts, classroom experiences, and research on bi/multilingual practices.” (España & Herrera, 2020). Mezirow (1991), on theorizing social change in adult education asserts, “in transformative learning, [...], we reinterpret an old experience (or a new one) from a new set of expectations, thus giving a new meaning and perspective to the old experience” (p. 11). It is very clear from the ways participants in the present study engaged with the literature that the literature circle model did in fact provide opportunities for adult EMLLs to reflect on power, domination, and their own identities and literacy practices. Educators can incorporate translanguaging pedagogy “to interrogate linguistic inequality and disrupt linguistic hierarchies and social structures” (García & Wei, 2014, p. 121). So, when using children’s and adolescent literature with adult EMLLs, educators can promote critical dialogue among learners that questions hegemonic narratives, “changing the way of addressing one assumed past and taking into account the processes of how knowledge about past(s) is produced, learning can unfold its transformative potential” (Beck, 2022, p. 168). Implications for Adult EMLL Education Considerations for Policy and Research Eyring (2014) argues that “more political work needs to be done to raise the status of adult ESL and improve its funding base” (p. 141). The current research in adult EMLL education points to the need for empirical studies that are convincing to lawmakers, and that might influence “investment in adult educators, their professional status, and the resources made available to them” (Brown et al., 2022, p. 114). Adult learners are unique in that they hold life 131 experiences and funds of knowledge that children have not yet had the chance to develop (Merriam & Bierema, 2014), which makes it imperative to explicitly study adult education and not default to research in K-12 education for EMLLs. Mathews-Aydinli (2008) argues for more empirical research that has the potential to influence policy makers’ positions, “if we agree that research on adult ELLs will have the greatest ultimate impact when it can be used to influence education policy or funding, then arguably efforts must be made at this time to also produce research that policy makers are more likely to consider. This might include, for example, studies showing that systematic or concentrated attention on factors that current research suggests are important to successful language learning in adult ELLs can actually—and measurably—be shown to raise communicative competence” (p. 211). But the focus on “communicative competence” alone is not enough when it comes to advocating for adult literacy programs for EMLLs in a migration society. Mecheril (2022) argues that worldwide migration patterns should change the way we look at and advocate for adult EMLL education: Migration as the movement of people across borders, as well as a discourse that shapes new knowledge about belonging and citizenship, troubles culturally dominant views and opinions about the legitimacy and functionality of individual privileges, for example the privilege to not only expect but also to claim that one’s own language is also the language of the other. (p. xiv) Currently, the American Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) defines adult literacy in terms of English literacy and includes American citizenship training. In light of our growing migration society, I argue for changes in the policy that incorporate definitions of adult literacy that are inclusive of multilingualism, transmigrant experiences, and transnational commitments. 132 For example, the AEFLA’s (2014) definition of literacy is “an individual’s ability to read, write, and speak in English, compute, and solve problems, at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual, and in society.” Taking into consideration the need to respond to our growing migration society, I recommend inclusive language such as, “an individual’s ability to read, write, and speak in any language, compute, and solve problems, at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual, and in a global society.” This small change in language, from the emphasis on English literacy to multiple literacies throughout the AEFLA would have the potential to shift the goal of standardized testing for adult EMLLs, common core standards for adult EMLL literacy, and consequently, curricula. Considerations for Teachers Educators can advocate for adult EMLLs by creating inclusive curricula that goes beyond the “regime of skills” (Hoggan & Hoggan-Kloubert, 2022, p. 120) focused on English literacy and life skills that are delineated in the common core standards to resist what Shan and Fejes (2015) call the ‘new mode of control and modulation that defines the desirability of individuals in the labor market, shapes the subjectivities, sensibility, and emotionality of migrants and workers” (p. 227). Therefore, “driven by the expectations and ideals to improve our societies (i.e., to make them more just, inclusive, free), adult education cannot be content with merely facilitating transitions into the labor market or adaptations into existing structures” (Hoggan & Hoggan-Kloubert, 2022, p. 121). One solution in the existing literature calls for educators to create student-centered curricula that are guided by adult EMLLs’ goals for themselves (West, 2022; Hoggan & Hoggan-Kloubert, 2022; Hoggan & Browning, 2019; Mclean & Clymer, 2021; Housel, 2021; Burt et al., 2003; Mathews-Aydinli, 2008). 133 Hoggan & Hoggan-Kloubert (2022) suggest that educators who are committed to transformative education should examine themselves and their own biases: This commitment of adult education to human dignity [...] may require a constant (self-)examination by educators of the fundamental ethical orientation that influences their practices. This examination might include, for instance, considerations such as: (a) whether migrants’ histories, goals, and aspirations are recognized and incorporated into the curriculum (rather than solely conveying the expectations of the host country), (b) whether the educational practices and policies are oriented towards developing agency and self-efficacy in the new society (rather than simply telling migrants what to do), and whether diversity and dialogue are promoted rather than ignored (p. 127). One way to address these concerns is for educators to foster local and international collaborations toward transformative pedagogy for adult EMLLs. Hooks (2008) suggests that school and community partnerships between adult education programs and K-12 are valuable for teachers, parents, and children. Additionally, Finnegan (2022) argues that international collaborations in creating transnational curricula are needed: For this sort of work to be sustainable and effective in the medium-term, calls for international collaboration between educators, researchers, and counter-publics in creating transnational curricula which express and explore the experience of superdiversity and hone the ability to read between the local and global in an informed and critical way. (p. 27) 134 International collaborations would decenter nationalist ideologies and discourses of linguistic supremacy across the world, centering meaning making and the learning needs of the whole adult. Future Directions for Research Overall, more research is needed to understand the literacy landscape for adult EMLLs in the US and abroad (Brown et al., 2022; Mathews-Aydinli, 2008). Notably, there are “very few studies [that] address topics such as racism, the question of belonging, and related democratic challenges in migration societies” (Kukovetz & Sprung, 2022, 148). These topics need to be addressed in the research to move toward emancipatory adult EMLL education. Finnegan (2022) argues that capitalist orientations to adult EMLL education are an “attack on equality” and that “this attack on equality is defended and even advanced through a particularistic notion of freedom, and that rights are something held by particular groups (defined by citizenship of a nation state and/or ethnicity)” (p. 23). This attack on equality, in the context of adult EMLL education in the US, calls for attention in the research to the way capitalism is centered in the life skills-based curricula designed to support the Americanization and English literacy skills of migrants to prepare them to be citizens of the US, and ignoring the skills and language learning needed for participating as citizens of the world. On the recommendation of Mathews-Aydinli (2008), my future work will be in collaboration with quantitative researchers in the field of learning sciences to produce empirical research in adult literacy that has the potential to impact policy. We aim to conduct large scale mixed-methods research across adult literacy programs nationwide to gather information about curriculum, instruction, and adult learners. We also hope to conduct smaller scale community action research led by multilingual community members to deepen our understanding of adult 135 community literacy needs, such as the possible needs for health literacy, family literacy, and multilingual/multimodal literacies. Finally, this work calls for international collaboration in developing new adult literacy definitions and standards that go beyond nation-state expectations and consider global citizenship, multilingualism, and transnational experiences and wisdoms. Conclusion In conclusion, this dissertation explores using literature circles as an emancipatory strategy that (un)patterns or disrupts the status quo in adult EMLL education in the US. The study found that student-led text selection is influenced by modality, cultural and linguistic representation, and informal family literacy practices and text selections by adult EMLLs’ children. The study also examines the ways in which adult learners construct their own identities and position themselves and others considering the ways they perceive institutional discourses that prioritize monolingual English-only ideologies. These discourses play a role in adult EMLLs’ feelings of anxiety and resistance as they navigate the world inside and outside of the classroom. Finally, the study found that when adult EMLLs are given the opportunity to make their own text selections, draw on their entire linguistic repertoires, and dialogue with a super- diverse group of adult EMLLs, possibilities for critical conscientização (Freire, 2018) and social transformation unfold (Mezirow, 1991). Finally, in carrying out this study, I have reflected deeply on myself as a researcher and scholar. I am a work in progress, just as the unfinished and repatterned quilt metaphor that frames this work. The following poem is an original piece that expresses my commitment to examining who I am as an educator, scholar, and human to critically engage with the world toward a just society. I hope it reflects the way I come to the adult education table with my whole self, past, present, and future, and that I aim to create spaces for learners to do the same. 136 How to Make an Inheritance Quilt Prep Time: 43 years Weigh the fibers and scour them pure. Cook Time: intergenerational Measure with glass spoons the alum acetate for the mordant bonding of food and fibers. Ingredients: Your grandmother’s fibers. Her basement and her freezer an archaeological site, you fill a box with stacked muslin, loose cans of Vernors, frozen blueberries in a ziplock bag, strawberry wafers, Robert’s Rules of Order, Pride and Prejudice, Finnish for Travellers, a polished Petoskey stone. Steps: 137 One. Gather the garden harvest: her blueberries, red onion skins, beets, spinach, black beans, red cabbage, mint. Two. Baptize fiber in earthen hues. Variation: An alkaline or acidic agent may cause an unorthodox splendor to occur. Hint: Forgive the muslin for rejecting the beets. Three. Compost faded food; return to dust. Four. Cut the blocks of fiber with a rotary knife for correctness. Hint: A perfect circumference is superior. Variation: Toss the metered cutting mat aside. Five. Stitch blocks together with your sewing machine. Six. Quilt fiber layers together by hand, with the deliberation and the messiness of a blue jay building its nest. Hint: Wear a thimble. A fair amount of resistance is expected. Serving and Menu Ideas: Fold the cloth, unfold it. Take stock of its edges. Offer it up as warmth to your mother, for ripping the willful seams binding us 138 to the patterns we make for each other. 139 REFERENCES Adukia, A., Eble, A. Harrison, E., Runesha, H. B., Szasz, T. (2023). What we teach about race and gender: Representations in images and text of children’s books (Working Paper 29123). 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Language Arts, 85(3), p. 185-192. 154 APPENDIX A: BOOK PLANNING SPREADSHEET Table 6: Book Planning Spreadsheet Lexile Title Author Illustrator Award/Honor Level Genre Asian/Pacific American Librarians A Boy Named Isamu: A Association Story of Isamu Noguchi James Yang Awards 500 Picturebook Africa, Amazing Africa: Mouni Country by Country Atinuke Feddag USBBY 600 Nonfiction Children's African Proverbs for All Johnnetta Nelda Africana Book Ages Betsch Cole LaTeef Awards 570 Picturebook Asian/Pacific American Librarians Amina's Song (Amina's Association Voice) Hena Khan Awards 800 Novel Hannah Anita and the Dragons Carmona Anna Cunha USBBY 800 Picturebook 155 Table 6 (cont’d) Stonewall Book Graphic Beetle & the Hollowbones Aliza Layne Awards 380 Novel Natasha Graphic Borders Thomas King Donovan Walter Awards 500 Novel Tomás Rivera Bright Star Yuyi Morales Book Awards 330 Picturebook Batchelder Catherine's War Julia Billet Claire Fauvel Award 500 Picturebook Anna Coffee, Rabbit, Snowdrop, Margrethe Batchelder Lost Betina Birkjær Kjærgaard Award 500 Picturebook Children's Elizabeth-Irene Africana Book Crossing the Stream Baitie Awards 500 Novel Darius the Great Deserves Stonewall Book Better dib Khorram Awards 590 Novel Drawn Across Borders: True Stories of Human George Middle East Migration George Butler Butler Book Award Nonfiction Middle East Everything Sad is Untrue Daniel Nayeri Book Award 800 Novel 156 Table 6 (cont’d) Explore the Old City of Aleppo: Come with Tamim Khaldoun Abdalla Middle East to a World Heritage Site Fansa Asaad Book Award 500 Nonfiction Exquisite: The Poetry and Cozbi A. Robert F. Sibert Life of Gwendolyn Suzanne Slade Cabrera Award 870 Picturebook Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Finding Junie Kim Ellen Oh Awards 500 Novel Boulley Firekeeper's Daughter Angeline Walter Awards 700 Novel Freedom Swimmer Wai Chim USBBY 700 Novel Yamile Saied Pura Belpré Furia Méndez Award 770 Novel 2022 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books; Children's Africana Book Novel in Home is Not a Country Safia Elhillo Awards NP verse 157 Table 6 (cont’d) Honeybee: The Busy Life Candace Eric Robert F. Sibert of Apis Mellifera Fleming Rohmann Award 750 Picturebook Romana How War Changed Romanyshyn; Rondo Andriy Lesiv USBBY 500 Picturebook How We Got to the Moon: The People, Technology, and Daring Feats of Science Behind Humanity's Greatest Robert F. Sibert Adventure John Rocco John Rocco Award 1170 Picturebook Schneider Sydney Family Book I Talk Like a River Jordan Scott Smith Award 400 Picturebook In the Meadow of Hadi Nooshin Batchelder Fantasies Mohammadi Safakhoo Award 500 Picturebook Schneider Itzhak: A Boy Who Loved Tracy Abigail Family Book the Violin Newman Halpin Award 500 Picturebook 158 Table 6 (cont’d) Kwame Nkrumah's Children's Midnight Speech for Useni Eugene Laura Africana Book Independence Perkins Freeman Awards 600 Picturebook Children's Yassmin Africana Book Listen, Layla Abdel-Magied Awards 800 Novel Maryam’s Magic: The Story of Mathematician Middle East Maryam Mirzakhani Megan Reid Aaliya Jaleel Book Award 300 Nonfiction 2022 Coretta Scott King Book Awards John Steptoe Amber Award for New Me (Moth) McBride Talent Author 750 Novel Moon Pops Heena Baek Jieun Kiaer USBBY 540 Picturebook Tomás Rivera My Two Border Towns David Bowles Erika Meza Book Awards 680 Picturebook 159 Table 6 (cont’d) Once Upon an Eid: Stories of Hope and Joy by S.K. Ali and Sara Middle East 15 Muslim Voices Aisha Saeed Alfageeh Book Award 500 Short Stories Jasmine Middle East Novel in Other Words for Home Warga Book Award 900 Verse Rajani Red, White, and Whole LaRocca Walter Awards Novel Sal and Gabi Break the Carlos Pura Belpré Universe Hernandez Award 600 Novel Seven Special Somethings: Zainab Middle East A Nowruz Story Adib Khorram Faidhi Book Award 480 PIcturebook Sona Sharma, Very Best Chitra Big Sister? Soundar Jen Khatun USBBY 300 Picturebook Anna Merve Middle East Song of the Old City Pellicioli Atilgan Book Award 840 Picturebook María Eugenia The Caiman Manrique Ramón París USBBY 600 Fiction Bahram Gabrielle Middle East The Library Bus Rahman Grimard Book Award 560 Picturebook 160 Table 6 (cont’d) 2022 Coretta Scott King Author Honor The People Remember Ibi Zoboi Loveis Wise Books 300 Picturebook The Spirit of Chicano Park/El espíritu del Beatrice Tomás Rivera Historical Parque Chicano Zamora Maira Meza Book Awards 500 Fiction The Total Eclipse of Adrianna Pura Belpré Nestor Lopez Cuevas Award 600 Novel Naomi Middle East Too Far from Home Shmuel Avi Katz Book Award 700 Picturebook Too Small Tola Atinuke Ibtubte Uwy USBBY 610 Picturebook Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Watercress Andrea Wang Jason Chin Awards 610 Picturebook 161 Table 6 (cont’d) Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association We Are Not Free Traci Chee Awards 800 Novel Jenny Torres Pura Belpré We Are Not from Here Sanchez Award 700 Novel Rafael Wounded Falcons Jairo Buitrago Yockteng USBBY 560 Picturebook 162 APPENDIX B: PARTICIPANT BOOK SELECTIONS Table 7: Participant Book Selections Participant Book 1 Book 2 Book 3 Adem I Talk Like a River Home is Not a Country How We Got to the Moon by Jordan Scott and Sydney by Safia Elhillo by John Rocco Smith Aurora Catherine’s War by Julia We Are Not from Here by Too Far from Home by Billet Jenny Torres Sanchez Naomi Schmuel Barbara My Two Border Towns by The People Remember by The Library Bus David Bowles Ibi Zoboi by Bahram Rahman Farwa I Talk Like a River Home is Not a Country How We Got to the Moon by Jordan Scott and Sydney by Safia Elhillo by John Rocco Smith Fazina I Talk Like a River Home is Not a Country How We Got to the Moon by Jordan Scott and Sydney by Safia Elhillo by John Rocco Smith Jane Amina’s Song by Hena Finding Junie Kim Too Small Tola by Khan by Ellen Oh Atinuke Jennysue I Talk Like a River My Two Border Towns by Catherine’s War by Julia by Jordan Scott and Sydney David Bowles Billet Smith 163 Table 7 (cont’d) Lusy I Talk Like a River by Home is Not a Country Catherine’s War by Julia Jordan Scott and Sydney by Safia Elhillo Billet Smith Mila My Two Border Towns by The People Remember by The Library Bus David Bowles Ibi Zoboi by Bahram Rahman Misk Once Upon an Eid edited Other Words for Home by How War Changed by S.K. Ali and Aisha Jasmine Wargo Rondo by Romana Saeed Romanyshyn and Andriy Lesiv 164 APPENDIX C: LITERARY ANALYSIS CASAS STANDARDS Table 8: Literary Analysis CASAS Standards Category: Content Standard Literary Analysis RDG5.1 Identify story elements including theme, setting, plot, character, conflict, and resolution in literary texts. [R2. C, D, E] RDG5.2 Determine characters’ traits by what the characters convey about themselves in narration, dialogue, monologue, and soliloquy RDG5.3 Analyze interactions between main and supporting characters in a literary text (e.g., internal and external conflicts, motivations) and explain the development of specific characters, ideas, and events. RDG5.4 Trace an author’s development of time and sequence, including the use of complex devices (e.g., foreshadowing, flashbacks); analyze the effectiveness of the structure used by the author. RDG5.5 Interpret and analyze the significance of literary devices (e.g., figurative language, imagery, allegory, symbolism), and the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone. [R4. D, E] RDG5.6 Analyze how different genres, cultures, and perspectives inform content, style, and theme in works of literature. [R6. E] Note. CASAS Literary Analysis Standards (CASAS, 2019) 165 APPENDIX D: SAMPLE QUIZLET VOCABULARY FOR MINI-LESSONS Figure 17: Sample Quizlet Vocabulary for Mini-Lessons 166 APPENDIX E: BOOK CLUB PRE-SURVEY Welcome to Book Club! Thank you for participating in our Book Club! This survey seeks to find out more about you and your experiences with reading books. Please answer each of the questions as candidly and completely as possible. Your responses are confidential. 1. First and Last Name______________________________________________ 2. Email______________________________________________ 3. Phone Number______________________________________________ 4. Birthday______________________________________________ 5. Gender (check one): • Man • Woman • Transgender Man • Transgender Woman • Queer • Nonbinary • Other_____________ • Prefer not to answer 6. Race (check one or more): • American Indian or Alaska Native • Asian • Black or African American 167 • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander • Hispanic or Latino • White • Other_____________ • Prefer not to answer 7. Birth Country or Home Country_____________________________________________ 8. How long have you lived in the United States (check one)? • Less than a year • 1 year • 2 years • 3 years • 4 years • 5 years • 6 years • 7 years • 8 years • 9 years • 10 years or more 9. What is your first language or home language? __________________________________ 10. What other languages do you speak?__________________________________________ 11. What are your goals for participating in this book club (check all that apply)? • Improve English reading • Improve English speaking 168 • Improve English writing • Improve English listening/understanding • Be able to read books in English to my children • Be able to read books in English for fun • Be able to read books in English for work or school • Learn how to talk about books in English • Learn about new books in English • Make new friends • Other______________________________________________ 12. Is there anything else you would like to tell me about yourself? 169 APPENDIX F: BOOK TASTING SURVEY Book Tasting Your first and last name: _________________________________________ Write the titles of 3 books you want to read this summer (1=the most interested): 1. 2. 3. OPTIONAL: Write the names of people you would like in your book club group: 170 APPENDIX G: POST-SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE 1. What is your name? 2. What languages do you speak? 3. Which books did you enjoy reading the most this summer? Explain your answer. 4. Which books did you enjoy reading the least this summer? Explain your answer. 5. In what ways do you think your English skills improved (reading, writing, speaking, listening, vocabulary)? Please give examples. 6. What did you like the most and the least about participating in the book club? 171