ABSTRACT
Today we live in a fluid and mobile world. Our schools are no longer becoming more linguistically and culturally diverse. Rather, in many places in this country, schools are linguistically, culturally and socially complex spaces with as many as 18 languages spoken in a single school. Having children who speak more than one language is ordinary, as is having a class with multiple languages spoken by students with culturally diverse backgrounds. The new level of complexity that this brings to the work of teachers and their students means that the question is not which language to use, but rather how to construct an explicit and purposeful language that builds on the multiple languages in the classroom, while creating a common community and language for learning of the classroom.
