ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the growing complexity and opportunity of teaching English Language Arts in both a standards-based and increasingly diverse classroom setting in the United States. It relies on the values of culturally sustaining pedagogies as part of an analytic and structural framework. The chapter focuses on the promise of linguistically diverse Language Arts instruction to develop students' bi/multilingualism. It argues that more research is needed about critical literacy in multilingual Language Arts settings. A culturally sustaining writing pedagogy forefronts the role of dialogue; includes linguistic, cultural and social resources; emphasizes agency; and creates opportunities to enact a critical imagination in material and digital formats. Critical imagination with multimodal and digital texts emphasizes the intersection of multiple modes of expression and digital tools, with the focus on increased agency, power relations, and issues of inequality and injustice. Working with video and digital tools, examined the autobiographical multimodal narratives of immigrant children.
