ABSTRACT
Middle grades educators are experiencing the demand of serving an increasingly linguistically diverse student population. Due to the English-centric nature of English as a Second Language (ESL) programming, multilingual early adolescents are often seen as a homogenous group. While multilingual early adolescents may all be working on a similar general skillset, they are incredibly diverse in their experiences, languages, cultures, abilities, and English-language proficiency levels. This chapter will use an intersectionality lens to examine the characteristics and needs of multilingual early adolescents and to identify culturally and linguistically sustaining strategies to support English language and literacy development.
