ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for the importance of developing multilingual classroom ecologies that value labor (Inoue, 2019) and provides specific recommendations for creating and implementing them. It also describes in detail the risks and benefits multilingual students encounter when they are asked to draw on communicative knowledge that is rarely valued in academic contexts. The authors provide two case studies that support and illustrate their position, one at the high school level and the other at the college level. Each case provides specific and compelling examples of the labor students expend and the risks they take when they choose to employ their multilingual abilities to complete academic assignments.
