ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates specific efforts within one adult English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classroom embedded within a family literacy program for refugee women and children. In the United States, where English is the implicit official language, programs for adult ESOL are a principal site where newcomers learn to negotiate the complex language and literacy tasks of life in their new communities. The chapter examines the mediational practices of one teacher who took up one participatory approach in an ESOL classroom for refugee women. It also examines the language and literacy practices surrounding the Language Experience Approach in Joy's classroom. It focuses on to data previously coded for Language Experience Approach (LEA) to identify "where, when, and with whom participants carry out regular practices with mediational means to manage artifacts and identity texts". The LEA stories further served as a record of the women's participation in community spaces and practices that were new to most.
