In response to the growing number of linguistically diverse students in elementary classrooms, this Teaching Tip centers stories of students exploring language identity and use in one fourth‐grade classroom in the Midwestern United States. Specifically, the author situates this Teaching Tip by first telling how students engaged in a discussion about the Navajo code talkers before nuancing stories of two linguistically diverse elementary students as they navigated and negotiated the intricacies of language identity in their school. The author then illuminates how teachers can open new spaces for dialogue about and the practice of a multiplicity of languages.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to theorize teacher agency as enacted through a P/policymaking lens in three elementary classrooms. Big-P Policies are formal, top-down school reform policies legislated, created, implemented and regulated by national, state and local governments. Yet, Big-P policies are not the only policies enacted in literacies classrooms. Rather, little-p policies or teachers’ local, personal and creative enactments of their values and expertise are also in play in daily classroom decisions. Little p-policies are teachers doing their best in response to their students and school contexts. Design/methodology/approach Adapting elements of discursive analysis, this interpretive inquiry is designed to examine textual artifacts, situated alongside classroom events and particular local practices, to explicate what teachers’ policymaking enactments regarding time and curriculum look like across three distinct contexts. Using three elementary classrooms as examples, this paper provides analytic snapshots illustrating teachers’ policymaking to solve problems of practice posed by state and school policies for curriculum, and for use of time at school. Findings The findings suggest that teachers ration (aliz)ed use of time in ways that enacted personal politics, to prioritize children’s personal growth and well-being alongside teachers’ values, even when use of time became “inefficient.” An artifact from three focal classrooms illustrates particular practices – scheduling, connecting and modeling – teachers leveraged to enact little p-policy. Teachers’ little p-policy enactment is teacher agency, used to disrupt temporal and curricular policies. Originality/value This framing is valuable because little-p policymaking works to disrupt and negotiate temporal and curricular mandates imposed on classrooms from the outside.

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Situated in the months after the 2016 United States presidential election, this qualitative case study illuminates third-grade children’s sense-making about the GOP Administration’s proposed border wall with Mexico. In light of these present-day politics, close analysis of how young children discuss social issues remains critical, particularly for social studies educators. Looking across fifteen book discussions, we zero in on three whole-class conversations about (im)migration beginning with initial read alouds through the final debrief wherein children conversed with a local university anthropologist about the clandestine migration of individuals across the U.S.’s southern border. During initial discussions, children in the Midwestern school demonstrated their frustration towards racist laws of the mid-1900s. Others responded with empathy or made personal connections to their own family heritage. In the findings, we note a clear progression in how children understood (im)migration issues as evidenced by how their questions and curiosities shifted in later lessons. We highlight how, when children are encouraged to engage with social topics, they can act as critical consumers and position themselves as politically active and engaged citizens.

Background/Context Educators have considered how Minecraft supports language and literacy practices in the game and in the spaces and circumstances immediately surrounding gameplay. However, it is still necessary to develop additional conceptualizations of how children and youth's online and offline worlds and experiences are blurred by and through the games. In this study, I take up this call and examine how the boundaries of the digital were blurred by one child as he wrote in response to a standardized writing prompt within his urban fourth-grade classroom. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Through snapshots of Jairo's writing, I illuminate how he muddled the lines between his physical play experiences and those he had in the virtual world of Minecraft. In doing so, I argue that he carried over his personal interest as a fan of Minecraft into the writing curriculum through creative language play. As Jairo “borrowed” his physical play experiences in the virtual world of Minecraft to complete an assigned writing task, he exemplified how children blur playworlds of physical and digital play in the elementary ELA classroom. Research Design Drawing on data generated in an 18-week case study, I examine how one child, Jairo, playfully incorporated his lived experiences in the virtual world of Minecraft into mandated writing tasks. Conclusions/Recommendations My examination of his writing is meant to challenge writing scholars, scholars of play, and those engaged in rethinking media's relation to literacy. I encourage a rethinking of what it means for adults to maintain clear lines of what is digital play and what is not. I suggest adults might have too heavy a hand in bringing play into classrooms. Children already have experiences with play—both physical and digital. We must cultivate a space for children to build on what was previously familiar to them by offering scaffolds to bridge these experiences between what we, as adults, understand as binaries. Children do not necessarily see distinctions between “reality” and play worlds, or between digital and physical play. For children, play worlds and digital worlds are perhaps simply worlds; it is we as adults who harbor a desire for clear boundaries.