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This 5-month ethnographic comparative case study of two culturally and linguistically diverse U.S. elementary classrooms juxtaposes restrictive educational language policies with the theoretical principles of culturally sustaining pedagogy to explore a gap in our understanding of how teachers reflect educational language policies in the range of pedagogical approaches they take. Triangulating data sources from state and local policy documents, classroom observations, and teacher interviews, we identify three salient dimensions of state and local policies that manifested in these two upper-elementary classrooms: teachers' curricular and pedagogical choices; student-teacher participation structures; and teachers' views on language. Similarities and differences between the two classrooms highlight how policy exerts influence on these dimensions while also affording degrees of instructional freedom that varied by teacher, with implications for the learning opportunities for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Overall, however, a limited range of culturally sustaining practices was observed, highlighting the need to understand the spaces in language policy where teachers can mitigate some of the effects of restrictive regulatory approaches to learning.

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This paper examines the literature on domestic minor sex trafficking. We draw on a critical race feminist lens, with particular attention to intersectionality and assemblage, to review research on conditions that exacerbate and decrease girls’ vulnerability to sex trafficking to emphasize why schools must systematically engage in sex trafficking prevention. We argue that school communities are positioned to address the intersectional and exacerbating conditions that make students, particularly Black girls, more vulnerable to this form of modern-day slavery. Rather than reinforce narratives that often criminalize and devalue survivors, the purpose of this article is to create a dialogue about how schools can be intentional in fighting sex trafficking in their communities. We provide specific recommendations for schools to place girls’ voices at the center of this prevention work and build knowledge within the school faculty to sustain this work, work that is both feminist and anti-racist, to equip students to become competent, confident, and empowered leaders.

This article contributes to a growing conversation of teachers’ advocacy for marginalized students. We follow a cohort of teachers’ advocacy from their English as a second language certification courses into their work in one linguistically diverse school district. Dialogic discourse analyses of 3 years of discussions show the types of advocacy in which the teachers engaged, and identify five foundational discourse moves teachers employed to develop ideas and manage the relational complexity of advocacy. Findings provide evidence of the important role of intertextuality: voices across time and texts facilitated the teachers’ advocacy efforts. We offer a revised definition of language teacher advocacy to emphasize its discursive nature, arguing that an examination of the dialogic processes of advocacy work can help better delineate how it develops iteratively, contextually, and not always successfully. We implicate teacher education as an important catalyst for the preparation of teachers’ advocacy for under-served and historically marginalized English-learning students.