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We examine a model for outofschool literacy instruction using language and cultural available designs for teaching awareness of audience across cultures. The literacy model described here engages undergraduate and secondary students in a cross-cultural storytelling exchange and calls for anticipating the needs of young readers who do not share linguistic or cultural backgrounds. We describe the process of helping the writers to understand their Rwandan audience and highlight some of the linguistic and cultural issues that arose in the early drafts and persisted throughout the editing process despite direct feedback. We describe the workshops in which we discussed available linguistic and cultural designs and track some of the responses of the writers. And finally, we examine a story from the third volume for evidence that the writers had addressed the needs of the Rwandan readers in their stories.

This chapter highlights the difficulties inherent in defining heritage languages for immigrant Africans in the various African diasporas and provides key arguments in favor of coalescing efforts for immigrant heritage language development in the diaspora around a few African national languages, rather than the many indigenous African languages. It also provides key considerations, including the influence of language use in the immigrants' home countries, on diaspora language use, language competence, home language practice by families, assimilative narratives that oppose linguistic diversity, and the availability of linguistic resources, such as books, that would support heritage language development. Recommendations and possible solutions for surmounting some of these challenges are also provided.

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Dual language (DL) programs have been held up as a promising means by which to reach student achievement goals across demographics (Collier & Thomas, 2004). Yet, the social and political risks associated with implementing DL programs are significant. This paper analyzes one large metropolitan school district’s rationale and preparedness for initiating its DL program, as well as the outcomes of its efforts to scale up the DL program to reach thousands of students, most of whom are children of color. The findings suggest that the district personnel used three pillars to rationalize their decision to implement their DL program: legal, research, and student demographics. In addition, the school district administrators, teachers, and parents showed varying levels of preparedness for the mass implementation of the DL program. While a young program with few quantitative data points to showcase its success, the qualitative data revealed that the program’s structure and professional development efforts for the teachers and principals benefited from a clear and ambitious vision and the unwavering support of the district’s executive leadership. In addition to the extensive data compiled from interviews with key stakeholders, case studies of two schools from the district are provided in order to highlight emergent tensions and showcase how the district’s efforts have materialized into intentional and dynamic DL learning environments.