Newcomers as Teachers: Enacting Linguistic Ideologies and Practices in an Internship Setting

ABSTRACT This paper explores the experiences of two high school newcomers who chose to participate in an internship program, assisting elementary school students, some of whom were also emergent bilinguals. This study used ethnographic and visual methodologies to explore young people’s evolving understanding of teaching, learning, and languaging as members of a community of practice within the internship. Both students rooted their practices in their work with children in their critiques of language policies that they had experienced. The narratives that the interns shared highlighted how the set of linguistic and cultural-historical repertoires of practice that they entered with shaped how they engaged with and contributed to the classroom communities in which they were placed.