Congratulations to Dr. Ruhma Choudhury on publication of a book chapter titled Raising Bilingual and Bicultural Bangladeshi-American Children in New York City: Perspectives from Educators and Parents in a Bengali Community.
Raising Bilingual and Bicultural Bangladeshi-American Children in New York City: Perspectives from Educators and Parents in a Bengali Community by Dr. Ruhma Choudhury
Bangladeshi Americans represent one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in New York City. According to the U.S. Census 2000, more Bangladeshis live in New York than in any other state. While the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) who speak Bengali at home is on a steady rise since 2000 and Bengali ranks third in the top twelve ELL languages in public schools, the New York City education system has made minimal progress in developing resources for Bengali language learning. The Bengali community has responded to this need by setting up Bengali language schools in various neighborhoods of the city. In the book chapter, I designed a qualitative case study to investigate one of these Bangladeshi-community run programs in an attempt to shed light on the impact of such programs on children’s bilingual and bicultural development. The paper is organized as follows. First, it opens with a description of Bangladeshi diaspora in New York City which serves as a background to the study. Second, it describes the community educational program to demonstrate how it provides children with academic and extra-curricular experiences outside of mainstream education. Finally, it presents the analysis of the data collected through in-depth interviews. The chapter specifically looks at the language education policies and practices of the program in order to determine the extent to which language ideologies of the teachers, parents, and school administrators acknowledge and support these children’s bilingual-bicultural identities.
