Actualizing Potentials for After School Leadership: A Case for After-School Programs Engaging Emergent Bilinguals Through Play to Offer Equitable Opportunities for Growth

With the increase of global migration comes a growing cultural and linguistic diversity in many countries around the world. Public schools in the U.S. experience this reality each year with the rising number of emergent bilinguals in the classroom. Emergent bilingual is a category or classification to designate a person who speaks a language other than English at home and is in the process of developing both languages. Public schools have and continue to fail to meet the unique academic and developmental needs of emergent bilingual children, due to the political resistance to establish long-term bilingual education programs. As a result, linguistically diverse children miss developmental opportunities, and experience greater levels of emotional stress and disturbance. In addition, emergent bilinguals experience inequities within school services, such as special education services. After-school programs need not focus on standardized bilingual educational curriculum to assuage the growing challenges and inequities, but instead focus on the power of play—which holds the potential for holistic growth, linguistic development, and social and emotional flourishing of the child and multicultural community. This paper explores the importance of after-school programs based in play to foster the growth and holistic development of emergent bilinguals.