Translanguaging as an Enactment of “Changjinglu” With a Chinese Satellite Baby in a Head Start Classroom

Introduction

The above classroom vignettes provide snapshots of two Chinese American toddlers who experienced transnational separations from their parents and struggles moving from a non-English-speaking household to a completely new English-speaking environment. Both toddlers were raised in China then returned to their immigrant families in the U.S. as “satellite babies” (Bohr & Tse, 2009). The practices of transnational “satellite babies'' have been documented in North American Chinese, Mexican, South Asian, Caribbean, and Filipino communities (Aulakh, 2008; de Guzman, 2014; Dreby, 2010; Glasgow & Ghouse-Sheese, 1995; Kwong et al., 2009). Although this experience is not restricted to Chinese immigrant families, satellite babies or astronaut households are terms often associated with working-class Chinese immigrant families (Aye & Guerin, 2001; Bohr & Tse, 2009; Kwong et al., 2009; Schweitzer, 2016; Skeldon, 1997; Wang, 2018; Waters, 2002). Specifically, Chinese immigrant families had to make such decisions when they faced severe financial difficulties providing childcare and other unforeseen life obstacles as they struggled to settle in a new country. As a result, many Chinese immigrants decide to have their children remain behind in the care of their family during their initial adjustment period to a new life in another country (Bohr & Tse, 2009). Another factor in their initial decision to have their young child stay in China is related to the cultural norm of trans-generational childcare that supports having multiple family caregivers for their children (Bohr & Tse, 2009; Kwong et al., 2009; Sengupta, 1999).

In this case study, we focus on three-year-old Emma, a “satellite baby” who was born in the U.S., spent her early formative years in China, returning to the U.S. to begin public schooling. We draw on the theoretical tenets of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014), translanguaging (Garcίa et al., 2017; Li Wei, 2018), and intersectionality (Creshaw, 1991; Collins & Bilge, 2016) to reveal and analyze Emma’s school-based literacy practices using English and one of her heritage languages, Mandarin. Emma was enrolled in a Head Start program in a large urban school district and was soon identified as an emerging bilingual learner with special needs. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) and translanguaging assert that learners utilize their culture and language resources along a continuum through processes that support multilingual meaning-making (Garcίa et al., 2017; Li Wei, 2018; Paris, 2012). We posed two research questions: How did CSP and translanguaging take place in Emma’s everyday classroom practices? How did CSP facilitate translanguaging spaces in the early childhood classroom? In the following sections, we overview three interconnected theories informing this project. Then, we introduce Emma and describe the classroom context.