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A letter from the BBE Program

Dear Prospective Student:

     If you have stopped here, we imagine you are interested in Bilingualism and Bilingual/Bi/Multicultural Education and you would like to know more.  The areas are broad and cover much territory.  We will not pretend to cover them in this space; this is our area of inquiry, and we would like to invite you to join us. 

     We have new reregistered programs with the New York State Department of Education.  They make clear distinctions on the paths towards teacher certification, if this is your choice.  They also include the study of bilingualism and bilingual education, a non-teacher certification track.  The latter program is for students who are interested in the area but do not aspire to be a teacher within our nations' borders, and/or aspire to be in policy, in research, or would like to consider the issues arising from bilingualism and educational situations in social institutions other than schools. 

     The education of immigrants, language minorities, and language majority students in other than English languages within the United States, and the global movement of peoples, borders, and economies call on rethinking what we do in bilingual education and how we consider the issues of bi/multilingualism in schools.  It pushes on questions we have as to how the traditional ways of implementing instruction can be transformed to meet the needs of a diverse linguistic and cultural student population, how we ensure inclusive diversity in classrooms and schools, and how these new situations and circumstances impinge on the process of learning and locating one's place in the world.  Both our geographical location in a multilingual, multicultural urban setting and our connections to the world, as we are housed within the Department of International and Transcultural Studies, provide us with settings in which we can experiment with, and document, new methodologies and new theories on the relationships between learning, language, culture, democracy, equity, and social justice.  This makes our institution an exciting place to study, one we invite you to join. 

    Please be our guest, explore the program website postings, and send questions you may still have to bilingual-bicultural@exchange.tc.columbia.edu.

     We leave you with the hopes that we can respond to your questions, that you give us the opportunity to see your admissions forms as part of the possibility of your making a presence in our classrooms next year.