In this website we bring together more than two decades of experience and research on language brokering. We aim to apply what we know – and come to know – about language brokering to classroom learning and beyond!
We designed this website with three main sections, in order to answer questions particular to three core audiences. Of course, you might fall into more than one category or be interested in all these questions!
- Language Brokers – Do you translate for others?
- Teachers – Do you teach kids who translate?
- Researchers and Policymakers – Do you research language brokering?
In each section, we are especially excited to share what we have learned from our most recent project, which explored: What do teachers know, and need to know, about language brokering experiences, to build on those experiences in school? During the 2025-26 school year, we met regularly with ten teachers who were working in bi- or multilingual public school settings in California, Missouri and Nebraska to design curriculum and other school activities that built on kids’ language brokering. This experience has informed the ideas we share on this website, particularly how the group’s understandings of language brokering grew through our participation in collaborative work circles.
We found that teachers had different ideas about what language brokering is, how their students engage in it, and whether kids even should language broker. Throughout our work together, teachers were able to share with one another about their diverse classroom experiences. Together, we discussed how to employ language brokering experiences in their classrooms in ways that made sense for their different contexts. Broadly, we found that teachers were interested in developing ways to survey and explore their students’ experiences with language brokering, and they wanted to find ways to leverage these tasks toward standards-based curriculum and lessons. For example, teachers of math developed lessons around surveying, reading, and interpreting graphs. Teachers in dual language/bilingual programs and English language arts used language brokering as a topic area for narrative and persuasive writing. Teachers in all areas were particularly interested in leveraging how language brokering requires attention to different audiences as a key literacy skill that is helpful across academic settings. See more in our section, Do You Teach Kids Who Translate?