Voices at the Margins
Episode 1: “Muted, Misheard, and Multilingual: Teaching Across Screens”

PHYllISE:
Welcome to Voices at the Margins, where we explore language, power, and identity in everyday life. I’m Phyllise—
CARLOS:--
—and I’m Carlos. Today we’re talking about what it means to teach and learn as a multilingual student in a classroom, focusing on online learning as well. Spoiler: it’s not just about tech glitches.

PHYllISE:
Let me set the scene for you.. It’s 8:30 a.m. on a Monday. I opened my Zoom room. A fifth-grade student logs in from a kitchen table in Queens. Her mic is off. Her camera is off. Her name is spelled phonetically in the participant list. I greet her in English. I will try Spanish. I try to smile. Nothing.
CARLOS:
That silence? It’s not just shyness. It’s sociolinguistic complexity. That student might be navigating three languages at home, switching codes depending on who’s in the room—and now she’s expected to perform “standard English” on a screen.
PHYLLISE:
And that’s something we spoke about in class – the translanguaging that is present in the classroom is often fostered at home. What we lack is communication between the teacher and parent to find out what the student is really comfortable with prior to the beginning of school. Our expectations should be monitored!

Sociolinguistic Lens: What’s Really Happening?
PHYllISE:
We’ve seen students hesitate to speak because they’re afraid their accents will be judged. During our multilingual tutoring on zoom one student told us it was hard for him to speak so he would rather type it in the chat. The other student helped him to find the words in English – they bounced ideas off of each other.
CARLOS:
Another said they speak a different language at home and have different expectations when coming to school, especially when they have to learn online at times. These aren’t just tech issues. They’re identity issues. Accent anxiety. Language hierarchies. Internalized shame.
PHYllISE:
And Zoom makes it worse. When cameras are off, we lose visual cues. When mics are off, we lose voice. And when students do speak, they hear themselves played back—sometimes distorted, sometimes interrupted. Students become so distracted by this new world of technology and it is only going to get worse.

Zoom as a Linguistic Landscape
CARLOS:
Zoom isn’t neutral. It’s a space where language is filtered, flattened, and sometimes erased. One student was telling us how his Halloween was in the Zoom chat and he was using Spanglish so it was hard to understand. That’s translanguaging. That’s survival.
PHYllISE:
But I’ve also seen students shut down when corrected mid-sentence for grammar. Or when breakout rooms feel isolating because no one shares their language. Students become discouraged when they are skipped over or ignored because they can’t understand, or no one can understand them.

What Can Educators Do?
CARLOS:
We need to validate all languages. Let students know their home languages are assets, not obstacles. Use translanguaging strategies. Let them write in mixed codes. Let them speak in the language that feels safest.

PHYllISE:
Model vulnerability. I let them see that “perfect English” isn’t the goal—communication is. Teachers should take the time to build connections with all students no matter the language they speak and include them in activities. Even if in a couple minutes they will be pulled out for services – every second counts.

Closing Reflection
CARLOS:
Multilingual students aren’t just learning content—they’re learning how to be heard. Over Zoom, their voices are often muted—literally and metaphorically.
PHyllISE:
But when we listen with sociolinguistic sensitivity, we hear more than words. We hear survival, creativity, and resistance.
CARLOS:
Thanks for joining us on Voices at the Margins. Next episode, we’ll explore accent bias and the politics of “sounding right.”
PHyllISE:
Until then, keep listening to the voices that don’t always get heard.