It's the beginning of second semester, the first day back from winter break, and we can sense they are tired as they slowly shuffle into the room seeming to have cement in their shoes. Greeting them at the door, we smile and announce that today we will start our writing block with a code switching lesson. Then we see that spark, the excitement that comes with learning new material! The students begin to arrange the chairs in our typical semi-circle fashion around the chalkboard and charts. Grabbing pens, white boards, and their new code switching notebooks, they jump into their seats ready to hear about code switching. Before our winter break we had told them we would be learning a new writing strategy. They were intrigued by the words code switching and were looking forward to the new lessons. We assured them it was something they had never heard before and that they would find the new method to be a very useful tool to improve their own writing. With the state writing test right around the corner they willingly committed to the new learning adventure.

We became invested in code switching in the fall of 2006. We felt strongly about including code switching in our 2006–2007 school accountability plan that drives our instructional year. We are both literacy teachers with Norfolk Public Schools and after receiving staff development on code switching from our English Department, we decided to introduce the concept to our Larchmont teachers.