The population of ethnically and linguistically diverse children in US public schools is increasing dramatically. Unfortunately, however, these children are often ill served in public schools. Scholars such as F. Erickson and J. Schultz (1992) maintain that members of the educational community must explore carefully diverse children's actual experiences in schools in order to understand how to meet the educational needs of these children. This investigation focuses on the critical role of a cultural and linguistic mediator named Vue as he helped to elucidate the literacy learning opportunities of Deng, a Hmong child, in Deng's fifth grade mainstream classroom. The questions guiding this investigation were (1) what was the nature of Vue's participation during the view session conversation, and (2) what was Vue's role in explicating Deng's interpretations of his literacy learning. This work illustrates that mediators can play an important role in shaping the nature of ongoing conversations by the manner in which they choose to engage in conversation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)