“How can we communicate if we don’t understand each other’s language?” Semira asks. Semira arrived in Norway as a refugee a few years ago. As part of the Introduction Program for newly arrived adults, she is now learning Norwegian as a second language orally while also learning to read and write for the first time in the second language. The language learning opportunities provided to participants like Semira vary, highlighting issues of social justice in education for adult newcomers. In this article, I will explore the education of adult newcomers in two classrooms at a learning center in a Norwegian municipality. Theories of pedagogical translanguaging serve as the theoretical backdrop, with stance, design, and shifts —the three strands of languaging pedagogy—as key analytical concepts. This study is part of a larger research project investigating the use of multilingual language assistants in second language learning where participant perspectives are the primary data sources. However, in this article, the primary data sources are interviews with three teachers, as well as observations of teaching.