This article reports findings from a qualitative study of Spanish-English code-switching--or "Spanglish"--among bilingual Latina/Latino sixth graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles. Analysis of the data revealed significant parallels between the skills embedded in students' everyday use of "Spanglish" and the skills that they were expected to master according to California's sixth-grade English language arts standards. In particular, students displayed an impressive adeptness at (1) shifting voices for different audiences, and (2) communicating subtle shades of meaning. It is argued that this skillful use of "Spanglish" could potentially be leveraged as a resource for helping students to further cultivate related academic literacy skills. The article concludes with a discussion of specific implications for how teachers might begin to leverage "Spanglish" as a pedagogical resource by helping students to recognize, draw on, and extend the skills already embedded in their everyday use of language. (Contains 16 notes.)