The founding and inception of Coral Way's bilingual program marked the beginning of Miami's multilingual era, as well as the start of modern bilingual education in the U.S. As multilingual and multicultural Miami has evolved, bilingual programming has not remained a priority in the school district. This dissertation study examines how language policies are interpreted and appropriated in an existing elementary bilingual program in Miami by teachers and administrators under restrictive policy contexts, and how students in the program respond to these explicit and implicit language policies through their language practices and ideologies. An ecological framework (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996) incorporating the sociolinguistic context of the school was used to analyze agency exerted within and across policy layers using ethnographic methods in a multilingual ecology (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007). Findings suggest that teachers' and administrators' ideologies are complex and multifaceted, and do not always inform teaching practices, but do play an important role in language policy appropriation. In addition, students exhibit agency in embracing their dynamic bilingual practices and bilingual identities even in a restrictive language policy environment. I argue that students are language policy actors, 'do-ers', or makers, and that their language practices play a critical role in the making of school language policy. This study carries implications for practitioners, educational researchers, and communities with significant language-minoritized populations to expand and improve bilingual programming for linguistically and culturally diverse learners schooling in challenging policy contexts within multilingual ecologies. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]