This article is part of a year-long ethnographic study conducted in an English dominant kindergarten in the United States. The classroom comprised 6 Spanish-bilingual English language learners and 17 native English speakers. The study was based on a theoretical framework that views language as the site for constructing social meaning and negotiating power. Such theory provides the foundation for asking questions about interaction that move beyond a strictly linguistic focus (Fairclough, 1989). The study demonstrated how relationships and interaction mediated through local gender constructions support and constrain English language learners' classroom participation. Based on these results, I argue that local gender ideologies operating in second language (L2) learning contexts affect students' access to the interactions that they need to develop a second language. TESOL professionals cannot treat gender simply as a fixed independent variable with universal outcomes. Gender meanings shift and change in subtle and not so subtle ways, requiring that researchers attend to local contexts and to consequences for local participants.