Submitted by: Adele de Biasi Pelz
5/26
We used this meeting to summarize and reflect on the curricular changes and additions to our program to better include a broader range of diverse authors and topics that reflect anti-racism, equity and a wider array of countries, cultures, people and families around the world.
Some examples:
L.S. : – Creating families “different” from your own
– Poetry by pablo Neruda
M.S. : – Researching countries that reflect the personal history of or connection with the students.
H.S. : – In Spanish and French, researching, creating websites, writing blog posts and reading stories and texts about hispanic and francophone speaking nations, people and culture.
– In Mandarin, comparing Chinese and American school systems and learning about and exploring the geography, history, and hardships of life in the provinces.
6/2
At this end of year meeting we reflected on and discussed the questions provided to us to further support the DEIJ work along with our department.
1. Some positive movement for us would be expanding our curriculum to include issues of diversity, responding to the needs and identities of our students, and creating safe spaces for our students.
– Gender equity : We will continue to examine with each other and our students any biases in language, gender, pronouns, accent, vocabulary, speech and expression.
– Inclusion : We will continue to give our students a voice in choosing what it is they would personally like to pursue, study and explore, albeit that those choices do not always align with our goals for anti-racism. And we will attempt to create a safe space for our students of color to share their voices with confidence, support and respect.
– Survey : At the beginning of the year, we will give the students an opportunity to share information about themselves, their background, the languages they speak at home, how they identify, what they hope to achieve, and why they chose to study the language of choice.
2. An ongoing challenge is always contact time, which requires prioritizing and flexibility. However, it is often native speakers who do not get enough contact time and are also students of color.
-We need to address ways in which we can educate and raise the awareness and accountability of our white students in ways that will move them towards making more informed curricular choices and being better listeners and agents of transformative change.
– We need to keep these discussions going, they have only just begun.
– We need to keep evaluating our content, assessing our practice, and searching for ongoing sources, materials, and P.D.that represent diversity. With so many expectations put on educators, it is critical to know and discuss as a faculty the needs of the students.
3. Our department can be supported by recognizing that World Language is by definition a model for diversity. To study language and culture is to understand the existence of people authentically in the surroundings in which they live. We cannot be fair to people from other cultures and countries who live in the US when we put labels on them. In our classes it is more important to represent the culture of the language we teach.
4. We are dedicated to bringing people together through globalization and multiculturalism. Learning a language other than your own is becoming culturally competent and can open doors without which you would not have access and this needs to be acknowledged.
In conclusion, our goal and challenge is to highlight the diversity within the countries about which we are teaching. At the same time, we live in a society that tends to label, group and all too often separate rather than include. So trying to bring our students to a place of understanding through a cultural lens is our World Language mission.