What did you learn from your own story? How is your own story a story of resilience and how can it be used to support your plurilingual students?
I learned how plurilingualism is embedded in my culture as a Canadian and in my grandparents and great-grandparents lives in Zimbabwe and Jamaica. The oral history and my story strategies of this toolkit made me reflect on my family’s immigration history to Canada and how their story is one of strength. I can use these reflections in my efforts to support plurilingual students. This investigation into my own story has taught me new strategies on how to model braving up, and how to collaborate and learn from the experiences of plurlingual students.
What strategies do you plan to employ to support your plurilingual students and why? How do you see yourself incorporating these ideas in your lessons?
In my classroom, I hope to incorporate all the strategies on my website: ethnography, photo voice, journey comic, poetry, and my story; as well as some that are not listed. Additional strategies I would employ are split image portrait (one half is the outer side of the student and the other half represents that inner part that cannot be seen as readily) and micrographies (a picture that is made of words). I would use these strategies to teach not only ELA, but core subjects such as science and social studies. For example, photo voice can be used to present issues related to climate change that students are passionate about.
How do you see building community and elevating student voice also as an opportunity to support civic engagement and student agency with wisdom and compassion?
Elevating student voice gives students the agency to be heard within their classrooms, the school, and in the community. These plurlingual tools help students apply their full linguistic repertoire in the classroom, and ensure they are given the tools to be heard in the classroom, not silenced. ELs are key members of the school and community. Their unique skillset, culture, languages, and experiences have the power to enhance the school and community, educate others, and reinforce an ideological shift away from monoglossia. This encourages the rebuilding of communities and emergence of values that support diversity, plurilingualism, and the abandonment of deficit thinking.
How do you plan on being an educational leader? How do you plan to engage with other stakeholders including parents and community members?
I plan on being a leader by becoming a plurilingual “champion”. I want to employ all the strategies I have learned from this course in my teaching. I believe that being an educational leader requires expanding the radius in which your actions make a difference. I think this expansion requires collaboration with parents, community members, educators, and district board members. These people are key stakeholders in making necessary changes. I plan on engaging with them by attending meetings, rallies, and hosting events that provide opportunities to educate key stakeholders on how there is a convergence of interests between what they want and what plurlingual students want. I also would create opportunities for plurlingual students to address stakeholders so they can personally represent their interests and use their voice as much as possible.
What are your next steps to incorporating what you’ve learned? How have you grown in your love, wisdom, and calling?
The next steps would be to put what I learned into action. When I enter my clinical placement in August, I intend on employing these strategies I have learned and model braving up. I feel confident I possess the toolkit to become a plurlingual “champion”. This knowledge has helped me grow in my live, wisdom, and calling by helping me on my path of becoming the teacher that makes a difference.