To repeat the main point of the last article: how our students do in terms of language gains and how we do at our jobs is directly and deeply connected to how we address the concept of inclusion and equity in our language classrooms. If you can accept this, you will make professional strides that quite frankly will blow your mind.
Since this new series of posts on BLM will take the form of an ongoing discussion here in our group, it would be a good place for you to stop reading if you choose not to connect the dots between your classroom success and the Black Lives Matter movement. This applies even if you have only white students and teach in the suburbs.
All of us in language education, all of us in our flailing society at large, are encouraged to begin to see, with the wool removed from our eyes, how the particularly noxious form of American systemic racism that is eating away at the fabric of our not-so-great American family – so unique in the world until the truth about us finally reared its ugly head – has affected our and our students’ experiences of our language classes.
Three people were removed from this PLC a few months back because they wanted to discuss politics. I want to be clear. We are not here to discuss politics. We are here to discuss how respecting the Black Lives Matter movement can improve our students’ – and our own – day-to-day experiences in our online or regular classrooms, with the goal to stopping the hideous way we have treated all but the favored few in our classrooms over the years.