Let’s not have another 2021. I mean not just in society in general, but also in our classrooms.
How?
Let’s stop making language gains our primary focus. Let’s make the kids our primary focus.
When we focus on language gains, we invariably end up favoring the few. This divides classes. Instead, we should focus on finding ways to teach that includes all of our students. How?
It’s easy. All we have to do is focus on community-building as well as the equity/ inclusion piece. When we do that, all of our students are naturally drawn into what we are doing in the classroom, thereby creating community. From there, the language gains follow. But without the community-building piece and the equity /inclusion piece, our focus on language gains is not easy to attain.
I have written a lot about that here, but I just wanted to address it again, to communicate that, as the editor of this site, that is what my primary focus now in 2022 will be for this group – reaching kids.
To say it again, this year we will be focusing on community-building and we can then realistically expect strong language gains working from that foundation.
