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US Looks to Taiwan for Chinese

Sunset on Zhongxiao Road in Taipei

Through the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO), the U.S. and Taiwan have launched the U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative, which is aimed at “expanding access to Mandarin and English language instruction, while safeguarding academic freedom.” The move comes after Confucius Institutes have closed across university campuses in America due to concerns that they promote China’s agenda.

To mark the launch, U.S. Deputy Secretary for Education Mitchell Zais joined State Department officials and representatives from AIT at a virtual meeting with Taiwan representatives to identify potential steps that the U.S. and Taiwan could take to meet the growing need for Mandarin teachers in the U.S. and for English instructors in Taiwan.

Taiwan can “play a key role” in addressing interest among U.S. students in learning Mandarin— and should use the opportunity to tout its culture and democracy, Brent Christensen, director of AIT, told Nikkei Asia. “Learning Mandarin from Taiwanese teachers means learning Mandarin in an environment free from censorship or coercion,” he added.

Taiwan plans to be bilingual by 2030 and wants to recruit more native English-speaking teachers, which could give U.S. teachers opportunities to teach abroad. American states and school districts will have the opportunity to expand existing educational partnerships or develop new ones to meet the growing demand for Mandarin instructors. Indiana already has an agreement with Taiwan to bring Mandarin teachers into its schools.

The benefits of the partnership extend to postsecondary education. For example, National Taiwan University signed an agreement to partner with the Partners Discovery  Institute, an education and research center led by the University of Illinois System, while Stanford University has agreements with Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology to bring top Taiwan scholars to Stanford to conduct research.

Postsecondary institutions can also apply for the Department’s Title VI and Fulbright-Hays grants to increase language instruction or cultural experiences in Taiwan, including Language Resource Center, National Resource Center, and the Foreign Language and Area Studies programs.

The recent meeting also provided an opportunity for the AIT and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), focusing on strengthening cooperation and collaboration on international education, especially language education.

As Deputy Secretary Zais explained, “Students who speak several languages have an advantage in many aspects of their careers and lives.  I am confident our partnership can help more students gain these important skills—on Taiwan and in the U.S.”

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In 2018, Congress passed a spending bill that cut Department of Defense funding for Chinese language programs at universities that host Confucius Institutes, which caused many to close, although over 50 U.S. universities still host them.

In August 2020, Mike Pompeo, then secretary of state, called the institutes “an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign.”

The U.S. also ended its Fulbright exchange program last year in China and Hong Kong, leading to a surge of interest in Taiwan’s Fulbright program—along with an increase in U.S. funding.

Up to 60 Taiwanese teaching assistants will teach Chinese at U.S. host universities in the 2021-2022 academic year, up from 39 placements in 2020 and 25 in 2019, according to Lisa Lin, the program’s director at Fulbright Taiwan.

The number of U.S. applicants for all Fulbright Taiwan programs has doubled from 2018 to 2021.

Seal of Biliteracy Goes Nationwide

Close up of three college friends standing in the street with arms around each other. Cheerful boys and a girl wearing college bags having fun walking outdoors.

For the first time since its inception, all 50 states and the District of Columbia are or have begun working toward implementing a state Seal of Biliteracy program, according to the recently released 2020 National Seal of Biliteracy Report for the 2018-19 Academic Year. The program, which began in 2008 as a grassroots movement in California aims to recognize the achievements of students who have achieved proficiency in at least two languages.

“Our vision is to help students recognize the value of their academic success and see the tangible benefits of being bilingual,” the report reads.

Currently, 40 states and the District of Columbia have already approved their state Seal of Biliteracy programs, while the remaining 10 states are either in the early stages of implementing the program or developing their state program. Most states’ programs award students for their proficiency in English and another language, however states like Hawaii allow students to earn a Seal of Biliteracy for proficiency in two languages other English.

According to the report, more than 100,000 students nationwide received a Seal of Biliteracy through their state’s program. California awarded the most seals out of any state, with 48,311 students receiving a Seal of Biliteracy. The state of Washington represented the widest range of linguistic diversity, with students receiving the seal for their achievements in a total of 69 languages, ahead of the states with the second most by 23 languages (California and New York both came in at 46).

Spanish, French, and German were the most widely recognized languages other than English for which students received the seal, however a vast swath of languages were represented, including indigenous languages like Navajo and Hawaiian as well as languages with relatively small populations of speakers in the U.S. like Afrikaans and Greek.

In some states, students received the seal for their proficiency in English and two or three additional languages. 12 students in Georgia received a seal for proficiency in English and three other languages—more students than in any other state to achieve this feat.

Introducing ‘School’

Q1: What activity can’t parents get kids to sit still for?
Q2: What activity can’t parents get kids to stop doing?

A1: Online school. A2: Video games.
This juxtaposition is particularly powerful considering linguist James Gee’s observation that video games are, at their core, instruments of learning. Furthermore, he points out that they encapsulate complexity as a feature. That is, people play video games because of, not in spite of, the difficulty involved for them to win.

Teachers and software developers are already jumping to develop gamified learning tools for the classroom, which is a good start. Here is a “next level” thought experiment for you: school itself as a video game. Structured around proven modalities like Fortnite and World of Warcraft, it would see students assemble in small teams for well-defined game-level objectives, such as searching for treasure or fighting orcs. In order to succeed, they would need to pass school-level objectives such as solving math or reading comprehension problems or completing more complex tasks (like programming a robot to follow a path to get to a door). The intrinsic motivation for completing the former objectives would provide the impetus to complete the latter objectives.

Unlike brick-and-mortar schools, which need to be built for each neighborhood, School game-level infrastructure would only need to be built one time. Bringing together the brightest minds in video gaming and education once would propagate society-wide benefits for years to come.

Such a platform would be at its most powerful if it integrated tools for both teachers and developers. Teachers would create content and design learning pathways for their students to follow. They would be ever present, checking in with students where necessary and supplementing game content via direct video connections with individuals and teams. If students didn’t know how to complete a problem, they could simply click a button for live online help.

The current edtech landscape contains an embarrassment of riches. There are thousands of tools and applications for teachers and administrators to choose from, each with its own niche focus, interface, and pricing structure. By inviting these developers to School, the platform would provide a well-needed opportunity for consolidation. Application interfaces to teach vocabulary, writing, science, programming… all would be available for teachers to seamlessly integrate with their curated content. Assessment and performance evaluation would likewise be built into the infrastructure. Students wouldn’t need to take tests in School because all activities would require students to demonstrate competence. Teachers and parents could even print out a daily summary of tasks completed by the student. Intelligent systems could adapt content for learners so they don’t need to waste time on previously mastered curricula. The need for and effort of assigning, completing, and grading worksheet-style homework would evaporate.

This School proposal doesn’t presume to eliminate the need for teachers (quite the contrary), nor should it be implemented at the expense of real-world activities such as music, art, PE, and free reading. Rather it is a framework for capturing students’ attention where they already digitally live and directing that attention and their drive to learn and master complexity away from Fortnite and toward their education.

Heidi Brumbaugh, PhD, is the developer of Vocab Victor, a word-learning app for smartphones. She received her PhD in linguistics from Simon Fraser University in 2015, with a focus on vocabulary and computer-assisted language learning. She dreams of one day banishing flashcards to the shoebox of history. Follow her vocabulary blog at vocabvictor.com/blog.

Canada Launches First Indigenous-Language TV Channel

A new, all-Inuit Inuktut language channel has been launched in Canada, serving as the country’s first channel broadcast entirely in an Indigenous language. Devised by the team at Nunavut Independent Television (NITV), Uvagut TV (Inuktut for “Our TV”) began broadcasting Inuktut language shows, movies and live programming on January 18.

“Our ancestors survived by the strength of their wits and their community. These new ways of storytelling can help Inuit survive for another thousand years,” said Dr. Zacharias Kunuk O.C., a filmmaker and co-founder of NITV in a press release. “People who turn on Uvagut TV any time of day or night will see our own stories in our own language.”

Uvagut TV is currently broadcasting Inuktut programming 24/7 all across Canada, and can also be streamed online worldwide at uvagut.tv. Along with the Aboriginal People’s Television Network, Uvagut TV is the second channel geared toward Canada’s Indigenous community, and increases the amount of Indigenous-language programming available to Canadians by approximately 500%.

Inuktut is spoken by the Inuit people of Canada, largely in the territory of Nunavut—it is the second most widely spoken Indigenous language of Canada after Cree, with about 35,000 speakers. Lucy Tulugarjuk, the NITV chair and executive director, said in a press release that she sees Uvagut TV as a tool for preserving and revitalizing the Inuit people’s language and culture.

“For me, Uvagut TV is a dream come true—to see Inuit culture and to hear our language full time on TV,” Tulugarjuk said in the press release. “As our elders pass away, we are fighting against time to keep Inuit culture and language alive for our children and grandchildren. TV in Inuktut all day every day is a powerful way to keep a living language for future generations.”

Image courtesy: uvagut.tv

Duolingo Report Suggests Fastest Growing Languages are All Asian

Duolingo’s first-ever Global Language Report was released at the end of 2020, showcasing language learning patterns, trends, and analyses around the world. The data reflects a 12-month time period between October 2019 and September 2020. The platform has over 500 million users in 194 countries and offers 98 language courses featuring 39 different languages.

Cindy Blanco, senior learning scientist at Duolingo, says that the data “tells the story of politics, social events, and cultural changes.”

After Covid-19 was pronounced a global pandemic by the WHO in March 2020, the number of new learners joining Duolingo soared rapidly, reaching 30 million worldwide within a couple of weeks. According to the report, it showed 67% growth compared to the same period in 2019, double the 2020 New Year’s spike and 1.5 times the 2019 New Year’s rise.

The countries with the highest number of new users and total learners are the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, India, UK, and China.

In terms of new subscribers during the first lockdown, Iraq had a 640% spike in March/April 2020—putting the country at the top of the list—while China grew more than 300%, even though their lockdown had started earlier.

Initially, people were registering for Duolingo to support their school lessons (27.9%), which was a lot lower (22.6%) during March/April 2019. Brain training as the motivation behind learning a language came second with 15.9% and travel reasons decreased from last year’s 19.9% to 12.7%.

The most popular languages are English (in 121 countries), Spanish (in 34 countries) and French (in 23 countries).

“[In] parts of the world, where English isn’t typically the first language… it’s clearly the most popular [choice]. The rest of the world is split between Spanish and French. North America is a great example of this because it’s just perfectly divided—the U.S. prefers to study Spanish, Canada prefers to study French,” says Blanco.

Languages like Irish, Finnish, Hawaiian, and Indonesian are more sought-after within their own borders. “There are the countries where people are studying for immigration or long-term reasons, like Scandinavia and there are other places where the language study is really driven by travel,” Blanco explains.

The fastest growing languages around the globe are all Asian languages. Hindi, Korean, Japanese, Turkish, and Chinese differ from each other linguistically but their “growing presence in the media and pop culture” is a common ground, the report suggests.

Germany is the hardest working country, where learners complete the most lessons per person, followed by Japan and Hungary. These nations are also the most dedicated users in terms of streaks, frequency, and length of time spent on learning a language, although the order changes by Hungary topping the list, succeeded by Japan and Germany.

Blanco believes that these committed, hard-working countries have “a more specific goal” in mind in comparison to regions where learners don’t spend too much time on the platform but they keep up the work.

Evening learning might just be the secret to consistency when it comes to studying a language since half of all the countries prefer to use the app between 10pm and 11pm, while another 41.6% of them make time for it between 9pm and 10pm.

Advocacy Groups Call to Postpone In-Person Exam for ELL’s

A number of advocacy groups have called on President-elect Joe Biden’s education transition team to amend the requirements for the in-person WIDA Access exam for English Language Learners. The request comes due to the potential risks associated with such gatherings during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“No student should be forced to choose between their health and well-being, or taking a test that will determine their proficiency in learning the English language, especially during an unprecedented pandemic,” said David Hinojosa, director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in a press release.

In a letter submitted by members of the League of United Latin American Citizens, National Association for Bilingual Education and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (among others), advocates urged the team to issue guidance to state and local education agencies to ensure the safety of the students slated to take the English proficiency test given to ELLs each year. They also requested that an “opt-out protocol” be devised such that no student in remote learning would face adverse consequences for not taking in-person exams during the 2020-2021 school year.

According to Education Week, states are required to assess English proficiency under the Every Student Succeeds Act, and could lose funding if they do not meet the federal testing requirements. More than 30 states use the WIDA Access test to fulfill this purpose, however WIDA has yet to offer a remote version of the test due to concerns over whether or not a remote test would provide a valid assessment of students’ proficiency. In the letter to Biden’s education transition team, advocates asked that the Department of Education not penalize any state or local education agencies that cannot administer the required testing due to Covid-19 safety protocol.

“These tests can wait. Students of color who comprise the vast majority of English learner students have already been disadvantaged by remote learning and are under immense levels of stress. We cannot accurately gauge their progress right now by forcing them into schools that have been closed due to health risks,” Hinojosa said.

Webinar: Distance Learning—English Language Development & Dual Language Instruction

Recorded webinar on Distance Learning: English Language Development and Dual Language Instruction from the California Department of Education on May 14, 2020. This video is part of the CDE Distance Learning Series.

This video is 52 minutes and 51 seconds in length.

source: California Department of Education

California Set to Boost Education Spend

California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, is proposing to spend almost $86 billion in his newly released budget for the 2021-22 fiscal year, thanks to the state recording a $15 billion budget surplus despite the economic woes of the pandemic.

“The investments we choose must help our schools urgently and immediately recover from this crisis and accelerate learning for the students and families hardest hit by a global pandemic that has deepened historic inequities. Our priorities should not only help our schools emerge safely from the impacts of COVID-19 but should immediately double down on our efforts to level the playing field for a generation of students. I want to thank Governor Gavin Newsom for proposing a budget that—until our educators, school employees, and communities are vaccinated—addresses main areas of need as public schools consider how to safely resume in-person instruction. Today’s budget proposal also represents a strong start at tackling the growing access and learning gaps experienced most severely among our students of color, low-income households, children with disabilities, and students learning English,” commented California’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.

According to the governor’s proposal, the $227 billion budget reflects the state’s highest-ever funding level for K-14 schools—approximately $90 billion total, which will expand on multi-year investments for greater equity for students and the broader school community. Targeted investments in special education include $545 million in ongoing funds – building on $1.5 billion over the last two years – and $300 million in ongoing funds for early intervention for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. It includes over $475 million for professional development and investments targeted to address the impacts of the pandemic on students, especially those inequitably impacted. Recognizing the value of in-person settings for both social-emotional and academic development, $2 billion is proposed for immediate action to support and accelerate safe returns to in-person instruction beginning in February, based on a phased-in approach that starts with the youngest students. Recognizing that students will need support that extends beyond the traditional school day or year, $4.6 billion is proposed for action this spring to expand learning opportunities for students, including summer and after-school programs. To address student mental health needs, especially as a consequence of trauma and the pandemic, $400 million is proposed for school-based mental health. All of these funds will prioritize students and communities disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, with funds strongly weighted toward schools serving students from low-income families, foster youth, homeless students, English learners, and others disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

The budget is indicative of sharp reversal of fortune for California from last year, when sales, income, and corporate tax revenues plummeted at the beginning of the pandemic, resulting in a budget deficit of over $50 billion. The state received more revenue than expected over the last year after misjudging the depth of the recession and predicting that the stock market would crash.

In New York, where the fiscal year starts on April 1, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is proposing an $848.8 million increase in formula-based school aid over 2021 funding of $25.9 billion.

View the entire budget summary (education spending can be found starting on page 57) on the California Department of Finance budget web page.

Safety First

Here are five steps that all districts should take when implementing student safety procedures and protocols for 1:1 devices and online access.

With eight schools, 5,000 students, and a 1:1 Chromebook initiative across all grades, our high-performing district takes student safety very seriously. Our job is to give them anytime, anywhere access to information, but we also need to keep them protected and safe both in school and off campus.

After all, a school’s responsibility extends well beyond the traditional school day. This is especially true for districts that hand out devices to students, knowing that they need guidance and support along their digital journeys. To ensure that our students are using these devices responsibly, detect any potential causes for concern, and support social and emotional learning, our district recently implemented a student safety platform.

The investment has already paid for itself in ways we couldn’t have even imagined. Last December, for example, we received an alert about a student who was in crisis and possibly considering suicide. The student discussed the issue online with peers—a conversation that immediately triggered an alert on our student safety platform.

We knew right away that we had a middle school student who needed our help and support. After getting the alert, our middle school principal immediately dispatched the information to the police. The intervention meant the child was able to get to a hospital during winter break—when school wasn’t even in session—to obtain the necessary mental health support.

Five Steps to Success
To ensure that our staff, board, parents, and community understand our district’s vision for student safety, we instituted these protocols, which all districts can use to develop their own safety plans:

1. Get the whole community involved. All principals and board members were involved with the platform selection process,and the local police department also played a role in those early meetings. We worked together to create a plan of policies and procedures. That way, any time an incident occurred, everyone would immediately know what to do and how to act upon it.

2. Invest in technology. By working in partnership with our surrounding community and implementing the student safety platform, we can effectively protect students. We understand that it takes a village to raise a child. Bringing in a product like this helps us all sleep at night, knowing full well that our students are protected.

3. Ask law enforcement what they need from you. We wanted our local police department to know and understand what we were doing when it came to student safety. In return, they gave us tips about what information they would need should an incident occur. That way, if a principal makes a call to local law enforcement, he or she will be prepared with the right information. This allows the police department to react quickly and come into the situation well informed about what’s going on.

4. Have a follow-up plan in place. Managing student safety isn’t a “set it and forget it” exercise. Our follow-up procedures include placing students on a monitoring list, having our guidance counselors/child psychologist conduct follow-up conversations with the students, and utilizing support groups. Collectively, we want to make sure these students aren’t showing signs of being at risk and let them know that there are always services available to them.

5. Don’t check out during the holidays. We have medical, health, and wellness professionals and guidance counselors who provide for our students’ wellness, but oftentimes when students are in crisis and in danger of harming themselves, it’s not in the middle of the school day. It happens after hours, during holidays, or other times they’re off campus. Keep this in mind as you develop your procedures and protocols, knowing that the most important call you answer may come at 4:00 a.m. on Christmas morning.

Meeting the Challenge Head On
Because all of our students have Chromebooks, they also have access to the internet. With this comes a great responsibility to provide a high level of safety that goes beyond firewalls and makes sure students aren’t visiting prohibited sites. It’s also about recognizing cries for help and responding quickly to them. As districts, we all have the opportunity to gain access to this information through student safety platforms and to truly get students the help that they need.

Evan Abramson is director of Technology and Dr. Christine Burtonis superintendent of Schools at Millburn Township Public School District in New Jersey.

Begin from Within

Students will gain the benefits of a culturally competent teacher who is racially informed. If teachers recognize how oppression and systemic racism work and if they look through a racial lens in their work, they will understand that systemic racism impacts student lives and will start the lifelong journey to do the human work necessary to avoid perpetuating it in the classroom.

Setting the Stage by Beginning from Within
Looking to and starting with the needs of our students is instinctual for us as teachers. For example, responsive teaching requires that the teacher observe the students’ behavior and assess the best way to provide quality instruction. We carefully plan lessons to give them the skills needed for the next level and we carefully choose which messages we want them to receive on the walls of our classrooms. But rarely do we reflect on how we grew up and how our backgrounds shade our pedagogy. In my experience, many teachers do not look to themselves as focal points to satisfy learners’ needs.

Resma Menkem (2017) states that the vital force behind White supremacy is literally in our blood and in our nervous systems, no matter how light or dark our skin. He provides a startlingly different approach to the persistence of racism through the trauma associated with White supremacy. Literally beginning from within as it pertains to neuroscience and the body is the ultimate goal. In order to get there, we must understand some key terminology for cultural competency, oppression, White supremacy, race, and racism to do right by our students.

What does it mean to be culturally competent in this current world of COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and everything associated with them both? Recognizing that out of all the human elements of intersectionality, race is the only one that is not real. The human identifiers like ethnicity, gender, economic status, nationality, disability, religion, and sexual orientation are real with the exception of race. Race is the only identifier that was socially constructed, created by White property-owning males. Race was made up, a social construction. And racism is a by-product of race construction and a mechanism to support White supremacy. Yes, race and racism present complex realities. Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) know that racism is real although race is not. With this reality, understanding of one’s own cultural competency should go deep in order to optimize the learning experience of the teacher.

When I envision what needs to be done in our field of language teaching, I am reminded of the passion with which Michael Jackson sang “Man in the Mirror.” The teacher’s reflective practice of looking within by starting with self seems appropriate here.

“I’m starting with the man in the mirror
(Man in the mirror, oh yeah!)
I’m asking him to change his ways
(Better change!)
No message could have been any clearer
(If you want to make the world a better place)” (Ballard and Garrett, 1987)

When teachers begin from within, they recognize their own racialized being. Just as there is biological and psychological development of human beings, there is also racial identity development. These are demonstrated in continua of being for various ethnicities in Helms (1995), Cross and Oldershaw (2000), and Sue and Sue (2003). Each presents different stages of how we show up in the world. A paradigm-shifting experience is created by recognizing where we are positioned at any given moment of our lives. It acts as a mirror, making our currently unexplained existence clear. We must know where we are in order to know where we are going, and these models of racial identity development help in this process of seeing and understanding our racialized being.

Seeing and Understanding Racism
Through observation, both anecdotal and statistical, most English language learner (ELL) teachers from the U.S. are White. This underrepresentation of BIPOC in the field contributes to institutionalized racism. Linguistically marginalized students (Villegas, 2018) and non-White learners (Galman, Pica-Smith, and Rosenberger, 2010) are being taught by a majority-White teaching staff of 79.3% in U.S. public schools (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). Due to these facts, White or White-passing teachers will have to do the heavy lifting, because whether intentionally or unintentionally, they benefit from and uphold White supremacy when not taking action to be anti-racist. As members of a race-based society, BIPOC educators must also deal with how they have internalized racism.

Being teachers demands so much of us, but reaching our highest potential as human beings is all of our salvation. Racism is a social disease that permeates the very fabric of our existence. Then why do educators not recognize our obligation to address it? My hope is that most teachers want to make a change in the world through their work with students.
Making a difference is what I believe many teachers live for. However, a missing factor in our field of language teaching and in the institution of education as a whole is how racism touches all of our lives in some form. It is all around us, we are swimming in it, and it is in the air that we breathe whether we are cognizant of it or not.

How often do we, as teachers, educators, instructors, and faculty members, ask ourselves vital questions about our pedagogy on a consistent basis? Even more so, how many use an equity lens when doing so? For that matter, most teacher education programs neglect to show us how race, racism, and power operate in the classroom, from the textbooks we choose to the interactions we have with the caregivers of our students. Even what is mandated by the state or administrators of our schools is seeping with White supremacy in all its glory, yet most are blind to it and remain in a bubble of indifference and apathy. Thus, it persists.
Being color-blind is not an option when our students demand otherwise. Those who believe we live in a color-blind society even after the barbaric and sadistic killings of Ahmaud Marquez Arbery and George Floyd should read Debby Irving’s book Waking Up White, Omi and Winant (1994), and Wingfield (2015). Bell (1995) informs us in layman’s terms that oppression occurs on four levels in a framework he calls the four Is. Those include ideas, institutions, interpersonal, and internal forces of domination. We cannot tackle one without intersecting with the others. The pervasive system of racism has kept us in this place, and this place affects our students and us.

Reflective practice should be a part of every teacher’s daily routine, and the integration of a lens for diversity, equity, inclusion, and social and racial justice demands that we take action. That action can take the form of being listener, reader, writer, researcher, and speaker. Listen to documentaries and videos about the lived experiences of Black people in light of anti-Blackness in the world. Read articles and books about the history of Indigenous people’s sacrifices. Write about your thoughts when learning about the cultures of people of color. Research White supremacy embedded in our institutions and White fragility that stops the dialogue from happening. Speak about centering BIPOC in your actions.

Cooper (2020) initiated this series with a wealth of resources to get language teachers started on the human journey of profound cultural competency. We can make sense out of the inhumanity in our world by addressing the trauma that it has caused us all and doing the interpersonal work that must lead to decentering Whiteness and disrupting systems through our own education. Starting with ourselves, we can listen to Seeing White, a podcast that looks at racial structures through the lens of the oppressor. Specifically for language teachers, read Byran and Gerald’s (2020) piece on how educational institutions can address the ways language is coded and weaponized. Keep a reflective journal by writing about what you are discovering and learning about how you have internalized racism using the questions in “Reflective Practice” (Coney, 2015). Research the long-standing history hidden from us, like Black Wall Street, human zoos, the Wilmington, NC, coup of 1898, and the “gasoline baths.” Get the tools to speak up whenever you encounter those difficult conversations by practicing Campt’s (2018) R.A.C.E. model strategies in the White Ally Toolkit. America and Moore (2014) provide a powerful life habit-building opportunity for those whose eyes have not been open very long.

Live Up to Your Fullest Potential
Are you an actor, ally, or accomplice? There are levels of engagement when doing this human work of dismantling racism through our teaching and it can take a lifetime, so we must get started. It is the missing link that demands our engagement to be anti-racist educators. To do this diversity, equity, inclusion, and racial and social justice work is to be fully human (Jensen, 2005). After teaching for over 30 years, it could be no clearer to me that this is the work we should be doing for ourselves, for our students, and for the world.

“No message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
(If you want to make the world a better place)
Take a look at yourself and then make the change
(Take a look at yourself and then make the change)” (Ballard and Garrett, 1987)

References
America and Moore, LLC. (2014). “21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge©️.” Debby Irving, https://debbyirving.com/21-day-challenge/.
Ballard, G., and Garrett, S. (1987). “Man in the Mirror.” Bad. Los Angeles: Epic CBS.
Bell, J. (1995). “The Four I’s of Oppression,” Begin Within, https://beginwithin.info/articles-2/.
Byran, K., and Gerald, J. P. B. (2020). “Weaponization of English.” Language Magazine.
Campt, D. W. (2018). The White Ally Toolkit Workbook: Using Active Listening, Empathy, and Personal Storytelling to Promote Racial Equity. Chicopee, MA: AM Publications.
Coney, L. L. (2015). “Reflective Practice,” https://sites.google.com/tc.columbia.edu/courageous-educator/reflective-practice.
Cooper, A. (2020). “Dismantling Racism: Working from the inside out.” Language Magazine.
Cross, W. E., and Oldershaw, B. (2000). Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American Identity. Microtraining Associates, http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?CTIV;534955.
Galman, S., Pica-Smith, C., and Rosenberger, C. (2010). “Aggressive and Tender Navigations: Teacher educators confront whiteness in their practice.” Journal of Teacher Education, 61(3), 225–236. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109359776.
Halley, J. O. M., Eshleman, A., and Vijaya, R. M. (2010). Seeing White: An Introduction to White Privilege and Race. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Helms, J. E. (1995). “An Update of Helm’s White and People of Color Racial Identity Models.” In J. G. Ponterotto, J. M. Casas, L. A. Suzuki, and C. M. Alexander (eds.), Handbook of Multicultural Counseling (181–198). Sage Publications, Inc.
Irving, D. (2014). Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race. Cambridge, MA: Elephant Room Press.
Jensen, R. (2005). The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Menkem, R. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press.
Omi, M., and Winant, H. (1994). Racial Formation in the U.S.: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge.
Osler, J. (2020). “Opportunities for White People in the Fight for Racial Justice,” www.whiteaccomplices.org/.
Sue, D. W., and Sue, D. (2003). Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice. New York: J. Wiley.
U.S. Department of Education (2019). National Center for Education Statistics Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_209.10.asp
Villegas, A. M. (2018). “Introduction to ‘Preparation and Development of Mainstream Teachers for Today’s Linguistically Diverse Classrooms.’” Educational Forum, 82(2), 131–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131725.2018.1420848.
Wingfield, A. H. (2015). “Color-Blindness Is Counterproductive: Many sociologists argue that ideologies claiming not to see race risk ignoring discrimination.” Atlantic, 8(3), https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/.

Lavette Coney, ELL chair, brings a wealth of wisdom and skills to the topic of social justice English language teaching. She has eight years of experience living and teaching in Japan, 56 years of lived experience as a person of African descent, over 30 years as a TESOL and social justice educator, and a vast experience providing workshops, lectures, and seminars. Please refer to her Biography Slides. [email protected]

Links
The Massacre of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ItsPBTFO0&t=31s)
When White Supremacists Overthrew a Government (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVQomlXMeek)
Human Zoos: America’s Forgotten History of Scientific Racism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY6Zrol5QEk)
The Dark History of “Gasoline Baths” at the Border (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkD6QfeRil8)

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