We’ve Moved!

We’ve moved!

The TESOL Blog can now be found at www.tesol.org/blog.

 

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/weve-moved/
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Social-Emotional Learning in ELT: 3 Takeaways From Action Research

This blog is part of the TESOL Research Professional Council (RPC) Blog series. 

I have been teaching EFL at higher education institutions in Turkey for more than a decade. One thing that became apparent to me over the years was that it can be very stressful to be a young adult language learner. The year 2019 was a particularly challenging one for those working and studying at Turkish universities. In Turkey, there was a sudden rise in the suicide rate, particularly among young people, according to news reports. This phenomenon did not leave the university unscarred. A conversation that I had with a colleague was particularly thought-provoking for me. She told me how powerless she felt and she had had no idea what her students had been going through.

Revising the Language Classroom Ecology Through Action Research

Reflecting on her words, I decided to increase my understanding of my students’ experiences and emotions by creating a classroom ecology where learners were motivated to speak about their own lives. Social-emotional learning (SEL) provided a blueprint for me in designing my English as a foreign language (EFL) speaking module. According to SEL, designing programs and lessons that promote learners’ social and emotional competencies are of critical importance. Accordingly, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning proposed five competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

I used these competencies to design a participatory action research intervention that included speaking tasks related to my students’ everyday challenges — these activities urged students to scrutinize stressful social situations and work together to find solutions. Overall, participating students reported that they felt more respected and engaged once they had opportunities to speak about their lives in the target language. I share findings from this practitioner inquiry experience here.

Three Takeaways as a Language Teacher

Overall, engaging in this study helped me to learn about my students’ lives and afforded me three takeaways as a language teacher:

1. Awareness: We teachers need to have a way to systematically take learner emotions into account in our teaching. An SEL framework helped me to do that.
2. Authenticity: The topics and concepts I ask my learners to engage with need to be relevant to their lives.
3. Achievement: Doing practitioner research helps me become a better teacher (such as making my lessons more engaging). It also makes language teaching more fulfilling and less stressful as I better understand what is happening in and around my class.

If you are interested in making research a part of your teaching as well, please consider attending the TESOL 2023 convention in Portland, Oregon, USA and the three Research Professional Council events at that convention: The Research Mentoring Workshop – Connecting Teaching and Inquiry (a ticketed event that focuses on classroom-based research), TESOL in Focus Colloquium (on understanding the importance of language learners’ psychological experiences with respect to engagement, motivation, and anxiety, among other issues), and the TESOL Research Agenda Fair (in which teacher-researchers highlight emerging research trends and priorities in TESOL). In addition, the Research Professional Council Blog Series supports TESOL professionals accessing research to inform practice.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/social-emotional-learning-in-elt-3-takeaways-from-action-research/
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Memes and GIFs for Writing Development

As a consumer of social media, I have long been fascinated with memes, particularly those that relate to topics I am invested in, like teaching, literature, or composition. Memes, usually consisting of an image file overlaid by a short text, have become ubiquitous in popular culture. Many are based on images taken from films or TV shows, while others are based on a memorable photo or pair of  photos. The humorous text references current events or everyday experiences. Similar to memes, GIF files are omnipresent in social media, particularly reaction GIFs, which are very short video clips showing characters’ facial expressions. Both memes and GIFs can be found through a web search, but can also be created using free and easy-to-use web tools like Canva or Giphy.

As much as I enjoy consuming memes and GIFs in my own social media use, I also see great potential for these formats in supporting second language learners’ writing development. Two recent publications highlight ways that language and writing teachers have drawn on these resources. In this blog post, I summarize these two articles with a focus on how they can be useful for teaching second language writing and suggest additional activities writing teachers might try to bring memes and GIFs into the classroom.

Memes as Intercultural Communication

Memes can be the basis for an ongoing discussion of culture and language between learners and native speakers of a language. In their article “An Ecological Perspective on the Use of Memes for Language Learning,” published in the journal Language Learning and Technology (2023), Yiting Han and Blaine E. Smith report on analyses of a chat group between U.S. college students learning Chinese as a foreign language and Chinese international students at their university. The researchers noticed that both the learners and the native speakers frequently used memes in their posts. When they analyzed the discussions, they found that the learners were able to increase their understanding of Chinese culture as they negotiated the meaning of the memes with the group. Han and Blaine also found that the learners were able to express their own multicultural identities when they chose and created their own memes that bridged U.S. and Chinese cultures.

This study suggests that second language writers can not only learn about culture from consuming memes, but also contribute to culture through creating memes. These are sophisticated language skills:

Being able to read, reply, reproduce, remix, or even create memes in [a second language] requires not only the ability to interpret the words, but also the ability to decipher the information hidden behind the interplay of semiotic resources (e.g., humor, cultural significance, etc.). (p. 156)

According to Han and Smith, the text chat with memes allowed learners to have fun, draw on their existing knowledge of social media, and learn slang in social context through a playful and relatable experience.

Text chats with memes could be something second language writers join outside of class, but the authors of this article also suggest ways that teachers could bring memes into the classroom. One idea is to use memes for teaching intercultural awareness by having the teacher select memes for the class to analyze as a group. Alternatively, students could individually collect memes on a topic to share and discuss with their classmates.

Academic writing GIF

GIFs for Academic Writing 

GIFs similarly draw on students’ existing understanding of social media communication. In her article “Using GIFs to Position Students as Scholars” in the journal Prompt (2023), Jamie Henthorn describes a writing assignment that uses GIFs to link students’ informal literacies to new academic writing skills while also positioning novice writers as scholars. Henthorn notes that her first-year college writing students are often intimidated by academic articles and unsure how to read or respond to them. This assignment directs students to analyze a journal article and report on their analyses by incorporating reaction GIFs to represent personal responses to each section of the text. In teaching this assignment over several years, Henthorn has found that even students who struggle to write about their understanding of academic texts are able to find and create apt GIFs to represent that same understanding. The author comments:

GIFs are one way to make analysis feel less formal, and they provide students another way to conceptualize their reactions to a text. Beyond my course, I want my students to see themselves as scholars able to engage with and build on the research they encounter. To do this, they should learn to trust their intuitions and observations about research. (p. 13)

In making the case that this assignment also positions first-year college students as scholars, Henthorn suggests that the process of selecting GIFs helps students recognize that they are in a conversation with the text and their own readers. Students have an investment in representing their reactions accurately so that readers know what worked (and didn’t work) for them in the text. Henthorn’s assignment could be modified for many different writing tasks that require learners to react to a source, from a film or song to a novel.

Note: If you are unfamiliar with the journal Prompt, check it out. It’s an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes nothing but academic writing assignments!

Meme about teaching writing

Other Teaching Ideas With Memes and GIFs

These two articles have prompted me to think about many other ways I might incorporate memes and GIFs into my teaching. As Henthorn notes, these formats bring in a sense of fun while still challenging students to develop essential academic writing skills. Given how many memes and GIFs are freely available on the internet, students can easily search and select ones that best represent the points they want to make.For creative writing, students might choose to start with a meme and make up a story about the situation in the meme. Going the other way, students can select memes or GIFs to retell a familiar story or narrate an original story.

As Han and Smith suggest, memes can also be fruitful prompts for discussions of culture. Students might create memes that represent their home culture for an audience from a different culture. They could also remix memes from one cultural context for a different context by providing text in their new language and editing the visuals (see an example in Figure 4 of Han and Smith’s article).

It’s worth noting that both memes and GIFs are visual forms of communication. Alternatives for visually impaired learners might include using sound clips or adding metatext to make images accessible.

If you’ve developed any activities that connect memes or GIFs with teaching writing, please share your ideas in the chat!

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/memes-and-gifs-for-writing-development/
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7 Benefits of Reading Aloud to Multilingual Learners in School

What are your most beloved memories of elementary school? One of my most poignant recollections of my early school years is that of my teachers reading books aloud to the class after recess. My parents didn’t read to me as a child, so the fact that nearly all my teachers in K–8 did so was crucial to my development as a reader and led to my lifelong love of reading.

When I became a teacher, I believed that reading aloud to multilingual learners (MLLs), and encouraging parents to do the same, has multiple benefits for their academic learning, and I’ve since found that this belief is supported by research—in addition to my own experiences over time. In this blog, I discuss seven benefits of reading aloud to MLLs in school. 

1. Sustain Cognitive Development

Reading aloud to MLLs helps maintain their cognitive development. According to Ellie Collier (2019) in an article entitled “Why Is Reading so Important for Children?“, Collier wrote the following: “By reading to children, you provide them with a deep understanding about their world and fill their brains with background knowledge. They then use this acquired background knowledge to make sense of what they see, hear, and read, which aids their cognitive development.”

2. Improve Working Memory

Dr. Tracy Alloway from Durham University’s School of Education describes working memory as a mental notebook. Good working memory eases students’ path to learning. Working memory helps students pay attention. It is a way to store information in your brain while you complete a task. When teachers read aloud to MLLs and discuss what is read, it allows them to practice using their working memory. Students with a good working memory understand what is read to them and will retain what is read at a higher level than those students who have a poor working memory.

3. Increase Vocabulary Development

Vocabulary is increased when teachers read to their students. It is also associated with a higher level of reading comprehension and word recognition ability. Note that when reading aloud to MLLs, teachers need to teach words and concepts that are crucial to the comprehension of the book before reading. Though you don’t want to explain every word that MLLs may not understand, it’s important that they know the key vocabulary.

4. Model Reading Fluency, Automaticity, and Expression

Automaticity is developed when MLLs have plenty of opportunities to hear and practice English. When you read to them, MLLs are exposed to the rhythm of English, including intonation and variations in pitch. In a previous blog, “5 Activities to Improve Reading Fluency in Pre-K-5 ELLs,” I talk about choral, echo, partner, and performance reading, which all help MLLs practice fluency, automaticity, and expression.

5. Foster a Love of Reading for Pleasure

According to the National Literacy Trust, students who read for pleasure have greater self-confidence as readers, develop positive attitudes about reading, and are more apt to become readers later in life. It must be emphasized that MLLs should be encouraged to read in their home language as well as in English.

6. Strengthen the Bond Between Teacher and Student

I always felt that the bond with my students was reinforced when I read aloud to them. All eyes were on me, and student concentration and attention were increased. This is an activity that appealed to all students, from high achievers to those who struggled. Every day, students would ask me if I was going to read aloud to them. I also found that they were motivated to find books that they could read on their own, and that they subsequently viewed themselves as readers.

7. Enhance Imagination and Creativity

When MLLs hear stories read to them, it sparks their imagination and creativity. Listening to different stories and hearing about diverse characters and distinctive settings can open up varying possibilities in MLLs’ minds and inspire them to think more creatively. It also exposes them to a wide range of books and an abundance of new vocabulary. Teachers can have students do  follow-up activities that enhance imagination and creativity when a book is completed. For example, my students wrote a different ending to The Three Little Pigs and illustrated that ending.

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Do you read aloud to your MLLs? Have you found other, additional benefits to doing so? Please share in the comments below!

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/7-benefits-of-reading-aloud-to-multilingual-learners-in-school/
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Mindfulness in PD: Not a Magic Pill, but Certainly a Superpower

For the next few months, I will be inviting voices from a variety of contexts to share their work and thinking on professional development (PD). This post focuses on mindfulness as a practice that can inform our PD, teaching, and whole lives and is contributed by Mary Scholl at the Institute for Collaborative Learning in Costa Rica.

I don’t believe that there is a magic pill that we can give every teacher to bring meaningfulness and ease into their lives in the classroom. But If I were suddenly given the ability to make sure that all teachers everywhere were given one specific superpower, and I could choose from all the tools, techniques, frameworks, materials, approaches, and methodologies that I’ve encountered, tested, and adapted in my 34 years of teaching and working with teachers, I would choose mindfulness.

Mindfulness gives us — educators and students both — all the power of being present, aware, nonjudgmental, and kind.

• It gives us the power of noticing what is happening in the moment.
• It empowers us to take a pause when emotions are strong to just feel them and let them be, so that whatever is underneath those emotions can surface and we can respond in a productive, inclusive, and tender way.
• Mindfulness brings all of us greater agency and potential in those moments when we are overwhelmed with the myriad decisions we need to make and the intensity of the conditions that we must maneuver through regularly.
• Mindfulness won’t “fix” the challenges in our world, but it will give us the capacity and potential to respond to the challenges from a place of inner wisdom and grace.

With mindfulness as our superpower, we would all have greater capacity to respond to the challenges in our worlds, to intentionally develop our ability to experience joy and happiness as well as to fully experience sadness and sorrow and build better relationships where we all have a better understanding of our own and each other’s needs and a greater degree of respect.

What Is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of how you are experiencing the present moment and accepting it without judgment. It involves paying attention to the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that you experience in the moment with an attitude of openness, curiosity, and acceptance.

Mindfulness can be practiced through different kinds of activities, such as meditation, deep breathing, journaling, and walking. We can practice mindfulness meditation in our daily activities, like washing the dishes or driving a car. By practicing mindfulness, we can learn to be more aware of ourselves and our surroundings, allowing us to make more conscious decisions and create a greater sense of peace and well-being.

My Mindfulness Journey

I first encountered mindfulness meditation at graduate school in 1992, when one of our professors told us he had just returned from a 10-day silent retreat. That sounded extreme, and I thought he was crazy. Two years later, I was sitting my first 10-day silent retreat and shortly thereafter I began seeking to learn about this superpower of mindfulness meditation. Something inside of me was shifting, and I was feeling calmer, more centered, more present, and more able to be with my students. It felt like magic.

Over time, my personal learnings get woven into my language teaching and work with teachers, and mindfulness meditation has become a part of who I am and how I teach. One of the simplest practices, which I’ve been doing for 30 years, starts by taking a moment to slow down and just notice my breathing. This might seem overly simple, but it has given me so much peace; it helps me remember how amazing it is to have breath and be alive – and that regardless of what might be whirling around me, I am indeed alive.

Mindfulness in PD and in the Classroom

Incorporating mindfulness into PD and into language classrooms can be an effective way to help teachers and students become more engaged with their learning and develop their focus and self-awareness. Here are some examples:

• Begin class with a mindfulness moment to help teachers and students transition from their lives outside the classroom and to become present to the class.
• Take a moment when frustration seems high and shift the energies by doing a breathing exercise.
• Finish the PD or class with some quiet reflection time to help teachers and students gather their thoughts about what they most want to remember about class that day.

Another intention is to use mindfulness activities that help teachers and students develop their language skills. For example:

• Encourage students to take a few moments to relax and focus on their breathing before they begin a speaking activity.
• Have students close their eyes and visualize a scene from a book they are reading to help them better understand the material.
• Invite students to do a guided meditation before a writing task or keep a reflective journal about their experiences as a learner.

By incorporating these activities into language classrooms, mindfulness practices help students in their language learning journey.

The Research

There are many neuroscience studies that offer us evidence to the potential of mindfulness to alleviate and manage stress, develop our positive capacities, and bring integration into our lives. You can find some of this evidence in these websites:

• Mindful
• Mindful Schools

You can also find activities and evidence of why they work on the website offered by the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer’s 40 years of research on mindfulness has influenced thinking across a range of fields, from behavioral economics to positive psychology and has useful implications for our work as teachers. You can learn more about her ideas in this video.

Resources to Build Your Practice

• Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, by Jon Kabat-Zinn: One of the first books I read on mindfulness, I remember repeatedly thinking as I read, “I need this. My students need this.”
• Teach, Breathe, Learn: Mindfulness in and out of the Classroom, by Meena Srinivasan
• Happy Teachers Change the World: A Guide for Cultivating Mindfulness in Education, by Thich Nhat Hanh and Katherine Weare: This is one of my favorite books on mindfulness to share with teachers. It has a lot of concrete information, activities and advice.
• “Awakening Joy: 10 Steps to a Happier Life”: This is a five-month online course that takes about two hours a week and directly relates to learning mindfulness in a way that is applicable in the classroom. If you would like a gentle and affordable introduction to mindfulness and how it can serve you as a teacher, I recommend this course!
• Greater Good Magazine and Greater Good in Education (in addition to their “Mindfulness for Adults” page) is a phenomenal resource for teachers. Based at the University of California at Berkeley, they have courses, practices, and resources that are all researched based and easily accessible.
• Sounds True has free resources, courses, and resources you can purchase. I have been using their resources for many years and recently completed a two-year program on teaching mindfulness with them.
• Lauren Alderfer has written some beautiful books we can use to both learn and teach. I particularly enjoy Teaching from the Heart of Mindfulness.

Overall, incorporating mindfulness into how we lead PD and in turn, how teachers can use it in their learning and teaching practice in the language classroom can help create a more positive and effective learning environment, which can lead to better outcomes for our students and for ourselves.

Do you use mindfulness practices when delivering PD? Share your experiences in the comments!

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Mary Scholl deeply values presence, learning, empathy, creativity, and curiosity and is founder and fellow of the Institute for Collaborative Learning in Costa Rica.  She has been teaching language for 30 years, designing and implementing educational projects in Latin America for more than 18 years, and served as an English language specialist for 16 years in nine countries.  A teacher-trainer and trainer of trainers, Mary is also a certified practitioner and facilitator at the Centre for Holding Space and holds a certification in teaching mindfulness meditation from Greater Good Science Center and The Awareness Training Institute at the University of California at Berkeley. She holds an MA in teaching English and Spanish from SIT Graduate Institute and has done doctoral studies in adult learning and leadership at Teacher’s College at Columbia University.  She has lived and/or taught on four continents and currently enjoys working virtually around the world from her home in rural Costa Rica, in addition to some face-to-face work. She is a frequent presenter at local, national, and international conferences. In 2021, she was named one of the top 30 English Language Specialists by the U.S. Department of State in recognition of her lasting impact on the Specialist Program and on the field of TESOL.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/mindfulness-in-pd-not-a-magic-pill-but-certainly-a-superpower/
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4 Ways to Use AI to Build Laser-Focused Custom Content for Your Students

An incredible amount interest in artificial intelligence (AI) launched late last year and has gone through the stratosphere since I wrote about ChatGPT in December. Since then, a so-called arms race of AI has begun to flood the market, from lesser known options like Lexii.ai to the expected big hitters like Microsoft and Google. And that’s not even to speak of the image, voice, music, and video generation tools that are showing up.

While educators are spending a lot of time figuring out how their students might be using AI, many haven’t stepped back yet to take a breath and think about how teachers themselves can use these text generators to lighten their load and better engage students. One promising solution is the use of AI to create customized content for English language learners.

We know that customized content can increase participation and interest among students, but many teachers find themselves stuck using the same old textbooks that somehow still ask questions like “Have you heard of the World Wide Web?” The fact is that publishers can take anywhere from two to six years to update their content, and the areas they choose to update are not always where we’d hope.

No problem! Because now AI-powered content creation tools offer a unique opportunity for teachers to provide personalized learning experiences for their students in 30 seconds rather than waiting half a decade. Here are a few ways that teachers can use AI to create customized content for their English language learners:

1. Make It Local: Economy

Recently I was asked to present on AI in the Salinas Valley, an agricultural area in the central coast region of northern California. We were discussing the idea that American textbooks often talk about places like Los Angeles or New York City, but students get far fewer opportunities to read about and have lessons based on what they see everyday: rural, agricultural lifestyles.

Fortunately, teachers can now use AI to generate articles about the local economy of their city or region. With this in mind, a teacher in Salinas could use ChatGPT to generate an article that explains the different industries that drive the local economy, such as lettuce, tomatoes, or even wine-making. These articles could easily be converted into the foundation for specific lessons, including understanding key vocabulary and grammar points related to the topic, such as business jargon, verb tenses, and local pronunciations of important terminology.

2. Make It Local: Culture

Understanding the local culture is essential for language learners, and teachers can use ChatGPT to create articles that provide insights into the local culture. For example, a teacher in Perth, Australia could use ChatGPT to generate clear information on the history of local landmarks. Alternately, they could have it write an article that explains the Aboriginal customs and traditions of the area before settlers arrived. As always, please be aware that you are responsible for checking the accuracy of the information, but using AI is a great way to get 90% of the way there.

3. Tell Stories Using Popular Video Games as the Background

Many of our students are passionate about video games, and as teachers we can use this interest to create engaging and customized stories. Using AI, teachers can generate stories set in the worlds of popular video games, such as Fortnite, Minecraft, or League of Legends. Not sure which games are popular? Just ask your students! Once you’ve built a baseline, you can go all sorts of directions.

Take Minecraft, for example. You could ask a chatbot to create the beginning of a story, then tell students they have to write the remainder of the first chapter, but their character only gets one tool: the pickaxe. Once the students have successfully written a story, you can have the AI wrap up the chapter and reward the main character with the next strongest tool: the axe. This could go on as long as you like, and you could even hand over the generation of tools and rewards to classmates, eventually removing AI from the process altogether. These stories could, of course, include vocabulary and grammar points related to the game, as well as real-life situations that students can relate to, such as teamwork, problem-solving, and communication.

4. Write Quizzes Using Popular Celebrities as the Subjects

The majority of students are interested in celebrities and pop culture, and teachers can use AI to create customized quizzes that incorporate their interests. For example, a teacher could use ChatGPT to generate a quiz that tests students’ knowledge of their favorite celebrities, such as Beyoncé, Harry Styles, or BTS. The quiz could include multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank questions, or short-answer questions, and could cover a range of vocabulary and grammar topics, such as phrasal verbs, idioms, and adjectives.

Here is an example of what it created for me:

My Prompt: Write me 3 multiple choice questions that quiz students on their knowledge of prepositions. Make the subjects of the questions famous modern musicians like Beyonce, Harry Styles, or BTS

ChatGPT’s Response

Sure, here are 3 multiple choice questions on prepositions with modern musicians as the subject:

Beyoncé performed ________ the Super Bowl halftime show in 2016.
a. at
b. in
c. on
d. over

Harry Styles released his debut solo album ________ 2017.
a. at
b. in
c. on
d. to

BTS won the Billboard Music Award for “Top Social Artist” ________ 2018 and 2019.
a. at
b. in
c. on
d. by

Take It Further: Extending the Content

Finally, if you want to go all-in, you could take the content generated and plug it into a different AI service like Roshi.ai, which will analyze your text and do all sorts of content building, such as generating prereading questions, building vocabulary lists, constructing comprehension questions, and more.

As you can see, flipping AI on its head and using it to create customized content that your students care about can be a powerful and fast way to improve the dynamics of your classroom and to get buy-in from students who have grown bored with the same old content. By using AI, teachers can generate articles that cater to their students’ interests, needs, and proficiency levels, helping them achieve their language learning goals.

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As I mentioned in December, we are still at the very beginning of this new world. Some parts of this technology will get stronger and stronger, and other parts will create more confusion and headaches. As educators, we need to commit ourselves to understanding how this technology can be used, as our students will never again live in a world without it. As you explore ways to build custom content for your students, please share your experiences and ideas in the comments below. There is SO MUCH fun stuff to figure out, so let’s get going!

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/4-ways-to-use-ai-to-build-laser-focused-custom-content-for-your-students/
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Reading Black History Month at Dar America

Happy February from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte! For this post, to celebrate Black History Month, I’d like to write about the power of public libraries and how I came to read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

In 1991, I graduated from the University of Virginia and began teaching at the American Language Center in Casablanca, Morocco. I stayed for three years. Every day, I’d walk to the school on Boulevard Moulay Youssef — passing by a restored villa, “Dar America/The American House.” It was an extension of the Cultural Affairs section of the U.S. Consulate and, among other things, a library. I filled out a card and became a member.

Dar America had a small collection of books — just a few shelves. But that was exciting because books in English were hard to come by in Casablanca in the 1990s. You could take two home at a time.

One of the first that I checked out was Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. It’s the story of a Black man’s struggle to be seen and heard in a U.S. society that sees him as less than human.

Toni Morrison had just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Dar America had a copy of Beloved — a haunting narrative about the legacy of slavery through the life of a mother, Sethe.

I picked up Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s The Signifying Monkey — Gates’s articulation of a theory of Afro-American literary criticism.

And then, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and the journey of Janie Crawford as she searched for love and home in the U.S. South.

There was another by James Baldwin, a semiautobiographical story of his youth—Go Tell It on the Mountain.

They were awesome and powerful. I felt lucky to be able to take them home and enjoy them page after page. Quite frankly, I wondered why, even with undergraduate major in English from the University of Virginia, I had never heard of them before.

Like many from my generation and background, I didn’t buy books. That was a luxury reserved for Christmas or a birthday. The books I read were all free. Even in college, I checked them out from libraries. I read them because I had access to them.

But the one thing I had never ever read until Dar America was a book by an African American author. I still check out now and then those first titles I read, and I quote them in my academic writing. They are part of the “canon” I’ve constructed for myself over the years — “must reads” for anyone studying literature, and especially American literature.

A lot of what we read or don’t read simply depends on what we (don’t) have access to. Whoever buys the books to shelve a library is an influencer. I’m grateful to the Cultural Affairs officer who stocked Dar America intentionally — with the idea of showcasing Black History Month and the treasures of African American literature that I came to love. I wouldn’t have come to read them otherwise.

So here are a couple of questions to think about:

• What books in English (and other languages) did you (not) have access to as a young student?
• How did that accessibility shape your understanding of “the canon” of English literature?
• Why is it important for readers have access to the spectrum of voices that American literature encompasses?
• What can we do together to make that happen — as teachers, librarians, administrators, and policy makers?

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/reading-black-history-month-at-dar-america/
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