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Trisha Dowling
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John Turnbull
| In composing the call for submissions for this edition of the
SRIS Newsletter on “Critical Stories as Social Justice,” outgoing
editors Ethan Trinh and Luis Javier Pentón Herrera said they had been
inspired by stories of multilingualism from around the world. The aim
was “to celebrate these individuals’ courage, brilliance, and excellence
while honoring their critical journeys and stories.” Certainly, part of
the attraction of teaching English as an additional language is to
witness as learners, beautiful in their diversity, add to an already
formidable translanguaging repertoire by sharing stories in a novel
linguistic code. If we pay attention to the phrase “critical stories,”
we are led to notice, in the tradition of critical scholarship or
critical pedagogy, how such stories connect to a wide spectrum of
questions related to power, agency, materiality, resistance, and change
(see Price, 2004, p. 3).
We present seven submissions that play with such questions and
that help us consider how story, originating among learners, scholars,
and transmitters of the English language and from the arts, health
sciences, ethnography, peace work, and critical praxis, shapes both
individual identity and movements toward justice and more equitable
relationships in community.
The first four submissions take us from an immigrant detention
center in Texas (Helen Boursier, “Facilitating Art/Reflection for
ESOL/ESL with Large Groups”) to Colombia, where Yecid Ortega conducts
anthropological fieldwork and asks, in an artful blending of student
stories, what it means “to be human in a posthumanist era” (“From Hell
to Heaven? We Are Humanity, Not a Country”). Authors Bedrettin Yazan
(“Critical Autoethnography in TESOL”) and Abir Ward (“Social Justice
Pedagogy”) ask how self-reflective storytelling affect the researcher’s
and instructor’s task and identities.
In separate sections, Boursier offers a timely report on
stories emerging from one English-teaching field site in Matamoros,
Mexico, among those suffering from restrictive U.S. policy against
asylum seekers in the borderlands (“Team Brownsville’s Escuelita de la Banqueta”). Instructors looking for
extensive reading to help bring stories of social justice into the
classroom will benefit from Tung Vu and Canh Truong’s extensive list of
resources (“Integrating Civic Engagement through Extensive Reading in an
EFL Context”). Finally, in a call to action, Emily Feuerherm brings
attention to narratives of disparity in health care amid the COVID-19
pandemic.
As new newsletter
editors, we welcome your comments on these contributions and these
issues (email srisnewslettertesol@gmail.com)
as we act to track such dynamic conversations and serve the Social
Responsibility Interest Section and broader membership of the TESOL
International Association.
References
Price, P. L. (2004). Dry place: Landscapes of
belonging and exclusion. University of Minnesota
Press. |
