TEIS Newsletter - February 2022 (Plain Text Version)
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ARTICLES EDUCATING FOR FUTURE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER LEADERS
The city of Jerusalem is home to Jews, Christians and Muslims; to great wealth but also severe poverty; and to a host of ethnic backgrounds, each with its own unique practices and culture. This ancient/modern hub is home to the David Yellin Academic College of Education. There, I am a teacher educator in the college's English Department. We prepare future English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers to teach in elementary and secondary schools, mainly in Jerusalem and the surrounding districts. In our courses we have L1 Hebrew speakers, L1 Arabic speakers, L1 English speakers as well as speakers of other languages. Our student population reflects the religious, ethnic and socioeconomic heterogeneity indicative of Jerusalem. Dismantling Binary Thinking One of the first ideas I address with my students is the pervasiveness of binary thinking. Phrased initially in more layman's terms, I give examples from language classrooms such as "motivated" and "unmotivated" learners and "strong" and "weak" learners. We discuss how learners can be both of these classifications and others, depending on the internal and external contexts at hand. We also look at examples from the local context such as "Jewish" or "Arab" and "religious" or "secular". Through theme-based units embedded in proficiency courses, students grapple directly and indirectly with these often reified categories. For example, this past year in a unit on identity in one of my first year academic proficiency courses, two L1 Arabic speaking students gave a written presentation on culture and identity. In their presentation, they described learning about each other's cultural traditions and the differences they uncovered. The monolithic unit of "Arab" was dismantled and students were able to see that there is a great deal of complexity and layering within the term Arab. Moreover, the simplified Arab-Jewish (Palestinian-Israeli) binary frequently used to characterize the region lost some of its clout and students gained an awareness of the plurality present in each "side" of this socially constructed binary. Helping students to acknowledge and become aware of predominant binaries (both local and general) is one of the first steps to ensuring that they, as teachers, can use more nuanced language when they enter the classroom. Language teachers who are able to see that perceived or externally constructed binary sameness, does not equal sameness can better engage with the heterogeneity and difference they will inevitably encounter in their EFL classrooms. On the local level, this means recognizing that there is diversity within dichotomies such as religious and secular. Learners' do not need to be preemptively categorized and the identifications they deem most salient can be recognized. Students who feel seen, validated and able to express their most salient identities, are ultimately more successful language learners (Darvin & Norton, 2016) Seeing Multiple Understandings An extension of dismantling binary thinking is seeing multiple perspectives or understandings. Rather than assuming understanding of the situation at hand, and responding, I encourage students to delay the urge to react and to first consider how the interlocutor, be they student, colleague or supervisor, came to the belief or behavior being exhibited. An apt example of this transpired a few years ago when Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, overlapped with Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror. In the corridor of my college, a temporary memorial had been erected on a chalkboard. Students could write the names of fallen soldiers or other expressions of mourning and condolences. The exhibit was in Hebrew and to a veteran Hebrew-speaking Israeli, a fairly obvious memorial site. However, given the use of a chalkboard and the absence of any other language except for Hebrew, the possibility for misunderstanding was present. One of the Palestinian, L1 Arabic speaking students erased a name from the chalkboard and wrote a ubiquitous greeting for the month-long fast "Ramadan Kareem." Tensions ensued with each "side" accusing the other of misstep. Allegations were hurled and the Palestinian student was accused of desecrating a memorial site. As conversations and debriefing sessions took place, it became clear that the incident was a misunderstanding, a mistranslation of the context and an unfortunate clash between the ways in which Yom HaZikaron and Ramadan are marked. The lessons for the students were many. Beyond the obvious conclusion that a chalkboard is not the optimal medium for a memorial site, the situation was an opportunity to discuss multiple understandings of a particular linguistic landscape and the ensuing, often unspoken, meanings. For Jewish-Israelis schooled in the dominant cultural ethos the site was "obviously" a memorial for fallen soldiers. The symbols and language used reflected this. But for L1 Arabic speaking Palestinians from East Jerusalem the context was not apparent or translated. They viewed it through a different cultural lens, one that in that moment was focused on the holy month of Ramadan. Rather than reacting impulsively and assuming intention or understanding, language teachers can bring to light different understandings as well as the nuanced layers present in multilingual contexts. Even in monolingual settings, "translating" the dominant or expected cultural discourse is an important step in any attempt to genuinely dismantle hegemony. Instead, what we are too often seeing are individuals "punished" or canceled for failing to demonstrate proficiency in the expected discourse. Lead language teachers can play a key role by teaching not only vocabulary and grammar but the semantic, pragmatic and semiotic meanings relayed within a particular context. We empower learners when we create safe spaces to ask and question; to be curious about meanings and to acknowledge that there are multiple ways to see and understand situations. Engaging in Reflective Practice The final concept I will address relates to the notion of reflective practice (see Farrell, 2018; Richards & Farrell, 2011). Any attempt to create a safe space for learning how to teach a new language, including learning how to use the language to engage in critical thinking, requires patience, compassion, explanation and reflection. Indeed, the previously mentioned ideas cannot be advanced without regular and ongoing reflective practice. How did the learner get to that answer or action? What is my role as a language educator in mediating the situation at hand? What can I do specifically and uniquely as an English language teacher? The unique context in which my college is situated offers multiple opportunities for reflection both generally and specifically within the context of Jerusalem. An illustration of this transpired over zoom this past year. I met with students who were in their final year of study to discuss administrative and logistical aspects of their future employment placements. I explained that first year teachers could be placed in different districts including outside of Jerusalem and within The Occupied Territories. At the end of the session, one of the students remained on zoom and asked to discuss my use of the term "Occupied Territories." He expressed concern and suggested that I use a more neutral term, particularly because one of the other students lives in a settlement that falls within that jurisdiction. The ensuing conversation required courage and honest reflection. I needed to reflect on my choice of the term and the student needed to reflect on why he found its usage problematic. We both needed to delay the impulse to react and to attempt to see the situation from the other's point of view. In an age of instant everything, delaying response and first reflecting is a cornerstone of (language) teacher leadership. This attribute requires thoughtful attention to beliefs and feelings; subsequent attention to thinking and finally to the ways in which thinking then informs the discourse we use. This serves future teachers when they encounter a disrespectful student, a difficult parent, or conflicts that arise in the classroom, be they general issues or those specific to the local, sociopolitical circumstances. * * * English teachers teaching language in an area characterized by intractable conflict are regularly called upon to reflect on their beliefs, both generally and within their specific social contexts. English language teachers can play an important role in guiding learners towards critical, thoughtful thinking while accessing information, knowledge and ideas in a language that, in this context, functions as a language of wider communication. English is certainly not a neutral language but accessing it and learning how to use it is part of building a more just, equitable and mended society. References Farrell, T.S.C. (2018). Reflective practice for language teachers. In The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching (eds J.I. Liontas, T. International Association and M. DelliCarpini). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0873 Darvin R., Norton B. (2016) Language, identity, and investment in the Twenty-first Century. In: McCarty T., May S. (eds) Language Policy and Political Issues in Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education (3rd ed.). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02320-5_18-1 Richards, J., & Farrell, T. (2011). Practice teaching: A reflective approach (Cambridge Teacher Training and Development). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139151535
Dr. Julia Schlam Salman is a lecturer and teacher educator at the David Yellin Academic College of Education in Jerusalem. She also teaches in the MA TESOL program and the Division of Languages at Tel-Aviv University. Her research interests include language education, second language acquisition and English language learning and teaching. |
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