My Next Big Idea

Logging into my teaching class, I was intrigued to discover that our class would be taught in Spanish that night. For me this was a welcome challenge. I learned later that this activity was more of an isolating and frustrating experience for those with no previous knowledge to rely on What really struck me however was how my bi-lingual peers led the class: the act of changing the language completely reversed the power dynamics in our Zoom room. At High Tech High I have served a diverse community of students many of whom do not speak that language. How might constructing or learning a new language together equalise power dynamic in the classroom?

About the same time I discovered Lisa Delpit's "The Silenced Dialogue," where she argues that power is a language and that it can be learned: and moreover as educators we have a duty to teach it. Since then I have made intentional attempts to empower young people in my classes with the skills of that language by conducting workshops on grammar and applying intense focus to the structure of student's writing. In the same breath, I recognise that I serve and aspire to serve students from a range of cultures and linguistic backgrounds. I want them to know that language is context dependent and certain contexts explicitly or implicitly require that it takes a certain form. The language of power is not the only valid or acceptable way to communicate but it is useful. How could explicit instruction in the language of power be used to overturn power dyamics in the future? Connecting this idea to Lisa Delpit's other work around placing student identity at the core of our pedagogy, I began to dream about how I could use my Humanities focused classroom to explicitly teach the language of power and elevate other languages.

Essential Questions

In this unit students will engage with the essential of question of what is the language of power in the spaces they operate in? How does the language they use affect their identity? How does being exposed to an entirely new language do the same? What do they observe about about power dynamics within the class and within society when they use different languages.

Products

Students will work towards producing an interactive theatre experience in multiple languages to expose language power dynamics among the audience. To scaffold students approach towards this goal they will learn about body language to be able to identify and evaluate behaviour and take field trips to different socio linguistic occasions to observe and record observations about who has power in the room. I will draw from students own lives and experiences to source potential trips.

I plan to source a collaboration with a Kumeyaay orgnisation to enable students to learn about the land and space they occupy and investigate how learning about the language native to this land deepens or enhances their connection to it.

Project mini planner can be found here.