I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Francie Woodford, Associate Professor of ESL and College Composition at the Community College of Philadelphia. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with her because we share many of the same interests and much of her work aligns with my research topic. With my understanding of how and why linguistic discrimination occurs in classrooms (and society as a whole), her insights provide me with effective measures to celebrate different languages and cultures in classrooms to develop educational spaces centered on respect. I appreciate her willingness to share some of her own experiences and walk me through some of her considerations for inclusive instruction. I can tell after this interview —and as you’ll see below— that she is a very thoughtful educator and that her students are lucky to have her.
What languages has she learned? How did she come to learn these languages?
When speaking with Dr. Woodford, I learned that her journey to becoming a multilingual educator starts with being a multilingual learner herself. With study abroad experience in places like the Netherlands and Spain, she knows a variety of world languages: Spanish, French, Dutch, and German. She first studied abroad in The Netherlands when she was seventeen years old, and she became fluent in Dutch after spending a year away from her native California. The linguistic knowledge she’s developed throughout her life now gives her the ability to understand languages like Portuguese or various creoles due to their similarities to Spanish and French. (While she humbly denied this in our interview, I expressed to her that I think this is truly impressive!)
What made her decide to become a language educator?
A significant motivator on Dr. Woodford’s journey to becoming a multilingual educator was the disconnect she sensed between the information she had been learning in school and the knowledge she knew the outside world had to offer her. After her year studying abroad in The Netherlands, she realized from her experience that the world was so much bigger than she had come to know before. She returned home with this in mind, decided she wanted to go to college, and now holds a Ph.D. in Multilingual/Multicultural Education. With this qualification, she can make a change so that the information students get within her classroom aligns with a more accurate representation of the outside world.
How do Dr. Woodford's experiences inform her teaching practices?
Dr. Woodford combines her linguistic knowledge, observations of other language educators, and studies of multilingual/multicultural education to implement inclusive teaching practices in her classroom. She recognizes that we live in a society that often holds whiteness as the standard, and she explains how she’s come to understand that many white colleagues of hers possess a certain mindset that doesn’t always account for diversity, equity, and inclusion. To combat the reinforced notion of whiteness as the standard, she made change in her ESL unit to replace a featured coursebook that focused on Benjamin Franklin with a book titled The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. This book tells the story of Malawian inventor and author William Kamkwamba who utilized his ingenuity to change his community and expand its access to electricity and running water. The change in books was pushed forward by recent social unrest related to the Black Lives Matter movement, and the shift from highlighting a white American protagonist to highlighting a black Malawian protagonist follows the movement’s idea of recognizing the equal importance of non-white lives and voices.
Dr. Woodford, alongside a group of other faculty members, exercises something called “Cultural Humility” within the concept of courageous pedagogy. She states:
“When I go in to teach, I don’t consider my culture as the superior culture [or my race as the superior race]. No, I have cultural humility.”
She recognizes the difference between teaching English and imposing her own culture on her students. Instead of considering her culture as the superior culture, she gets to know her students without diminishing their respective cultures or their identities. A key consideration for her practice is merely acknowledging the values attributed to students’ names. Being a newcomer English student should not equate to having one’s name anglicized, and Dr. Woodford makes careful considerations about addressing students by the right name. However, this doesn’t mean asking the student what he or she would prefer to be called and stopping the conversation there. In addition, she probes the student to uncover this history behind the name he or she wishes to be called. For example, if a student with a French name states that she wishes to be addressed with an anglicized pronunciation of this name, Dr. Woodford will ask some follow-up questions to understand why this is the case. Before immediately agreeing, she’ll discover whether this altered pronunciation is something the student requests because it helps her establish her American identity on her own terms or whether it’s something she does to avoid having to constantly correct others on how to pronounce her name. As demonstrated in the story “The Death of My Mexican Name,” cultural erasure takes many forms, and the failure to uphold and respect the value of a student’s name is one of them. Dr. Woodford takes precautions to prevent cultural erasure by digging into the history of her students’ names, reinforcing the power they hold.
Another one of Dr. Woodford’s considerations for inclusive ELL instruction is asking students to fill out a survey at the start of the semester that gives her a better sense of who they are as learners and individuals. The information she gathers in these surveys includes general information (each student’s name, address, email, phone number, and college major, etc.) as well as some more personal information (whether the student has a job outside of school, how many children the student has, how the student feels about having his or her grammar corrected in front of the class, how the student feels about reading aloud in class, etc.). Dr. Woodford stresses that she leads her classes with “love and kindness,” fostering an environment that pushes students toward success while taking into account their individual needs and comfort levels. She understands the importance of balance in her teaching style for ELLs. Bombarding students with corrections without first verifying that they are comfortable with receiving constant correction creates a situation where students shut down and become reluctant to practice their oral communication skills in class. Likewise, deferring from calling on the student who is not yet confident enough to read aloud provides this student with time to build his or her confidence and eventually volunteer to read without prompting from the teacher.
Citing the motivational framework for culturally responsive teaching, Dr. Woodford states:
“What guides my learning is not my lesson plan. What’s guiding me is my learners’ experience in the moment… [If I can’t find the most clear, simple, inclusive way—meaning including them from their experience to understand something—, then my instruction is worthless].”
Above all, her focus is on being able to educate the whole student. In order to meet students where they are and recognize their experience in the moment, she is not afraid to try new things. If I’ve learned nothing else from this interview, I’ve learned how crucial it is for educators to not limit themselves to one set way of teaching. Doing so prevents them from establishing an inclusive space and fostering student attitudes. The willingness to apply students’ suggestions for curricular changes provides a learning opportunity for both teachers and students: students become more engaged and the teacher acquires a new learning tool/activity for his or her collection. Additionally, the willingness to try new things corresponds with the willingness to accept that no one is free of bias. This is something that can strengthen one’s teaching practices or weaken them, but the difference lies in deciding to actively combat them. An important consideration for overcoming biases is continuing with professional development whether one is a teacher with no experience, five years of experience, or even fifty years of experience. By welcoming different ideas and perspectives, educators can accomplish Dr. Woodford’s initial goals of ensuring an accurate connection between the classroom and the outside world and ensuring developing culturally conscious learning spaces.
Ideally, I would have been able to observe a live class and speak with both students and teachers about the classroom measures employed to promote inclusive ELL instruction, but I was unable to do so due to restrictions related to COVID-19. In lieu of observations from a current class, I observed prerecorded class videos featured on the ¡Colorín Colorado! website for the educators and families of ELLs.
This video highlights some of the things teachers can do to make ELLs’ transition into a new school year and a new environment as seamless as possible. In the section below, I’ve identified four of the considerations featured in Ms. Prentice’s classes which make an impact on ELLs and connect to the practices implemented by Dr. Woodford:
Smile!
Smiling is something that can help all students feel more comfortable as they adjust to a new school year, and it’s one of the easiest considerations to implement for English language learners. Seeing a smiling face provides a feeling of reassurance for students who may be navigating living in a new country, learning a new language, and trying to make new friends. It improves students’ moods as they naturally respond with a smile of their own, and it causes them to perceive their teachers as accepting and trustworthy.
Pronounce Students’ Names Correctly
As Dr. Woodford posits, there is immense value in each of our names, so it’s important to maintain that value through proper pronunciation. For newcomer ELLs especially, there is a profound comfort in having a teacher pronounce one’s name the way it’s pronounced at home. A consideration as simple as this may help ease feelings attributed to being geographically distanced from their homelands. While it doesn’t bring them back home physically, it reinforces cultural bonds that are tested by relocation.
Learn Some Words in the Students’ Home Language(s)
In addition to preserving student’s names, preserving students’ mother tongues is an important consideration to support ELLs. Not only does it help establish a bond between the student and the teacher by demonstrating the teacher’s interest in the student’s culture, but it also allows for more effective acquisition of the English language. Utilizing students’ knowledge of their home languages boosts their learning of English as it allows them to transfer skills in each of the four key language areas: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. For a teacher like Dr. Woodford with knowledge of different world languages, the ability to communicate with students in their other tongues provides for more memorable and effective learning, and it helps them establish connections between English and their home languages.
Be Welcoming of Students’ Various Cultures
Most importantly, teachers should work to embrace student cultures within their classrooms and allow for cultural exchange. As the video mentions, some ways to do this are offering books about students’ home countries, offering books in students’ first languages, providing opportunities for ELLs to share their experiences, and finding ways to connect class content with students’ traditions. If students feel their voices and identities are truly valued, they are more receptive to instruction and more enthusiastic about learning. Language-rich and culture-rich classrooms allow for far more than the learning of English— they expose all students, no matter their background, to different perspectives and expanded worldviews.
Ms. Gonzales-Espinoza’s considerations for diversifying course materials reinforce the idea that representation matters. By selecting a single anchor story, Cinderella, and examining different versions with variations across gender, geographical location, and ethnicity, she demonstrates the power of stories as unifying tools. Who says Cinderella has to be the blond princess we’ve come to know her as? Who says she has to be a princess and not a prince? Who says she has to speak English? As with many stories, each culture has its own Cinderella equivalent, and it’s important not to specify a telling of the story as the only one that’s acceptable.
Students should never feel as though they must leave a part of their identity behind when they walk through the doors of a school. I’m a proponent of educating the whole child, and this can never be achieved if part of a student’s identity is hidden by oppressive school practices. With the implementation of the practices for inclusion described above, students will feel that multilingualism and multiculturalism are welcomed in their educational experiences.
This quote highlights the view of multilingualism and multiculturalism as benefits as opposed to drawbacks within schools. There is an abundance of advantages to learning different languages and learning about different cultures, yet monolingualism prevails in many U.S. classrooms. Appreciation for language shouldn’t be limited to the space of a foreign language classroom— instead, it should extend throughout all educational spaces. Through the learning of a second/additional language, students are able to strengthen their home language use and improve in various areas of their academics.
As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie informs us, there is a real danger in accepting the single story. While many of our stories may be similar, no two are identical. The failure to account for the differences in our stories while acknowledging their similarities prevents meaningful learning opportunities. If a newcomer ELL from France enters a classroom filled with students all born in the United States, for example, the students may have predetermined notions about what a French or European student is. Likewise, the newcomer ELL may look at his or her new class and assume that each of the American children is the same. If neither the newcomer nor the native-born students try to avoid subjecting the other to a single story, then a key source of cultural exchange is lost. Engaging in discourse about stories, whether they be common folklore or personal narratives, allows people to learn about different identities, and this exchange of information helps cultivate cultural competence.