On a chilly Sunday morning at 8 a.m., in a city bustling with marathon runners, I presented on Cultivating Cultural Connections: A Novice Approach. Honestly, I expected only a handful of attendees. I was thrilled to see a sizable crowd show up—and also immediately regretted having prepared a post-it share out instead of a padlet or a google doc 🙂
I set out to address some of the challenges faced by World Language teachers in developing the intercultural competence of their Novice learners. First, investigating cultural products, practices and perspectives with students who have limited language skills, poses a unique challenge. Second, in a post-George Floyd world, fostering students’ understanding of diverse target language cultures requires a prior appreciation of cultures and identities within their classrooms and local communities.
How do we develop empathy?
During the session, I asked participants to share something they do to center their students’ cultures and to develop empathy toward each other. As stated above, this seems to be a pre-requisite before investigating cultures they may or may not be familiar with. Here is my working definition of “Culture”:
Participants’ insights
Here are the insights shared by participants during the session. The number in parenthesis indicates how many participants said the same thing or something very similar. All these suggestions are gems and wherever possible, I have linked the idea to a resource for you to investigate:
- “Incorporate important events in their lives in Calendar Talk” (5)
- “Personalized Questions & Answers (PQA)” (5)
- “Surveys” (3)
- “Ask students to find 5 things they have in common with their peers, including common concerns” (2)
- “Use students as the topic of study” (2)
- “If the topic is food, start with what they usually eat in their homes” (2)
- “Find out which celebrities they know and like and use them in your curriculum” (Example)
- “Set norms“
- “Model empathy and respectful curiosity”
- “Who is in the class? Students share a slide with pictures about themselves that showcases what they want us to know”
- ” After reading a short story in L2, I ask them to present a story from their own culture”
- “Weekend chat“
- “Chatmat from Amy Lenord (Anchors and Aides) on “My Identity” leads to an All About Me poster” [Note: this resource is available in several languages]
- “Gratitude Journals”
- “Celebrate holidays and birthdays”
- “When students are writing about where they live, I provide vocabulary unique to our town/state”
- “Teaching the word because unlocks beliefs + values”
- “Help them make connections between L2 and their home language (Arabic, Portuguese, etc.). Let them showcase their home language”
- “Use songs with multiple languages (not just L2)” (Example)
- “I remind them to embraces differences”
Your turn!
Do you have more ideas for centering students’ cultures and fostering empathy? I’d love to hear them—comment below!
PS: If you were in my session and do not see your idea, my apologies. I might not have been able to read your handwriting or did not understand how your idea supports centering our students’ cultures first. Please comment below to expand on your idea, I would love to include it.
Below are some further nuggets from my session, captured by my colleague Dorie Conlon. if you want to know more, head to Claudia Elliott’s podcast where we discuss intercultural competence for Novice learners.
