Throughout the year, the Illinois Resource Center offers informative, relevant and FREE workshops for educators across the state to receive free professional development credit hours. We’ll be giving you a sneak peek at some of the workshops ahead, so stay tuned to find the workshop that’s right for you!
Here, IRC Specialist Carly Spina previews her next workshop on incorporating heritage languages when you are monolingual, taking place April 27th at 3:30 p.m.
As educators and leaders that serve multilingual learners, we know and understand that language is closely tied to our identities. Languages connect us to our families, our cultures, our communities, and our rich life experiences. We know that it’s important that we know the learners that we serve. How can we move beyond acknowledging our languages, and actively incorporate them into our spaces?
How exciting it is to be living and breathing in a linguistically rich world! Languages are floating in the air of our grocery stores, banks, streaming services, radio stations, and social media feeds. Every time I walk through the aisles of a Target, I am thrilled to find t-shirts, books, candles, or mugs that express an idea in a language other than English. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the US actually has no national language- we are a linguistically rich country!
I wish sometimes that I had a magic wand that would grant me language abilities across all the language groups I’m privileged to serve. It would make life so much easier, wouldn’t it? However, even when I don’t share a language skill with a student, family, teammate, or community member- I’m still able to do a few great things to share, communicate, and connect!
Inside of our learning spaces, let’s gain a better understanding and awareness of the rich languages that exist in our spaces. Let’s bring them to the forefront! How can we ensure that we are intentional about the languages that are present on the walls? How can we make it a point to include multilingual texts? How do I create and sustain a space that is linguistically inclusive for the families that I serve? How do I actively invite the community to lift up our languages?
In this workshop, I can’t wait to share a few thoughts and ideas around this topic – from the lens of a classroom, a school, family engagement, and community engagement. I’m also excited to hear what you are doing in your spaces!
