Challenging Frameworks of Scarcity with Debora O and Tara Wren
Join us for Challenging Frameworks of Scarcity: How the Multilingual Project Nourished Existing Abundance to Shift Institutional Culture towards More Just Language Practices (Social Justice Community of Practice )
What happens when we consider students as experts on the student experience, and teachers as potential conspirators running sympathetic experiments to optimize learning for the actual students in their classrooms?
In a fit of curiosity fueled by a moment of institutional consideration, Debora O and Tara Wren invited students and teachers alike to share strategies for learning across and between languages, while nudging academic culture around perfection in fluency, and cracking their own and others’ expectations for who students and teachers actually are, and what we might actually create together.
Taking advantage of being seen as nurturing, kind-hearted ladies, Debora and Tara gathered up and shared student and teacher experiences of linguistic marginalization to seed a culture shift that emboldened multilingual students to show up to school with more of their identity and magnificence. Nefarious as ever, Debora and Tara continue to suggest that not only are non-standard and unexpected students deserving of space at our school, but are vital to the success of our larger goals as an institution and as humans.
About Debora O and Tara Wren
Debora O is a lecturer (sessional instructor) teaching in the Faculty of Culture and Community at ECU since 2009. As an educator, she takes a social justice approach to teaching and mentoring. She believes in teaching students to be critical and in empowering them to speak from the numerous spaces and communities to which they belong.
Tara Wren is a teacher, parent and mender, who thinks and writes about communication and miscommunication in contexts of neurodiversity and language learning. She experiments with gestures of care and invitation in exploring ways to create welcome for students, staff and faculty who exist outside of institutional imaginations.
We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).