“Let’s Create Communities!”

Coping with lost class time due to snow days can be frustrating, but also gives time to reflect on what we are doing. You have to re-prioritize when time gets shorter. I pause to reflect on the 5th Standard – Communities. This “last” standard often gets neglected, not only because it is “last,” but because it focuses on affective and behavioral goals more than cognitive “content.” We spend the vast majority of our time on “Communication” and “Culture” and there is indeed a huge amount of content there that is admittedly easier to quantify and measure progress in achieving. But wait.  We focus on the “How” and the “What” but continue as isolated facilitators of learning or, worse yet, providers of exotic, non-essential (in some people’s eyes who don’t see language study as “core”) content to the academically privileged.  We create our own moats and often willingly raise the drawbridges so we can sing, dance, and speak in the subjunctive in our realms.  Maybe the whole idea of “Communities” needs to come first! Not to supplant “Communication” and “Culture,” but to provide new context. Not just for our students, but amongst ourselves as professionals, and indeed with the members of the world cultural communities who speak the languages we teach and see the world through the cultural lenses we strive to give access to. 

Let’s broaden our own inner definitions of “community.” It’s certainly not most of the small towns or cities of West Virginia. With some exceptions, we are a state of small communities with fairly low cultural diversity.   Is it the groups we have our students form or that they form themselves? That’s certainly a start, as long as these small “learning communities” do something to stretch the linguistic and cultural realities of its members. Is it the groups we professionals gather together in, physically in conferences, workshops, immersion weekends, and fairs or virtually in Facebook and other such groups? Are our internet-mediated, newly –emerging communities class-to-class in the same school, class-to-class in different schools around the county or state or even in another country in the world? Yes, maybe all of the above. This year’s theme and the focus of our 2010 Conference in Elkins on September 24-25 is Renewing Our Vision: From “Foreign” to “World.” This isn’t just a trendy playing around with labels. This is a true shift from exclusive to inclusive. Web 1.0 offered the wonders of the websites which people could randomly access but still represented one-way, broadcast-style information giving. Yes, we had more choice and certainly customized our consumption of information, but we were still “consumers.” The new media was a digital newspaper, though there were “chat rooms” early on. Web 2.0 offers two-way forums for us to link up, come together, to be a member of a community. The 3rd –Person “Otherness” of “Foreign Language” study is giving way to the 1st –Person “We-Community” of “World Citizenry.” This sounds a little utopian and one-world-ish, but let’s resolve to do little things to move in that direction. Create some sort of community with members of your profession, share ideas, concerns, and dreams. Make contact with others around the world; make real the content we so often abstractly teach. The students may not always be sophisticated at processing grammatical concepts, but they know authenticity and relevance. We are in a position to “live large” in newly-created community memberships. Say to yourself:  I will do something today that creates more community bonds.

Have a great 2010-2011 year!

Brad Martin, President
          WVFLTA