Language is central to STEM education, and therefore to educational justice — that is the theme of our invited symposium, “Leveraging Linguistics to Broaden Participation in STEM,” presented along with Dr. Anne H. Charity Hudley, Dr. Michel De Graff (MIT), and Dr. Mary Bucholtz (UCSB) at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). So much inspiring work has been done, and is still left to do, building bridges from the humanities to STEM with language and culture at the core!
Baltimore Language in the News
I am honored to be a part of this Baltimore Sun multimedia feature story on Baltimore language change! The feature includes the news article, “Hold Up, ‘Hon’: Baltimore’s Black Vernacular Youthful, Dynamic, If Less Recognized than ‘Bawlmerese’”, as well as a short video in which I weigh in on language variation in the city, and an interactive lexicon. Leave me a comment and let me know your favorite Baltimore slang!
Read about Our Free App for Teachers, “Valuable Voices”
This UMBC News story describes how Anne’s and my free iPhone app for teachers, called “Valuable Voices,” is reaching teachers far outside our own networks. If you haven’t already, go to the App store, search “Valuable Voices,” and download, or just click here for the link. And if you are a teacher and are interested in participating in our follow up study later this year, send me an email!
(photo credit: Marlayna Demond, UMBC)
Our Commitment to Our Students
Yesterday I drafted the following statement with my colleagues in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Program at UMBC, as a means of reaching out and reaffirming our commitments to our students in this time of national upheaval.
“We the LLC Community reaffirm our commitment to diversity, to civil dialogue across differences, and to engaged scholarship on issues of critical social justice. We reaffirm our respect for multiculturalism and multilingualism locally, nationally, and internationally, and we see these strengths reflected and upheld in our LLC and UMBC communities. Please know that you are welcome to reach out to us and to each other to talk.”
For any students out there who value these ideals of diversity, dialogue, and community, who are striving for change, and who want to get a PhD — come work with us!
“Valuable Voices”: Our Free iPhone App for Teachers!
Dr. Anne H. Charity Hudley and I are excited to spread the word about our latest educational outreach initiative… a free iPhone app!! The app provides 12 ready-to-implement exercises for students and educators — one a month, for a year’s worth of teaching — to build awareness of language and culture. The teaching exercises are geared toward middle/high school English but could easily be adapted for elementary or even college, in a variety of content areas. Please download it, use it, and let us know what you liked — and didn’t! To download the app, go to the App Store on your iPhone and type in “Valuable Voices” — here is a screenshot so that you know what to look for. To our knowledge this is the only sociolinguistics app of its kind! Hopefully one day we can expand to create more apps — and expand to make the apps available to Android users, too. We couldn’t have done it without our team of assistants and our teacher consultants – thank you all!
AAA Digital Data Workshop
I recently participated in the workshop “Digital Data Management for a New Generation,” sponsored by the American Anthropological Association with support from the National Science Foundation Grant #1529315. Our group participated in creating instructional modules for Archaeology, Biological, Cultural, and Linguistic Anthropology that will cover digital data management and ethics. Here is a picture of our group (photo credit: Daniel Ginsberg):
Seated (L-R): Philip Cash Cash, Jenny Cashman, Christine Mallinson, Natalie Underberg-Goode, Candace Greene, Fatimah Williams Castro, Kathryn Oths, Blenda Femenías
Standing (L-R): Edward Liebow, Lindsay Lloyd-Smith, George Perry, John Yellen, Darlene Smucny, Thurka Sangaramoorthy, Ricardo Contreras, Sara Gonzalez, Arienne Dwyer, Brittany Mistretta, Ricky Punzalan, Amber Wutich, Jeffrey Mantz, Colleen Fitzgerald
The initiative was profiled in the September/October issue of Anthropology News:
New Article on Culturally and Linguistically Supportive Professional Development for K-12 STEM Educators
Dr. Anne H. Charity Hudley and I have an article in the latest issue of Cultural Studies of Science Education entitled: “It’s worth our time”: A model of culturally and linguistically supportive professional development for K-12 STEM educators.” Thanks to all of the educators and students who made the work possible, particularly the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Education, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the School University Research Network (SURN), the UMBC Dresher Center for the Humanities, the UMBC Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship and our current and former students Erin L. Berry, Merci Best, Rachel Boag, Jerome Carter, May F. Chung, Inte’a DeShields, Adryan Flores, Aure Hakenson, Heather Hoskins, Mark Jamias, Rita Turner, Dan Villarreal, and Adom Whitaker. We are grateful for all the support and inspiration!
