Abstract:
This volume is a result of our annual event, Every Teacher is a Language Teacher, held in 2021 and 2022 at the Faculty of Education of the University of Ottawa. Every year, we organize professional learning workshops for teacher candidates in our program. We invite seasoned teachers and young researchers (many of whom are also teachers!) doing their graduate work at the faculty to share methods, ideas, strategies and activities. Together, our community explores how to work with English and French language learners, as well as learners who come to the classroom with multiple languages in their repertoire. As research and experience have shown us, accessing students’ funds of linguistic and cultural knowledge is a powerful way to include students in the curriculum and center their contributions, identities, and experiences in the learning process. As a community of committed educators, we practice teacher learning with this same mindset – we draw from the personal and professional experiences of our guest presenters and teacher candidate attendees. Together, we speak to the social, cultural and political issues that matter in the classroom and share cutting-edge practices. The chapters in this book are intended for teachers who may or may not have a language teaching specialization. So as to promote equitable access to knowledge, we asked our presenters to write chapters based on their workshops and the experiences they had with our teacher candidates. They write in direct, accessible language and draw on the literature about language learning and teaching grounding their work in tried and tested initiatives. As such, for the reader, we hope the chapters will provide insight into what occurred during the workshops and how they can benefit from these professional learning sessions.
