Uncategorized – Chris Chang-Bacon

Shh – Don’t Say ‘Speak American’ (Out Loud)

October 20, 2017October 20, 2017 Chris Chang-Bacon

There was justified outcry this week when a New Jersey teacher reprimanded students for speaking Spanish in class. She demanded the students speak “American,” arguing that U.S. troops are “not fighting for your right to speak Spanish.”

The students staged a walk-out. There have been calls for the teacher to be censured and dismissed. These outcomes are necessary, but we must also recognize that the teacher’s rant accurately named aloud what most U.S. schools impose on students every day.

The vast majority of students in the U.S. are spoken to, taught, and assessed exclusively in English, regardless of whether English is the language through which they learn best. Whether these English-Only restrictions are actual policy, or simply monolingual inertia, students across the country are forced to “speak American” every day without anyone having to name it out loud. Continue reading “Shh – Don’t Say ‘Speak American’ (Out Loud)” →

Critical Pedagogy, Education, ESL, Literacy, Research, Uncategorized

Who Gets to be “Critical?”

September 14, 2017September 14, 2017 Chris Chang-Bacon

bb1 — Image: Burning the “Book of Sports,” 1643

This year continues to demonstrate the importance of reading the world through a critical lens. But who gets to be “critical?” Who gets access to critical approaches to literacy versus who gets timed reading tests?

Educators who use literacy to challenge the status quo often ground their work in critical literacies. This approach goes beyond reading and writing as mechanical skills, using literacy to critique power and inequity–what Paulo Freire called “reading the word and the world.”

But what does this mean when we ask students to read the word and the world in another language?

I took up this question in a recent article for the Journal of Literacy Research. In the journal’s latest issue, Literacy Research and the Radical Imagination, I wrote alongside a phenomenal group of authors working to “radically reimagine the ways in which research can reposition people and ideas to create new and more inviting spaces for literacy.” (JLR, p. 319).

No small task. Continue reading “Who Gets to be “Critical?”” →

Policy, Uncategorized, Vocabulary

Inventing Illegality

February 22, 2017February 22, 2017 Chris Chang-Bacon

A new week, a new round of policies that endanger more than than they assist.

Through the debates that will rightly follow Trump’s latest round of immigration directives, notice who chooses to employ the term illegal vs. undocumented. And if that distinction doesn’t yet set your ears aflame, here’s one of the many reasons it should.

Earlier this fall, Emmy Award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa explained that you can identify an individual as having broken a law, but “what you cannot do is to label the person illegal.” Hinojosa continued,

“The reason why I say this, is not because I learned it from some radical Latino or Latina studies professor when I was a college student. I learned it from Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust, who said, ‘You know what? The first thing they did was that they declared the Jews to be an illegal people.’ And that’s what we’re talking about at this point.” Continue reading “Inventing Illegality” →

Uncategorized

Analyzing the Inexplicable

June 13, 2016June 13, 2016 Chris Chang-Bacon

Cullen

A Columbine reference eerily appears in today’s class reading.

We’re discussing how to teach analytical writing—going beyond recounting, adding original, evidence-based conclusions that inform, uncover, and expand our own thinking, and hopefully public discourse.

The book’s author, Kelly Gallagher, uses Dave Cullen’s 2009 account of the Columbine massacre as an exemplar for his students, illustrating how the author “moved past simply telling what happened by delving into why the tragedy unfolded the way it did.”

He goes on to note how the shock-jock reporting and lack of rigorous analysis that followed the shooting has led to years of misconceptions about the tragedy, its perpetrators, and its causes.

The next few days will do the same. Teachers, writers—this is why we exist. How could any of us teach about anything else today?

Please see the following resources on addressing the Orlando tragedy at your school.

– A National Tragedy: Helping Children Cope

– How to Discuss National Tragedies with Kids

– Addressing the Orlando Shooting at Your School