Countering Monolingualism: Translingual & Anti-Racist  Pedagogy

Thursday, April 22, 2021 • 12:30-2:30pm

View a recording of the symposium.

The linguistic diversity of Baruch  students creates tremendous opportunities for language and writing instruction. This symposium explored ways of recognizing and taking advantage of multilingual students’ unique abilities to move across and weave together languages and cultures.  

Topics included: 

• Resisting harmful stereotypes about multilingual and ELL students 
• Multilingual students and issues around plagiarism
• Moving past monolingualism towards translingualism in our approaches to teaching 

And featured 3 half-hour sessions: 

Missy Watson, City College, CUNY & Rachael Shapiro, Rowan University:  Toward Socially-Just and Anti-Racist  Student Learning Outcomes  
On the need for student learning outcomes that contest monolingualist ideologies and the social and racial injustices that follow. 

Greer Murphy, University of Rochester: Academic Honesty & Multilingual Writers
Research on academic honesty and strategies for developing source-based writing pedagogy through clarifying expectations and understanding the specific complexities multilingual students encounter as they learn to avoid plagiarism.

Kamal Belmihoub, Brooke Schreiber, & Adrian Izquierdo, Baruch College: Translingualism in Practice in the Classroom
What is translingualism, and what does it offer us as literacy  instructors of both monolingual and multilingual students? This session offered strategies for implementing a translingual approach to existing assignments, as well as examples of assignments resisting monolingual ideologies and  incorporating students’ language resources. 

Sponsored by the Ellen Lask Teaching Fund and the First-Year Writing Program, Baruch College