Advocating for Community Change

Joan Chavez, Dale Junior High School

As a bilingual English Language Arts and ELD teacher at Dale Junior High, Joan Chavez's goal is to help students see the beauty in diverse approaches to languaging, and to support them in using their full linguistic repertoires within and beyond the classroom. In her classroom, students routinely analyze languaging and translanguaging in literature and nonfiction, examine approaches to storytelling in culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and experiment with leveraging their plurilingualism when speaking and writing.

Unit: Narrative Writing & Soapbox Speeches

In this narrative writing unit, which Joan adapted from her school's 8th grade English Language Arts curriculum, Joan's newcomer and emergent plurilingual students created a short speech (a "Soapbox Speech") addressing the question, "How do we live healthier lives and build healthier communities?" Below, you will find some of Joan's scaffolds intended to support students as they brainstormed, crafted, and executed their speeches. Throughout, Joan challenged students to utilize their entire linguistic repertoires as they drafted and delivered their speeches. As students analyzed various approaches to storytelling, they discussed what stories can reveal about a community's needs and values. They then identified an issue in their community that has been ignored, and how they could use their unique voice to advocate for themselves and their community.

Setting the Stage: Building Background Knowledge

Copy of ELD 2 Chapters 7&8 2/21/23

Joan anchored this unit in an analysis of Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, a collection of short stories examining the perspectives of 13 culturally and linguistically diverse people who collectively cultivate a community garden. As students read, they analyzed the impact and importance of storytelling amongst different cultures and communities, and how the author and narrators used language to express their hopes, experiences, and values.

Next, Joan invited her students to consider how members of their own communities cared for each other. As students read each story, they considered how key themes in the novel manifest in their own lives. Throughout, students evaluated multilingual quotes and videos, and shared openly about their experiences with volunteering, storytelling, and collective action.

Raising Our Multilingual Voices

Once students were confident in their analysis of themes in Seedfolks, Joan guided them towards an exploration of the issues that impact their own communities, and an analysis of how youth activists around the world are using their voices to advocate for community change. Students then used their full linguistic repertoire to crafted a speech about their chosen issue, focusing on ways to use their unique voice and linguistic assets to engage diverse members of their communities. Joan was especially impressed with the ways students became more comfortable taking linguistic risks, noting that students whose native voices had been "silenced" by school became "brave enough to utilize their full linguistic repertoires" as they taught their peers about their language, culture, and community.

Drug Abuse (Thai)

Drug Abuse (Thai).mp4

Pollution and Climate Change (Spanish & English)

Trash/Climate Change (Spanish & English).mp4

Bullying (Spanish & English)

Bullying (Spanish & English).mp4

Healthy Food
(Pashto & English)

Smoking
(Vietnamese & English)

“Being part of [Project LEARN] has taught me in a deeper level how to ... emphasize to students the empowerment of being able to utilize their full linguistic repertoires. English is not the only language that should be spoken in school, and English is not the only language that can communicate a message or one's intelligence... Project LEARN has instilled within me a confidence which I can carry over to my students, [and] as they begin to see others embrace their native languages, they slowly begin coming out of their shell...and see [their linguistic repertoire] as an amazing and powerful tool."

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