Sharing Stories & Diversity @ Troika Xperience 2021
About Troika Xperience
Troika is an education consulting firm based in Brazil. They not only design education products and services that are fully customised for schools, publishing houses and education companies, but also offer face-to-face and online courses for teachers looking to upskill, as well as mentorship. Their courses cover all areas of education: neuroscience, soft-skills, teaching methodologies, bilingualism, education technology, including a focus on ELT. Most opportunities are in Portuguese, but you can also find some courses in English.
Every year, they organise a special event called Troika Xperience, an online conference with the Troika ethos. There are round tables, micro-courses and webinars. And it was through teacher friend and SYSWC member, Talita, that I had the chance to co-present a webinar at this brilliant event. It did not take long to decide what we wanted to discuss with the Troika community: We chose to talk about sharing stories and diversity.
About Diversity
The webinars are only 40 minutes long, so we had to be very intentional about what we wanted to achieve in the short space of time! It was clear we wanted to highlight the importance of diversity in ELT - but what does diversity mean anyway? We offered a few definitions and noticed an overlap in meaning. It’s all about variety and including people from a range of backgrounds and with different identities. Most of all, it’s about celebrating those differences and being respectful of each other while we do it. This quote from the American University in Washington sums it up nicely:
"The presence of diversity in the classroom allows students to consider perspectives and opinions beyond those they’ve already formed or were shaped in early life by family and friends. By presenting students with viewpoints far different from their own, it gives them the opportunity to think critically about their own beliefs and examine the world in fresh ways.”
About Sharing Stories
Having defined and emphasised the value of diversity, we wanted to situate it within our own field of English Language Teaching. How to ‘diversify’ our lessons? We drew on two areas of academic literature which called for ELL’s to be exposed to a ‘variety of Englishes’ (Suzuki, 2020) as well as ‘the need to integrate diverse cultures into the ELT practice as a platform for learners to become intercultural speakers’ (Nguyen, 2013). This is where exchanging stories comes in. Facilitating the reading of stories by lesser-heard English voices (think writers from the Caribbean, other English-speaking territories) and the writing and reading of personal stories (think your own students/yourself), is a creative way to diversify our classrooms.
Resources
Well, there is probably much more to say on the subject! Not least that this project, Share Your Story With Confidence, was founded on such thinking. We actively encourage the reading and writing of diverse stories amongst our English Language Teacher community. Indeed, you can check out the work in progress on the Your Stories page. More about this in future blog posts!
If you like, you are welcome to access the resource list that we compiled for teachers/interested parties. Of course, we would love to know your position on diversity in ELT, whether you think it’s important, and if so, how you are bringing it to your classroom. And, if you have any questions about our presentation, we would be more than happy to answer.
November Creative Sessions
Finally, as the days become darker and the cold creeps in for winter, why not warm your creative juices up by participating in an online creative session next month? I’m full of ideas for the workshops - short story reading & discussion, brushing up storytelling skills, experimenting with digital tools - but what do you want to do?! I’ve set up a very short survey to help me design some cool experiences for you. Please take 2 minutes to complete it! Click here. Oh, and feel free to share with friends!
References
American University, Washington, School of Education Online Programmes. Available at:
https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/benefits-of-inclusion-and-diversity-in-the-classroom
Suzuki, A. (2020) Introducing diversity of English into ELT: Student teachers' responses. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249252943_Introducing_diversity_of_English_into_ELT_Student_teachers'_responses
Nguyen C. (2013) Cultural Diversity in English Language Teaching: Learners’ Voices . Available at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1076981.pdf
Photo by Talita