Description

• Institute Type: 3-day online—synchronous
• Target Audience: Language educators at the postsecondary level. Educators at the secondary level can benefit from the institute if they are comfortable extrapolating from the examples provided.

There is increasing pressure to employ global, international, and intercultural learning frameworks in the service of career readiness initiatives in U.S. secondary and post-secondary contexts. As language teachers, there are important questions of equity, access, and cultural competency that confront us as we consider this situation; there is also an opportunity to harness the momentum of these initiatives to support the social and economic justice goals of our courses. To that end, this institute is designed for those who are interested in learning more about career readiness initiatives and how they can be integrated to support language learning objectives related to social and economic justice.

During the institute, participants will first consider their own career path as teaching professionals. Next, they will learn about the history, context, and leading models of career readiness currently in use, and examine key questions of equity in language teaching and learning that have arisen. They will explore and discuss a critical, disciplinary-grounded approach to address these issues, and identify potential integration sites in their own macro or micro contexts. Participants will also have time to begin to develop their own materials for a course they teach and will receive constructive feedback from co-attendees. The institute will include examples of how this approach was applied to a multi-section intermediate Spanish as a Second Language course, propose best practices, and highlight areas for continued work in the field.

Instructor

Sara Mack, Ph.D., (she/they) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Sara is a former Faculty Fellow of the College of Liberal Arts Career Readiness Initiative and past recipient of the College of Liberal Arts Career Readiness Teaching Award and the College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Service Award. Current research interests include equity and access in U.S. higher education, metacognitive regulatory processes in classroom-based learning, sociophonetics, and learning and memory.

See the full course description here.
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