All in a term’s work (by Dr. Mela Sarkar)

It was a good fall. But it was a full fall. We have heard from all our BILD members since the last time I wrote in midsummer — and then some! Having guest bloggers has been enriching beyond all measure. Among all of us, though, I seem to be the only full-time faculty BILD member (for now!), so I thought that as term starts to wind down, I would add the faculty member point of view to all the other perspectives we have heard.

Où est mon multilingual newsfeed? (by Michaela Salmon)

I was browsing through Facebook today, when suddenly a post caught my eye. It was the page of a local park that I know posts almost exclusively in French. This time it was only in English. ‘Huh’, I thought, and kept scrolling.

[De]Institutionalizing English (by Jennifer Burton)

We have been anticipating the publication of this post for several weeks now. It is our first spoken word poem and it comes to you from Jennifer Burton, at University of Regina.  After completing her degree in Justice Studies, she decided to take one year out of her life to teach English as a Second Language in Seoul, South Korea.  Teaching in Korea soon became her life and one year quickly turned into five.  In 2010, she returned back “home” to Regina, Saskatchewan and continued teaching ESL at the University of Regina.  Currently, she is writing her MEd thesis where much of her work is informed by her experiences as a teacher and language learner, centering on some of the themes highlighted in the BILD blog.

The languages I look like (by Kathleen Green)

I’ve written on this blog before about my experiences as a speaker of French and English and how I feel myself self-categorizing, and being categorized by others, in relation to these two languages. Today, I’m going to add my third language, Mandarin, to the mix. Mandarin is a part of my daily life – these days, it’s present in the music that I listen to, it’s the subject of one of the classes that I teach, and it’s the language that I use to navigate applications on my computer and cell phone.

Language and Literacies of Civic Engagement: A Call for Papers (by Casey Burkholder)

Lately, I have begun writing my dissertation about my research project with a collective of ethnic minority young people who have grown up and studied in Hong Kong’s public schools. Through the medium of cellphone-video making (cellphilming), we have gathered, brainstormed, written, filmed, and edited some pretty amazing cellphilms (films shot on a cellphone) that describe the experiences of growing up and going to school in Hong Kong (HK) as an ethnic minority. We explore how language, literacy and civic engagement are becoming increasingly linked in Hong Kong. Through these cellphilms, and in our conversations, the participants have answered the questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? How do I participate as a citizen of HK? We have shared these cellphilms in community screenings, in university classrooms, via e-mail and Facebook, and on YouTube.

“Who am I?”: My Finding Amy Project (by Eun-Ji Amy Kim)

Our guest blogger this week is Eun-Ji Amy Kim, a PhD candidate in DISE at McGill University. Her current research interests include Indigenous science education and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics education). In her free time, she likes to bake cookies and hang out with friends at parks. She is interested in how languages and cultures of a place influence her identities. She is in the process of conducting her personal life-long project, Finding Amy.