Today’s guest blogger, Yecid Ortega, brings us the first episode of his new podcast series, Chasing Encounters. Click on the link below to hear Yecid’s conversation with fellow OISE/UT (University of Toronto) PhD candidate Claudio Jaramillo. Yecid has also provided an abstract and a listening guide.

Chasing Encounters: Episode 1 — Our linguistic and cultural journeys

This conversation between Yecid and Claudio explores their own visions on ideology, capitalism, identity and language in today’s world. As a point of entry, we deploy our ideas based in the concept of investment (Norton, 2013; Peirce, 1995) as a form of identity navigation in our lived experiences as language educators and researchers in different contexts. We identified some key elements of what makes a good educator in today’s post-truth times. First, how tolerating the other is not enough but accepting and understanding is key to human development. Second, we posit that being an expert is not enough because we as teachers need to acknowledge the complexity and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) of our classrooms. And finally, we need the pedagogical, political and disciplinary knowledge in order to address contemporary issues inspired by plurilingual instruction (Galante, 2018). We conclude by hoping society will move from individualistic to more collective ideologies that would support our communities and our future generations.

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