residential schools

Learning to learn about acquiring Indigenous languages (by Dr Mela Sarkar)

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Twenty-one McGill Master’s students in Education and I have just finished a wild ride through what’s called a “Special Topics” course from January through mid-April. It was called “Acquiring Indigenous languages as second languages,” and was quite possibly the most exhilarating, tormenting, troubling and ultimately satisfying experience I can recall in 25 or so years of teaching graduate courses in applied linguistics.

But I have to re-think that word “teaching,” because I have no illusions that I taught that course. It taught me.

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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Call to Action for Language Teachers and Scholars (by Andrea Sterzuk)

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Andrea Sterzuk grew up in an English-speaking home in rural Saskatchewan on Treaty 6 territory. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a public school teacher in rural Saskatchewan as well as in the Canadian arctic. She is currently an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina, located on Treaty 4 territory. She lectures in English and French to undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of linguistic diversity in schools, second language pedagogy, and issues of power, identity, and language in education. Her current research examines the development of language beliefs in teachers.
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