This story in the newsletter from the Middle Grades Partnership reports on how participants in our week-long language variation professional development workshop for Baltimore middle school teachers. One teacher called MGP’s 2011 language variation workshop “an eye-opening” revelation and said she “applied everything immediately.” Another reports that the workshop gave him “a whole new vocabulary with which to talk about language.” You can read the article here.
This story in the Spring 2012 issue of the College of William & Mary’s Ideation Magazine talks about Anne and Christine’s three-year National Science Foundation research grant, “Assessing the Results of Sociolinguistic Engagement with K-12 STEM Education in Maryland and Virginia Public and Independent Schools,” in which we are working with K-12 educators in the Baltimore and Richmond areas to study how language variations affect learning and assessment in STEM classes.
The next two months brings lots of travel and workshops. We look forward to seeing you in Baltimore, Williamsburg, or elsewhere some time soon: http://charityhudleymallinson.com/appearances/
Anne and Christine are presenting on October 29, 2011 at the New Ways of Analyzing Variation 40 Conference at Georgetown University in a panel entitled, “Sociolinguistics in the Schools: The Next 40 Years of Service in Return.” Co-panelists include Mary Bucholtz and Julie Sweetland. You can download our panel abstracts here.
Our book, Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools, has just been reviewed in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. Here is an excerpt from our review: “The result is an academic study relevant to anyone interested in the way children (and adults) process language, as well as to classroom teachers looking for educational strategies to better serve their students. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels.”
Anne & Christine are participating in the Virginia Capstone English Academy: http://education.wm.edu/centers/sli/surn/Capstone/index.php. On August 8-9 2011, 50 high school from across the state and 10 university English educators from the College of William and Mary and James Madison University met at William and Mary to start designing a high school elective course for students to help them further develop the skills needed to succeed in college and in careers. The course will help students to develop their critical reading, thinking, writing, and speaking skills. The educators will return to William and Mary on November 7th, 2011 and March 19th, 2012. At the first Capstone workshop, Anne & Christine presented a general overview of our work and gave insights about how language variation is key to the secondary English classroom. In addition, we also directly modeled exercises from the first book that emphasize the transfer and transition of English skills from the high School English class to collegiate notions of writing across the curriculum. We noted the role that linguistics and research and courses at the intersection of language, literacy, and culture can play in this process.
July 10-13, 2011 Anne and Christine gave three presentations and did a book signing at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) TEACH 2011 Conference in Washington, D.C. A book signing will follow. Click here for more schedule information.
Sunday, July 10, 1:00 p.m. -2:30 p.m. : AFT Pre-TEACH Professional Development Network Conference: Using English Language Variation in US Schools
Monday, July 11, 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. : Mini-Plenary Session: Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools
Monday, July 11, 6:45 p.m. -7:45 p.m.: Book Signing Click here to see an official AFT picture of us setting up our book exhibit!
Tuesday, July 12, 9:00 a.m.- 10:45 a.m. : Workshop: Using Knowledge About Language Variation to Support Multicultural Literature Instruction: Models from African-American and Southern English