Social Media, Multimodalities and Social Justice Movements in the Bilingual Classroom
Suzanne García-Mateus, California State University – Monterey Bay
As educators we are living in new and unprecedented times and it is urgent that we reimagine the ways in which we weave social media, multimodalities and social justice movements content as a part of the bilingual classroom. A critically conscious approach to teaching (Palmer, Cervantes-Soon, Dorner, & Heiman, 2019) centers the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse students and models how to critically listen to others who have felt the repercussions of a global pandemic at a much greater degree than their privileged peers. This plenary talk will describe how the global pandemic has changed the ways in which some educators are approaching issues of social justice and diversity in bilingual contexts. As a professor of future bilingual teachers, I will provide examples of how I have shifted my own approach to teaching online by drawing on social media and students’ multimodalities to leverage language learning and the discussion of social justice issues. The first example involves university students connecting their own language and literacy experiences with educational policies and social justice issues such as the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The second example describes an international virtual exchange between students in the U.S. and those in Mexico and Argentina as a component to the courses I taught during remote learning. Part of the exchange involved deconstructing current social justice movements and drawing conclusions as a group. An analysis of language learning with future Latinx and bilingual educators, either through reflection about their own experiences or an international virtual exchange, offers a new perspective about what it means to teach using a critically conscious curriculum in bilingual education programs.