Language, Society and Culture Conference

(Bronx, NY) On Friday, March 7, 2014, I attended the Language, Society and Culture Conference at Bronx Community College.  Some of the highlights of the conference were the sessions on "Using Digital Storytelling in the ESL Writing Class" and the talk, "Storytelling and Academic Discourse: Including More Voices in the Conversation," by Dr. Rebecca Mlynarczk

Both of these sessions were meaningful to me in several ways.  First, both sessions reinforced what I am studying in my "Adult Learners of Language and Literacy" and "Second Language Acquisition" courses. 

Our discussion at the session on digital storytelling and on bringing the world of the students into the academy certainly speaks to the one-sided narratives that Freire indicates as the basis of the banking model of education. Dr. Shoba Bandi-Rao, who led the session on digital storytelling, suggested that "academic discourse can seem like a foreign language" for many non-traditional students.  She said their stories and their language are not valued on college campuses. 

Her digital storytelling project was an attempt to affirm her students in the process of becoming English language speakers by using "problem-posing education" as a way to free her students from the rote memorization often associated with language learning.  Instead, she de-mythologizes the learning process by using creative methods for student to speak and write their truth.