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Identity Languages: Building a Program for Students to Maintain their Complex Cultural Identities Daniel
Identity Languages
Building a Program for Students to Maintain their Complex Cultural Identities
By Daniel Cowan and Luiza Marie Razeto
This article is in two parts, written by two teachers centrally involved in different aspects of the introduction of an Identity Language Program at Frankfurt International School.
Daniel Cowan
Imagine if one of the first questions your new international school asked you, as a family, was which languages are important to your child? Moving from Japan to Egypt had us, as a family, trying to reconcile the notion that our two children had spent five years developing some proficiency in Japanese, alongside an affinity for Japanese culture, but would no longer be able to deepen, or even just maintain, this connection. We repeated the same process four years later, moving from Egypt to Germany. Now it was Arabic that would need to make way for German, Spanish and French. At each stop, I thought about ways to continue their development in the language they’d left behind, but the demands of the schools’ language programs meant that this would be done in addition to adding a new language.
The two barriers to allowing students to continue to develop their existing language skills in a new country are lack of access to opportunities (resources, teachers) and having to meet the new school’s language requirement. I also did not have a conceptual framework for what this language was for a child. I had toyed with terms like ‘foothold language’, but when I came across the term ‘identity language’, this matched my children’s (and many other internationally mobile students’) experience. In essence, an identity language is any language with which a person has developed both proficiency and personal connection.
The International School of the Hague has created an Identity Language Program that asks the provocative question ‘Who are we to decide for a student what their cultural identity should be?’ (McCracken et al, 2018: 32). I visited the International School of London in the winter of 2019, and had the opportunity there to see a vibrant language learning program that offered tremendous flexibility and a wide range of language classes in small classrooms taught by peripatetic language teachers. These two examples inspired a model for Frankfurt International School (FIS).
At FIS, this issue arose during a whole school language policy review in 2018. We recognized that each student is on a unique language pathway and that while FIS has many language options for students, we could not meet all students’ needs within our language programs. Once we recognized that this concept was worth addressing, we developed a framework for a program that will allow students to
learning needs. This allowed me to set up specific learning settings and develop a structure that catered to our learners. Shadowing the initial pilot group, it became clear that students are well versed in self-organized online work due to their experiences in distance learning. As a teacher, I approached this class in a mentorship capacity by providing students continue to pursue their identity language, which includes: with encouragement, help in organization and supporting 1. Identify the identity language need. them in asking questions and advocating for their own 2. Identify learning goals for the student. learning. It was a truly transformational experience and 3. Identify the curriculum, platform and the instructor/tutor for I established very close working relationships with all of the student. the students in the program. As I am a language teacher 4. Identify when and where the learning will take place. myself, I will very often engage students in cultural 5. Assess and report the student’s progress. discussions and provide them with complementary In order to make this happen, in the summer of 2021 we projects to their course that I differentiate based on their created the position of Identity Language Coordinator. When learning goals and needs. Evaluating students’ semester the community was introduced to this concept in a newsletter, reflections, it has become evident that they take pride we discovered that there were several Mandarin speakers who in their learning progress and appreciate the challenges were not Chinese who would like to continue their language they overcame in this individualized setting. We are learning for both personal and future learning pathway purposes. planning to expand the program next year, primarily We also had a student who was moving to France, so she focusing on grades 9 and 10 as we found these students needed to learn French much more quickly than would have best equipped with a suitable set of core skills and been possible in our existing language learning pathways. Both emotional maturity to manage their learning. of these cases formed the test case for us in how we could free Some important questions remain for the future up time in the day, help coordinate tutors and resources, and development of our Identity Language Program: help guide their learning through goal setting, reflecting, and 1. Can we form relationships with other international acknowledging the value of their learning. schools so that we can share resources to support
Luiza Marie Razeto, Identity Language Coordinator at FIS, will our students as they move around the globe? now share how the first months progressed. 2. Can we develop links with institutions that grant official language level accreditation for students so that they can Luiza Marie Razeto gain credentials for their future learning and careers? We started the year with eleven students learning four 3. How do we refine the screening process at different languages, in the area of language acquisition as well admissions to streamline the process? as in language literature. Over the summer I had researched International schools should allow for the transfer of local agencies for tutoring, in the hopes of arranging in-person students between cultures and schools. In this sense, it instruction, and met with several providers of online courses. is incumbent upon schools to make sure that a student
The program quickly grew around the core Mandarin group is able to maintain as much continuity of learning as in grade 9 and we were able to accommodate parent possible. Perhaps the lack of a model of what identity requests for Swedish, Italian and Dutch as well. We languages are and a sense of how a school can meet used the first two weeks of the new school year to set them has held us back in the past. We can see the individual goals with potential for networks of international schools increasing students and identify openness to new modes of learning, and shifting attitudes their personalized about personalizing learning and language acquisition, leading to a wider acceptance of how we might facilitate identity language learning in international schools. ◆
Daniel Cowan is Head of the Barra site of the British School of Rio de Janeiro. When this program was launched he was an Upper School Principal at Frankfurt International School. ✉ dcowan@britishschool.g12.br Luiza Marie Razeto is a German teacher and Identity Language Coordinator at Frankfurt International School. ✉ luisamarie_razeto@fis.edu
References
• McCracken M, Rikers L, Tee S and Eerdewijk J (2018) Bringing
Identity Language Into Our School. International School. 20(3): 31-33.
