Inclusive Reads & Conversations with UWGB Libraries

Cory Mathieu

Cory Mathieu is an Assistant Professor in the Professional Program in Education at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She has a Ph.D. in Second Language Education from the University of Minnesota. Cory’s research and work in teacher preparation centers on improving educational experiences and outcomes for language-rich students, especially in bilingual education. She uses culturally sustaining pedagogies and critical language awareness to guide teachers in understanding how to create classroom environments and instruction that sustain minoritized and racialized languages and ways of being. Prior to pursuing a career in teacher education, Cory taught high school Spanish in Ohio as well as English in various contexts in China, Peru, and the United States.

Join us from 12:15-1:00pm for our discussion via Microsoft Teams! 

Cory chose this month's reading to invite conversation about the role of language in our efforts toward inclusion at UWGB. This conversation builds on the excellent Inclusive Reads discussion in October, 2021 on language and assessment. This sociolinguistic article explores the stress and additional emotional and language-related work experienced by Black college students on predominantly white campuses. In particular, it highlights how Black students navigate using standard (White, mainstream English) and non-standard (Black English) language varieties in their interactions in and outside of the classroom. The article provides excerpts from interviews to demonstrate how the Black students who participated in the study constantly think about the language that they use and how they are perceived based on their language.

As you read the article, Cory invites you to consider how your own actions and interactions with students of color may have inadvertently caused them to change how they use language on our campus and how this affects our efforts toward inclusion. If you teach classes, Cory especially invites you to critically examine how your own instruction, assessments, and overall expectations might explicitly or implicitly communicate a need for Standard English (i.e., White, mainstream English) that causes sociolinguistic labor and stress in your racialized or language-rich students.