Putting languages at the centre: developing the Language Across the Curriculum (LAC) faculty seminar at LaGuardia Community College, Queens, New York

ABSTRACT

Our article presents the development, conceptual toolkit, and preliminary observations of an interdisciplinary Language Across the Curriculum (LAC) professional development seminar at our urban community college in Queens, New York. Although innovative in promoting inclusion and diversity, the college reflects a common monolingual ‘Standard American English-only’ ideology in U.S. higher education. Linguistic difference is celebrated yet often viewed as an instructional and professional obstacle. LAC argues that such an approach compromises our institutional commitment to diversity and fails to use these cultural and epistemological assets as resources in learning. In contrast, LAC puts languages at the centre of a multidisciplinary inquiry and outlines a paradigm shift from a ‘language-blind,’ deficit model to a ‘language-aware,’ asset-based, translanguaging pedagogy. Targeting both classroom and college-wide change, the seminar guides participants in reflective and critical discussion of language ideologies and theories of acquisition before developing and applying new teaching strategies. We connect evidence-based translanguaging approaches with critical insights from anti-racist pedagogy, encouraging faculty and students to develop a nuanced appreciation of linguistic identities and to use and build on their full linguistic repertoires. The article provides an overview of the seminar’s interdisciplinary framework, conceptual foundation, and preliminary impacts on faculty, students and campus culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Community college
• faculty development
• inclusivity
• language diversity
• translanguaging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The metric often used for diversity in US higher education is the proportion of under-represented minorities (URM) comprised of Hispanic, Black (NonHispanic) and Native American students; at LaGuardia 61% of students are URM, as compared to the national average of 33% among two-year colleges.

2 A designation that links all accredited, public or private, nonprofit colleges and universities with 25 percent or more total undergraduate, full-time equivalent, Hispanic student enrollment. Recognized by Congress and the Higher Education Act of 1965 under Title V, HSIs help increase Hispanic college participation and completion rates for this population, narrowing educational and economic gaps (Laden, 2021).

3 Anecdotally, Lucy has heard from students that these documents have been used by professors to inform them that their use of British or Caribbean variations of written English are ‘inappropriate.’

4 ESL Faculty in the ELA Department proposed to collaborate with the English Department on offering a credit-bearing accelerated composition course focused on bilingual and multilingual learners. The English Department discussed this idea but was unable to proceed due to institutional roadblocks to collaborative teaching.

5 ‘Despite challenges and heartbreak, LaGuardia professor is “pandemic hero.”’ Campus News, November 2020. https://cccnews.info/2020/11/24/despite-challenges-and-heartbreak-LaGuardia-professor-is-pandemic-hero.

6 Reported student data was collected as part of an IRB-approved study (IRB File #2017-1234) by the CUNY HRPP.

7 Students attended an event co-hosted by English and ELA, Symposium on Languages Across the Curriculum, in which they heard about research on the importance of students’ home languages in academic contexts. They also participated in the ELA Student Showcase, in which they presented the meaning of their name and in the process shared information about their home language and culture.