Monday, February 4, 2019

Amplify, Amplify

I've deleted my post about Back-to-the-Well and PBLA Survival. Other things are more pressing right now.

There are two items this week that we can all mail off to the folks on our PBLA CONTACTS list. One is Yuliya Desyatova's latest publication, a brilliant article in the TESL Canada Journal. The other is a news article that appeared two days ago in The Star.

Yuliya Desyatova's latest article is "Batting the Piñata and Swallowing Camels": Teachers Learn to PBLA in the Absence of Dialogic Interaction in TESL Canada Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2018): Special Issue - The Shifting Landscape of Professional Self-Development for ELT Practitioners. Reading it helped me understand why I feel the way I do about PBLA, the training model and so-called PD we have received and continue to have shoved at us to date. Brava, Yuliya! This is your heftiest work yet.


The news piece, posted to Twitter, is entitled, "Refugees Hoping to Become Citizens Face High Bar to Achieve Language Benchmarks." It was written by Sarah Schulman for the Toronto Star. Schulman, a sociologist, brings up many points that I believe spell out discrimination. We are erecting barriers to citizenship for those who will never--no matter how hard they try--be able to reach that magic status of achieved CLB four.

Shouldn't OCASI and other organizations advocating for refugees' rights have an interest in the way PBLA is affecting refugees' wellbeing? There are so many ways PBLA is damaging, especially when you consider factors such as trauma and learning disabilities.

Let's add OCASI to the list of contacts, shall we? But I don't want to be guilty of being Ontario-centric. Do you know of a similar organization in your province that might take up our cause?

6 comments:

  1. What is OCASI? I did a search but couldn’t find what the letters stand for.

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  2. Click the coloured OCASI in the article...it will lead you to the webpage

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  3. I did that, but I don’t see what it stands for. Do you know?

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  4. Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. I guess I have been around so long that I know this stuff but if you dig, you find things. If you are a teacher, you would know that there is treasure below the surface. Has anyone contacted OCASI about investigating the extreme wait times, and for a certain student body in SWO extreme hurdles because the SPO won't allow the government funded resources to be used (OTTAWA RESOURCES, neither the resources from the Emerging Practice Guidelines, nor the Conestoga rubrics) This is a fiasco of great harm

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  5. Anonymous 4:35 a.m. Ontario-centric much? How would the rest of us know what it stands for? Guess what? There are 12 other provinces and territories out here that might not have a clue what your particular province-specific organization is. We have our own. Do you know BC’s? Thought not. I know you’re stressed. Try to stay kind.

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  6. The new guidelines are GOOD news for many, and an end of POWER for some. Happy for the first and sorry about your luck for the second.

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