What began as a ‘provocation’ to the GSTILE community became a provocation to myself.
“GSIPM is rockin’ on that
‘social change’ band wagon.
C’mon y’all. Let’s do this.“
A tale of two grad schools
I began, as we often do, by asking of others:
“I want the world to hear more of what drives
the rich, articulate (!), deeply committed GSTILE community to do the absolutely fabulous work being done out in the world, in the quiet offices and classrooms of our campus, in the hallowed halls of the UN, in myriad language classrooms and linguistic interactions around the world, on a daily basis.
I want to hear it in your own words.
No ‘CBI’ or ‘Monterey Model’ or ‘pedagogy’ or ‘immersive’ allowed, for now.
Not because they don’t matter — they do — but because those are the words of others.“
‘you said the words, Jon’ #GoT
What are your words — you, personally? Where do your passions lie?
What matters to you and why? #middcse #socent #socinn #romComp
What resonates as ‘success’ as you watch a particular graduate head out into the world, or even before, as they transform over the course of a few short semesters into the world-class professionals that they will soon become.
Are we content to participate as a linguistic modifier?
Laurie proposed “literate social change” as one possible point of departure, #onephrase to unite us all. Is that it? If so, what does that mean to you, to us as a broader community? What else suggests itself to you?
GSIPM is rockin’ the ‘social change’ band wagon.
C’mon y’all. Let’s do this.
Does asking this question even make sense?
And so it comes home to roost.
So here’s a phrase of my own to toss into the fray, one that lives, natively, in neither of the two schools alone:
“literate engagement in a complex world”
What might that look like, for each of us and collectively, as a way of being — as a set of mindsets to be cultivated and negotiated over a lifetime — as ‘our words’?
Comment below, tweet with me (@sarspri), leave me a GoogleVoice message, send me an email, stop me on the sidewalk.
Better yet, Facebook this, LinkItIn, TweetItOut … let’s send it out into the world and see what happens next …
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Deans' Seminar: Ideal Practitioner 
It is my hope that the ‘literate’ of “literate engagement in a complex world” works as a nod to our collective, explicitly ‘linguistic’ skills but points as well, paired with ‘engagement’, towards the broadly applicable — and crucial — notion of being responsive and flexible, the capacity and willingness to ‘read’ a constantly changing human landscape, to be cognizant of ‘context’ (whatever that means to you), to take into consideration the particular, specific, and local factors that are at play, from macro to micro levels … at any point in time.
Yes? No? What say ye?
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Yet another possibility: “literate change makers” was Laurie’s most recent iteration during yesterday’s speech at Commencement
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From an NPTS perspective, does ‘literate’ sufficiently reference the depth of subject-matter knowledge that is expected / demanded of practitioners in that field?
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