The questions of varied national identities and narratives is, I think, incredibly relevant in the language classroom, which is why I feel like the message of this webinar will help me in my future as a Spanish teacher. The suggestions at the heart of this webinar really stood out to me and I think that they could speak just as much about language education as they could history.
When we teach students a new language, we are inevitably leading them in an exploration of the target language culture. Helping students to explore the ways in which language simultaneously shapes and reflects our ideas about the world around us is a key mission for the foreign language teacher. Leading that exploration with this perspective of multiple national narratives in mind could be, I think, insightful for students. It is important to teach students that the way we see and experience anything in the world (history, pop culture, etc) has everything to do with our own background and surroundings, and much less to do with absolute "rightness" or with "being normal."
When we teach students a new language, we are inevitably leading them in an exploration of the target language culture. Helping students to explore the ways in which language simultaneously shapes and reflects our ideas about the world around us is a key mission for the foreign language teacher. Leading that exploration with this perspective of multiple national narratives in mind could be, I think, insightful for students. It is important to teach students that the way we see and experience anything in the world (history, pop culture, etc) has everything to do with our own background and surroundings, and much less to do with absolute "rightness" or with "being normal."