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6.2 Activities for Race and Anti-racist Pedagogical Possibilities in World Language Teaching

Hongni Gou and Wenhao Diao

 

The data presented below came from a larger mixed-methods project that examined Chinese language teachers’ experiences with race and racialization in elementary and secondary schools in the United States. The larger project included surveys and interviews with the participating teachers in the spring and summer of 2021, as well as their teaching journals over the course of the fall semester of 2021. (Please see Diao et al., 2024, for more details about the study.) Below is a quote from the interview with a teacher (pseudonym Ms. Yao Liu), and three excerpts from her teaching journal entries. Ms. Yao Liu was teaching Mandarin in an urban school that primarily served Black and brown students. Please read carefully and work on the following questions, as well as the specific prompts for reflections following each excerpt:
  1. Throughout the interview quote and journal entry excerpts, what themes related to antiracist language teaching do you see?
  2. In what ways do you see Ms. Liu intentionally work antiracism into her Chinese language teaching?
  3. What teaching ideas can you draw from here to develop racially inclusive language teaching activities?

During the interview, Ms. Liu was asked to share cultural, social, or political topics that she might choose to avoid in her teaching, if any. In her response, she said she would not avoid any but would instead actively bring in open discussions about racism and anti-racism with her students, and she turned the portion of the interview to into a discussion of pedagogical possibilities for anti-racism:

1. 如果我只讲这个Asian, anti-Asian的东西，你其他Black, brown的学生他们的死活我都不管的话，那其实是非常不公平的，而且是非常bias的， 学生就没有办法跟你有这个同情心，对吧。[…] 所以包括这个Black Lives Matter我也会参加，而且你看到我上课，我这个都是在后面 [指向身后一个画板，上面有一个黑肤色女性和代表对她支持的各种肤色的拳头]。所以就是这些信号，其实都是在告诉学生，我是一个什么样的老师，我支持什么。那等到我去探讨这个这个anti-Asian hate crime的时候，他们才会有所触动。其实我们经历都是一样的，然后你Black经历的racism怎么样，那Asian 也有racism，那我们都是在同样的一个处境。[…] 所以我觉得是所有的minority的一个equity的问题。(Interview, June 2021)

(English Translation) If I only talk about Asian or anti-Asian, and if I don’t care about the dire situation of Black, brown students, then that’s actually very unfair, and also very biased. Students cannot have empathy with you [the teacher]. Right? […] So I would also participate in events like the Black Lives Matter [protests]. And you see when I teach, my background is like this behind me [Transcriber’s note: pointing at a sign on her board that showed a dark-skinned woman with fists of all skin tones showing support for her]. […] These are the signs that are actually telling my student what kind of teacher I am and what I stand for. Then when I discuss the anti-Asian hate crime[s] with them, they will show sympathy. The racism that you Black people have experienced is also experienced by Asians. We are all in the same situation. […] So I think it’s a matter of equity for all minorities. (Interview, June 2021).

Reflection: Based on Excerpt 1, how does Ms. Liu situate herself within the social discourses of racism and anti-racism here? In what ways does her understandings of these discourses and her own position shape her teaching practices?

2. 10月印象比较深刻的一节课是中文四的学生开始重做他们的identity bubble。因为我教的unit1是identity，今年我特意节奏很慢，但是希望学生真的能了解并且学到很多，所以我的第一单元用了11周的时间。 从第二周学生开始画他们的identity bubble。每个学生平均写了5个词来代表他们自己，比方说国籍、性别、种族、爱好等等。但是最后一周，在我们学完了长相，性格，偶像，理想等等后，每个学生重做identity bubble，可以看到他们都对自己有了新的认识。我觉得很骄傲，中文课可以给他们一个更好认识自己的机会。(Journal Entry, October 2021)

(English Translation) One of my most memorable classes in October was when the students of Chinese IV began to redo their identity bubble[1]. Because the first unit I taught was about identity, I purposely paced it slowly this year. But I hoped that the students could really understand and learn a lot, so my first unit took 11 weeks. Starting in the second week, students began to draw their identity bubbles, and each student wrote an average of 5 words to represent themselves, such as nationality, gender, race, hobbies and so on. But in the last week, after we finished learning about looks, characters, idols, ideals and so on, each student redid their identity bubble. You can see that they all had a new understanding of themselves. I feel very proud that the Chinese class could give them a chance to know themselves better. (Journal Entry, October 2021)

Reflection: In this activity described in Excerpt 2, Ms. Liu included ‘race’ as an identity aspect and encouraged the students to reflect on their own racial identity. In what ways do you think this activity may influence the students?

In the next two excerpts (Excerpts 3 and 4), Ms. Liu describes the lessons that she designed in her journal entries. For each excerpt, consider how her pedagogical practices were intended to counteract racism and promote diversity and equity – what materials she chose, what classroom activities she designed for these materials, and why she made these choices.

3. 我们11月在结束第一单元后看了一部纪录片《美国工厂》，然后我们做了深入讨论。 这部纪录片是我个人觉得可以很好的反应文化冲突的纪录片，学生们很喜欢，而且我让学生记录了其中四个角色的性格和他们的观念。 然后让他们进行小组辩论。学生的批判思维给我很多惊喜，比如他们理解了不同的人做出的决定都是根据他们的立场决定的，哪怕自己不认可，但也可以站在他们的角度去理解他们的决定。(Journal Entry, November 2021)

(English Translation) We watched a documentary called “American Factory”[2] after the first unit in November, and then we had an in-depth discussion. This documentary is a documentary that I personally think can reflect cultural conflicts very well. The students liked it very much, and I asked the students to note the personalities of the four characters and their perspectives. Then [I] had them in different groups and debate. The critical thinking of the students pleasantly surprised me – a lot. For example, they understood that the decisions made by different people were based on their respective positions. Even though they didn’t agree with them, they could still understand their decisions from their perspectives. (Journal Entry, November 2021)

 

4. 中文三我正在改革如何把公平教学融入我的教案。我们正在学习房子。以前教房子总是要学生介绍自己的房子、房间，仿佛已经成为固定的教学模式，但这次我决定更好的考虑到学生的家庭背景、收入水平 ，但同时也能学习到[关于]房子[的中文]。首先我开始用视频介绍世界各地不同的房子，然后让他们对话你最喜欢哪一个房子，（以及）为什么？ 然后再介绍房子里的房间，玩词汇游戏之后，让学生设计他们理想的房子。巩固房间词汇。[…] 但我后来把阅读和演讲放在了一起。给学生12个家庭对他们理想房子的介绍，让他们2个人一组阅读至少5个家庭的介绍，然后选择一个家庭来为他们设计房子，然后演讲。这个活动很成功，学生也有了很大的自由，也锻炼了阅读和演讲的能力。(Journal Entry, December 2021)

(English Translation) In Chinese III, I was improving [my lesson plans and considering] how to incorporate educational equality into my lesson plans. We were learning about houses. Previously, teaching about houses always required students to introduce their own house and room, which seemed to have become a fixed teaching mode; but this time I decided to take into consideration the students’ family backgrounds, income levels, while still allowing them to learn about [the language related to] houses. First, I started to use videos to introduce different houses around the world, and then let them talk about “which house is your favorite, and why?” Then after introducing the rooms in a house and playing a vocabulary game, I asked students to design their ideal house [to] consolidate [their] room-related vocabulary. […] But then I put reading and oral presentation together. I gave students 12 families and their descriptions of their ideal houses [in Chinese]. I asked them to work in pairs and read the descriptions of at least 5 families. Each pair then chose a family to design a house for that family and gave a presentation. This activity was very successful – the students had a lot of freedom [to choose], and they practiced their reading and presentational skills. (Journal Entry, December 2021)

FINAL REFLECTIONS

  • How would you teach a class about cultural differences in your language class, if at all? And how would you teach a class about rooms in a house? Compare your own lesson plan with Ms. Liu’s. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of your plan versus hers?
  • Can you imagine integrating similar lessons in your own teaching context? Why or why not?
  • In addition to describing a house and its rooms (Excerpt 4), what other scenarios/topics that we typically encounter in language teaching that may be based on certain racial and socioeconomic conditions of a particular group (or groups) but not others? Can you give a specific example and design a class activity to disrupt those assumptions?

 

Ms. Liu identified as a racially and linguistically minoritized individual (Asian and a native speaker of Chinese) in the U.S., and she was keenly aware that she was working at an urban school that served mostly racially minoritized individuals. Therefore, her teaching must address racial inequities and injustices, not only because she was experiencing anti-Asian racism in the society at the time, but also because she deeply cared about her students and connecting with them. In the teaching activities that she described in her journal entries, she consistently incorporated space for students to critically reflect on their own and diverse ethnic, racial, and linguistic identities, and how these differences may inform their lived experiences and perspectives. In the activity described in Excerpt 4, she also showed an awareness of how language teaching has traditionally assumed learners to be homogenous, and routine activities such as describing one’s rooms and houses may expose economic and social inequities in housing, which may intersect with other identities such as race. As she used a task-based approach and created a space for her students to consider diverse needs when it comes to housing, while not assuming that all her students came from families that were able to afford a home that would have multiple and different rooms, or a home at all. We suggest that these activities be further extended to include a community engagement component, such as connecting students with low-income immigrants, asylum seekers, and/or refugees (especially in this case, Chinese-speaking individuals and communities), or perhaps an organization that is devoted to sheltering them, to further allow students to engage in the use of the target language while further reflecting upon racial (in)equities both locally and globally.
  1. “Identity bubble is a teaching activity. One of the examples can be found here: https://assets2.hrc.org/welcoming-schools/documents/WS_Lesson_My_Many_Identities.pdf. ” ↵
  2. “American Factory is a 2019 documentary about a Chinese company, Fuyao, establishing a factory in Ohio. More information can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Factory.” ↵

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Contemporary Topics in Applied Linguistics for Language Educators Copyright © 2025 by Julieta Fernández and Chantelle Warner; rights for individual chapters held by respective authors. All Rights Reserved.

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