Every year, millions of children write their letters to Santa Claus, and address their envelopes to the North Pole. While many countries have designated “North Poles,” including a town in Alaska for the US, have you ever wondered what would happen if the letter actually reached the North Pole? What language would Santa or his […]
Language of the Month: Inuktitut Read More »
As we all know as language educators, there really isn’t any “easy” part of our job. While we all have different areas of challenge and areas of expertise, one of the universally acknowledged most challenging areas for teachers is adding authentic culture in the classroom. For many of us, culture in the language classroom as
Teacher’s Corner December 2020: Using The Cultural Iceberg to Teach Holidays Read More »
November and December in the past have been popular months to take school-aged children on field trips. Science classes will go to museums to see fossils or out into the field to experience wildlife in its natural habitat, English classes will see plays, and art classes will visit galleries. One of the benefits of being
Teacher’s Corner November 2020: Virtual Field Trips Read More »
Growing up, many of our American readers learned about the first Thanksgiving in elementary school. While we learned varying accounts, with a varying accuracy, depending on what generation we are, most of us were made familiar with Squanto, the first “Indian” to make contact with the Pilgrims of the Mayflower. We now know more of
Language of the Month: Massachusett Read More »
As someone who frequently consumes news about languages and language learning, it’s always interesting to see what language will suddenly be put to the forefront of the public conscience, either because of its direct use, such as Kamala Harris casually using Tamil words in campaign speeches, or indirectly by bringing a country or people to
Language of the Month: Estonian Read More »
By now, most of us have been doing some form of digital teaching for nearly 2 months; whether it be completely digital where we “see” each child every day on Zoom or Google Meets (more likely their avatar or name). Maybe we are doing a hybrid model where some students are online and others are
Teacher’s Corner Digital Edition: Virtual Interpretive Reading Read More »
Late last month, Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-CA) was a minor sensation in India for her use of the word “chithis,” or auntie. Harris, who has visited Chenani, a town in the Indian Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, before to learn more about her mother’s side of her family, with her father’s side
Language of the Month: Tamil Read More »
If you are a frequent follow of our website, you probably saw last month’s Language of the Month was about Belep, a language found in New Caledonia. My main contact point for information and clarification was Chelsea McCracken of Rice University. I had the opportunity to ask her a few follow up questions, which were
Interview with Chelsea McCracken Read More »
We are extremely fortunate to be “based” out of Maryland as a Museum, as we always have a wide variety of voices and languages surrounding us every day. Recently, we had a linguist, Dr. Chelsea McCracken, reach out to us, and through her connection I learned about a wonderful language named Belep. While the word
Language of the Month: Belep Read More »
As many schools are either on the cusp of beginning their new years or have just begun, many of us have probably seen a lot about “Bitmoji classrooms” from colleagues and social media groups. Especially for teachers like me who will begin the year virtually, these can be a great resource to show your personality
Teacher’s Corner: Creating a Bitmoji Classroom Read More »
