There is something particularly insidious about world language teachers' insistence that they automatically teach for social justice because (1) they teach about cultures and languages AND/OR (2) their students do well on language proficiency assessments. (1/x)

Virtually NO research says this. Research says that it's HARD to teach for social justice, especially for white teachers, especially with no training in it. (2/x)

Research also shows that just having multicultural texts in the classroom doesn't mean that social justice learning happens either, again, especially when the teacher does not have training in teaching about race (3/x).

We KNOW it's hard to teach for social justice. We don't get a pass just because we're world language teachers. Although the challenges are often different for white WL teachers and teachers of color, we ALL need training to teach effectively. Don't we know that? (4/x)

The arrogance of thinking that we're somehow exempt from having to learn how to teach for social justice effectively because we are good at teaching language or culture...it's astounding. (5/x)

I'm going to stop here, but this idea that "I teach abt other languages and cultures so I'm automatically teaching about social justice (or) equity (or) multiculturalism (or) inclusion" comes up SO OFTEN in our field...we need to stop. (6/x)

Not to mention the strange positioning of teacher-as-expert that happens within this discourse - students don't know the TL, so we teach them! They don't know social justice, so we teach them! Ugh. That's not how any of this works. (7/7)