Teaching Diversity and Inclusion: Examples from a French-Speaking Classroom ed. by E. Nicole Meyer and Eilene Hoft-March

Abstract

Reviewed by: Teaching Diversity and Inclusion: Examples from a French-Speaking Classroom ed. by E. Nicole Meyer and Eilene Hoft-March Mary Anne Garnett Meyer, E. Nicole, and Eilene Hoft-March, eds. Teaching Diversity and Inclusion: Examples from a French-Speaking Classroom. Routledge, 2021. Pp 216. ISBN 978-0367648329. $160.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0367648275. $38.95 (paper). ISBN 978-1003126461. $35.05 (eBook) The tone set by the editors in their introduction to this volume is urgent, even militant, in expressing the need for teachers to implement practices that promote diversity and inclusion in their classrooms. Acutely aware of the challenges facing our society and our profession in these turbulent and divisive times, they have [End Page 200] selected what in itself is a diverse and inclusive selection of seventeen essays to help teachers like themselves better understand the issues and to provide them with practical tools to implement changes. The authors of these essays represent a variety of institutions of higher learning. Writing from their own classroom experience, they have developed their own materials or supplemented existing ones to better meet the needs of their students in terms of gender, race, ethnicity and disabilities. This is indeed one of the major strengths of the volume. Each chapter begins by posing the theoretical basis for the practices described and recommended therein. This leads to some redundancy but also makes each chapter self-contained for readers who wish to pick and choose the areas that interest them. Each chapter also concludes with a bibliography, virtually an état présent, in addition to E. Nicole Meyer's comprehensive bibliography that closes the volume. The essays are organized into three sections, although the boundaries among them are fluid and some essays could easily have been included in a different section. The first section contains four chapters, each dealing with a traditionally marginalized group. CJ Gomolka makes the case for a queer pedagogy that also intersects with "anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-imperialist, antiableist, and decolonial pedagogies" (12) while Kris Aric Knisely focuses on TGNC (transgender and gender nonconforming) students in the context of TAQIBP (trans-affirming, queer inquiry-based pedagogies). In a deeply personal essay, Tammy Berberi, a disabled teacher herself, shares strategies she has implemented that foster pride and self-acceptance among all her students, disabled or not. The Black Lives Matter movement and backlash to the teaching of Critical Race Theory make Kate Nelson's contribution, "Improving Racial Inclusivity in the French Classroom," more relevant than ever. The second section, "Inclusively Speaking," is comprised of seven chapters, two of which (essays by Kiki Kosnick and Dominique Carlini Versini) examine the challenges of teaching langage inclusif. Kathryn A. Dettmer and Brenda A. Dyer discuss means of helping students with language-oriented learning disabilities, including dyslexia and audio-processing disorders, using principles of Universal Design of Learning. Jessica S. Miller details how she redesigned the French curriculum at her small state university using backward design and student learning outcomes (SLO) to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Similarly, Stephanie Schechner describes efforts at her private liberal arts college "to develop a curriculum that serves the entire-French-speaking world" to better serve "the needs of heritage, native, and second-language speakers" (97). Eilene Hoft-March focuses on promoting civil discourse in her speaking-intensive course, "La chose franco-arabe," while Dominique Licops has designed an introductory literature course with a diverse corpus based on Intercultural Teaching Competence (ITC) principles. The third section, "Embracing Cultures/Extending Contexts," contains a heterogeneous selection of six essays, each of which describes a specific course developed by its author. Lowry Martin has developed a core curriculum course and adapted it as an upper-level French course based on the concept of "Francospheres" as applied to the Americas. Global foodways and hip-hop cultures form the basis of courses created by Lauren Ravalico and Kathryn St. [End Page 201] Ours, respectively. Lovia Mondésir utilizes novels by Haitian authors Jacques S. Alexis and Louis-Philippe Dalembert to teach tolerance in her classroom. Whereas Jews as a minority group are often neglected in discussions of inclusivity, the final two essays seek to remedy this. Nancy M. Arenberg has created...