It's summer in Portland! And, is it ever! Let's get the superficial stuff out of the way first. It was nearly 100 degrees here yesterday, and an important distinction between Portland and other places that are hot more of the time is that few people in PDX have air conditioning in anything except their cars. So, it's hot and we're feeling it.
This year, I'm spending my summer in Portland at the Summer Insititute for Intercultural Communication. I actually wrote (and got) a grant to come out here, where I have been, and will be, taking some professional development workshops that are really helping me develop an action plan for the long-term work I want to be doing with language teacher preparation.
Last week, I attended a session called "Diversity Work: Where Do We Go From Here?" It was probably more designed for people who are the "Diversity Director" in their organizations, but I got a lot out of it, in terms of nurturing my soul (we talked about some great strategies for avoiding burnout, for example), increasing my own awareness to go even deeper ("When you woke up this morning, were you inhaling, or exhaling?"), and some downright useful information (statistics and such) to make the case for diversity, which is something I think the field of language education still hasn't totally understood.
I think one of the challenges with a field instead of an organization is that organizations are easier to change. Granted, organizational change is not easy, but I think changing a field is an even bigger challenge because I'm not much of a supporter of incremental change because I think that by the time any significant change is observed, the context has already moved on. The impact, under these conditions, is not enough.Thoughts?
Well, there'll be more to come from PDX, for sure. But now, I'm getting ready to go to the Carribean Festival. It's summer in Portland, indeed!
Posted by chri1010 at July 22, 2006 12:53 PM