Reflecting on English language learner (ELL) students’ struggles with prejudice and privilege, Dr. Cahnmann-Taylor discusses how Acting up with Language activities can help all language learners prepare to engage in social justice work focused on classroom equity, community equity and global equity. Examples of theatre from Latin America and the U.S. civil rights movement illustrate the ways theatre can help teachers validate and navigate language learners’ personal and social struggles through language, but also prioritize students’ triumphs and assets. Sharing games from her new book, Enlivening Instruction with Drama and Improv: A Guide for Second Language and World Language Educators (Routledge, 2021), Cahnmann-Taylor will share examples of theatre structures that can extend classroom dialogue into public performance forums and opportunities for social change.
Presenter
Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor, Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is co-author of four scholarly books in education: Teachers Act Up: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities Through Theatre (2010); two editions of Arts-Based Research in Education (2008; second edition, 2018) and Enlivening the Language Classroom with Drama and Improv. A poet, she is also the author of a book of poems, Imperfect Tense, (2016), and currently serves as a Fulbright Ambassador Alum speaking about the power of poetry and theatre in teaching second or additional languages. Winner of four “Big Read” Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Beckman award for “Professors Who Inspire Social Change,” Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg and Anna Davidson poetry prizes, and a Fulbright for nine-month study of adult Spanish language acquisition in Oaxaca Mexico, she is a regular international speaker whose recent engagements include a 2017 Richard Ruiz Fellowship in Guanajuato, Mexico and an invited plenary to the 2018 English Teachers Association of Israel. A graduate of the New England College low-residency MFA program and the University of Pennsylvania’s Educational Linguistics doctoral program, her poems, essays, and articles about language learning have appeared in numerous literary and scholarly journals can be found on her website. She lives in Athens, GA with her husband and two children and their rescue dog, Bagel.
