Laura and Ana are two social entrepreneurs. They give their time, energy and skills to a good cause. The value of their work is manyfold. But let's start by saying that this is a project carried out by young people, like our students, working to help others in a country that is hardly visible in textbooks or in the news: Equatorial Guinea.
This choice to focus on people like Laura and Ana and their work is the kind of conscious decision that we, as language teachers, can make to make a difference too. Our entrepreneurship as language educators consists in making a good choice. What is a good choice? A meaningful one, one that directs the focus of attention to initiatives led by creative, resilient and resourceful people carried out in places most in need of such qualities and determination. And these do not have to be neither famous nor well-known.
We have to shift our attention and that of our students to normal people that decide to embark on extraordinary pathways and embrace the possibility of making change for the better. These are social entrepreneurs or activists. People who need to keep learning and expanding their knowledge as they face new challenges. Our students could be one of them, but this proposition is only made credible when we pick up the right examples. Normal people, like any of us, with real stories that slowly shape dreams into realities. They are being educated by the experiences they decide to be part of. They put their skills to use in a context of need, but they return with their hands full of unexpected gifts. As Martin Buber said in The Legend of the Baal-Shem, "all journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware".
Texts books are not up-to-date with our new needs nor those of our students. As teachers of any subject, we are making political decisions even when we think we are making none. We need to become conscious of the fact that when we teach something we can do it in a way that adds value. Time is precious, and we can waste opportunities to connect with, to ignite, to inspire our student's minds if we do not make choices driven by a framework that goes beyond the purely linguistic. We need a framework of values.
Yes, as a language teacher can be argued that teaching and learning a language is mainly about language. However, the contexts in which we situate that language teaching and learning cannot be just any. That choice matters too.
Those of you who can understand Spanish will be able to appreciate the value of the material I produced here in collaboration with Ana and Laura. For those who cannot follow (until I get the subtitles fixed), the summary is that Laura and Ana are telling us about the kind of work that they are doing in Equatorial Guinea. This is both a good material for presenting an opportunity to students to volunteer and work with Ana, Laura and other volunteers in the summer, as to use this presentation to teach Spanish. This is the kind of material that we need, and we need lots of it. Collaboration and pooling resources are the way to accelerate the process of change we need to see very soon.
Do you want to know more? Watch this video and find out what Laura and Ana are up to.