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Standard 10-Partnerships Artifact 1 Joely Rogers 1

Standard 10 – Partnerships

The teacher fosters relationships with school colleagues, parents, and agencies in the larger
community to support students' learning and well-being.

Artifact I for Standard Ten: Partnerships

Name of Artifact: L2 Justification Essay "Crossing Over: Does Learning a New Language

Transform Our Sense of Identity?"

Date: Spring 2010

Course: This was not part of a course.

Rationale

A partnership is two or more players who are on the same team and who are working

toward a shared goal. As a student in the MATL program; my partners are my professors, my

fellow MATL students and the University of Southern Mississippi at large. Our shared goal is

the acquisition of knowledge for the betterment of all individuals in our society. If any member

of my ‘team’ is unable to thrive it not only affects the team, but because of our shared goal, it

affects all of society.

On December 10, 2009, Dr. Joanne Burnett sent an email to her students in FL561 –

Teaching Second Languages: Theory into Practice which stated that our college dean had “gone

on the record stating that she believes that the study of foreign languages should no longer be a

requirement in our college's BA” (J. Burnett, personal communication, December 10, 2009). In

addition, she stated that the dean, USM and the academic councils were allowing departments in

the college of arts and letters to offer it (the study of languages) as an option (J. Burnett, personal

communication, December 10, 2009). Dr. Burnett’s fear was that the department might drop

foreign languages all together. She asked us, if possible, to send her an email stating our beliefs

about the value of studying languages and cultures, for which she planned to use as a rebuttal to

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Standard 10-Partnerships Artifact 1 Joely Rogers 2

any attempts at reducing the study of languages in the college curriculum (J. Burnett, personal

communication, December 10, 2009).

Even though my undergraduate major is not in languages the idea of having a college

curriculum lacking in foreign languages fills me with dismay. How can we call ourselves

scholars, or function as businesspersons and public individuals in our globalized society without

knowledge of other languages and cultures? Such a mentality is hubris in the truest sense of the

word. I decided that an email wasn’t enough. I needed to support my team. To do so required the

use of a more powerful medium than a bullet-pointed email. I needed a personal essay stating the

importance of studying languages and other cultures, and it needed to be convincing.

The finished essay was submitted to Dr. Burnett in January 2010. It is called “Crossing

over: Does learning a new language transform our sense of identity?”, and I have included a

copy of it at the end of this rationale. In the essay, I argue that global enlightenment results from

three things: trust, communication and transformation; all of which result from learning a new

language and integrating with a new culture. Dr. Burnett placed the essay on the content page of

FL694 – Practicum in Second or Foreign Languages, where it remains to this day under the

heading “Justification of L2 Learning”. A quote from Dr. Burnett:

Hello Class,
I have placed a very moving essay by our fellow student Joely Rogers on the Course
Content page. I asked students in FL 561 for some assistance last semester during USM's
budget crisis and Joely came through with this lovely essay on the importance of learning
about second languages and cultures. I thought you too would enjoy reading it.

Dr. B. (J. Burnett, personal communication, January 30, 2010)

A quote from Ginger Reinke, a fellow MATL student:

Hi Joely,
I read your essay that Dr. Burnett posted for us and I just wanted to let you know how
much it affected me in such a positive way. Your words were eloquent and deeply felt. It
reminds me of how far I have come in my Spanish learning and what a wonderful gift

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that I have to share with my students :) My whole life has been transformed by learning
another language and I want to thank you for reminding me of this incredible journey, the
challenges and the blessings of traveling to foreign countries and who I have become as a
foreign language teacher in this global community.

Gratefully, Ginger :) (G. Reinke, personal communication, January 31, 2010)

Did the essay serve its function of supporting the team? I believe that it did, and that

while it did not prevent budget cuts from affecting at least two professors in the language

department; it hopefully at least opened some minds to the importance of studying foreign

languages and cultures. I have included this essay as an artifact for Standard 10 – Partnerships

because I feel it demonstrates my commitment to creating and sustaining relationships with my

university colleagues (my team).

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Artifact I – L2 Justification Essay

Crossing Over: Does Learning a New Language Transform Our Sense of Identity?

Traveling to a country where you don’t speak the language is a humbling experience.

Commonplace activities, such as ordering lunch at a restaurant or casually conversing with the

checkout person at a grocery store, abruptly become major undertakings. Your comfort zone

demolished, a nervous, child-like state surfaces, suddenly you must TRUST again. Trust that the

individual taking your money is being scrupulously honest about the price, and trust that your

waiter has not decided to play “entrails of the day” entrée with the gullible, unsuspecting

foreigner. Later in the journey, the enthusiasm for trust alone may wane, giving rise to a new

aspiration, one called COMMUNICATION. Learning to communicate in a new language

requires a release of hubris about the presumed “superiority” of your native language, and a

return to the tabula rasa of infantile youth. You must crawl before you can walk, and the humble

act of crawling; whether on the floor in the corporeal sense, or linguistically through a maze of

foreign conjugation, induces a profound state within an individual called TRANSFORMATION.

The scenario portrayed above may be deeply familiar to anyone who has traveled abroad

from their land of birth. My first trip out of the United States was a twelve-day cultural

awakening to France, where I struggled to understand the peculiarity of French consonant

liaison, in addition to the tacit rules for cheese-course selection – one cheese is boorish, two or

three is perfectly courteous, more however, is gluttonous. On a later trip to Portugal, I discovered

that the cute little symbols above letters, the diacritics, were actually pronunciation helpers – this

along with the utility of a spit bucket if you attempt to taste 18 varieties of Porto in one sitting!

Regardless of the country visited or language attempted, the pattern – trust, communication and

finally transformation to new individual, remained continuous in every situation. It is because of

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this reoccurring pattern that I can say without a doubt “learning a new language, or even

attempting a few words in a new language, transforms a person’s belief about who they are”.

They emerge with greater appreciation for life on this planet, and hold a greater respect for all its

inhabitants.

My current transformational venture is graduate school at the University of Southern

Mississippi as a language education major. Someday I hope to teach my native language,

English, to those individuals desiring a personal transformation of their own. The best teachers

are those who can relate to what their students are feeling, and intuit how best to help them with

their potential struggles. Intuition is product of experience, and warrior-like training. I feel my

experiences learning a foreign language and struggling to adapt to a different culture will aid my

evolution into a teacher/warrior/scholar, ready to train my future students to become “warriors of

words” and ambassadors of cultural amalgamation.

While writing this essay the Buddhist term, “satori”, Japanese for “enlightenment” came

to mind. Certain texts assert that the path to enlightenment is not an ascent heavenward, but a

descent down - downward into the masses of humanity. In my opinion, the mastery of an

additional language(s) is a huge step down this path to global enlightenment and its resulting

peace. The path to enlightenment lies not in superiority, but in TRUST, COMMUNICATION

and TRANSFORMATION into a state of genuine human connection and profound appreciation

for our shared experience in our communal home, this wondrous blue planet called Earth.

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