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Release date: October 25, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Faculty members share strategies and formulate goals at national conferences

Providing leadership and scholarship beyond the campus

Three faculty members will be representing Greenfield Community College as they share successful teaching strategies and formulate academic goals with their peers at national conferences later this month.

Linda McCarthy, Instructor of Sociology, will lead a roundtable discussion of transgender issues at the National Association of Multicultural Education in Kansas City, Oct. 27 through the 31st. "Transgender is an emerging identity,” explains McCarthy, who did her doctoral dissertation at UMass on this subject. "It generally encompasses people who want to express their gender in a way that's not the norm, and it's a self-claimed identity.” McCarthy suggests as examples a female high school senior who didn't want to wear a dress for the school's graduation picture, "and it became a big deal,” or a little girl who wants to be called by a boy's name. "I think years ago we just ignored that and didn't know how to deal with it,” says McCarthy, "but we have a sense now of people who experience gender differently.” The roundtable will discuss instances of transgender behavior and how to deal with them in the classroom.

McCarthy hopes to share what she learns with GCC faculty and the College's Diversity Committee. "We now have, and we will have, students in our classes that express gender in a way that we're maybe not accustomed to,” says McCarthy, "so how do you react? Depending on how the teacher handles the situation, she or he can model that behavior for students. It's just like having someone in the classroom with a difference that kids aren't used to; if you treat them like everybody else, then the kids will treat them like everybody else. I'm excited to be able to bring my perspective on this issue to GCC.”

Charlotte Gifford, Chair of World Languages and Professor of French and Spanish, is the Chair of the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association Conference which takes place in Sturbridge at the end of October. "I chose as our theme "Multilingualism Makes the World Go ‘Round,” says Gifford. Multilingualism, she explains, is the ability to function in more than one language. "We hear it more and more from government, business and industry that we need multilingual citizens. Monolingualism has been a serious detriment to us socially, politically and internationally.”

It's a theme that GCC embraces as one of its principles of education, according to Gifford. "GCC believes that it is important for all citizens to aspire to having at least a functional ability in a language other than English. One of the other huge benefits of learning another world language is that you get that speaker's point of view into a whole other culture and way of life. I really do see this as a world peace issue.”

Gifford spent all summer putting this Conference together, a labor of love in which the rewards come from what other teachers get out of it. "Regular teachers get a chance over a few days to get together, compare notes, and go back to the classroom really re-energized and ready to try some new things that they have learned. If there's one thing I hope for, it's that the participants will feel that they can go back to the classroom and make a difference.”

As First Vice President of the Mass. Foreign Language Association, Gifford is looking forward to the MaFLA's year-long celebration of the Year of Languages. "There's a resolution pending in the Senate now that I hope will boost that effort significant,” says Gifford. "It is a very specific call for improved support and funding for language learning at all ages and at all stages. We're just about the only industrialized country in the world that does not treat foreign language as seriously as it really needs to be.”

One of Professor Gifford's colleagues will be a presenter at the Conference. Amanda Damon, Spanish Adjunct Instructor, will share her specialized teaching techniques in a workshop called "Spanish for the Professions,” in which students concentrate on learning the Spanish they need to know for their jobs.

GCC offers Spanish for Law Enforcement, Spanish for Medical Professionals and, beginning next fall, Spanish for Firefighters and EMTs. They're all based on a curriculum called "Command Spanish,” which uses phonetic representation. "If I want them to say ‘¡Alto!' which means stop,” explains Damon, "I'd type the words all-toh, and so they read English and Spanish comes out.”

But the reason Damon was invited to present a workshop at the Conference was because she brings something extra to the curriculum, and that's on-the-job verisimilitude. "Their mid-term exam takes place in the parking lot with a cruiser,” says Damon. "I have native speakers in my vehicle. The officer will approach the vehicle and then the native speaker, who they've never talked to before, will start talking to them in Spanish and the officer has to go with whatever language they've learned. In a couple of the scenarios, the operator becomes irate, because people aren't happy when they get pulled over. It's as real-life as I can get it in an educational setting.”

A reserve officer in the Greenfield Police Department for three years and a former 911 dispatcher, Damon knows what her students are facing. "I know what it's like to do a traffic stop,” recalls Damon. "I know what it's like to have someone who just got into a domestic assault and who is crying and screaming and talking as fast as they can. So I teach my students how to slow down the talker. I give them the skills so that they can control the situation and make it better.”

Equally important are the cross-cultural insights that Damon shares with her students, "like the idea of planta baja, which is ground floor, versus primer piso, which is first floor. If I'm a Spanish speaker and I called 911 and said ‘Come quickly! There's a man on the first floor having a heart attack,' the first floor is actually the second floor,” explains Damon. "You can imagine what that type of a mistake could mean to an emergency service person.”

So far, Damon has had four officers from Greenfield go through her program, and three officers from Montague, and looks forward to working with more area law enforcement professionals. From 1990 to 2000, Franklin County had a 69% increase in its Hispanic population, and the projections for 2000 to 2010 in Franklin County is for an additional 60% increase. "So it's needed,” says Damon.