Ok #langchat friends. I’m so glad to have found CI and the great CI community. It has revolutionized my teaching and the teacher that I am. I am better for it, no doubt. But we’re not perfect. A thread. 1/

Recently in a group on Fb there was a post about our CI “lineage” and acknowledging all of our influences and how we found CI. (There are a lot of parallels to religion that I’m going to ignore for the moment.) 2/

While I recognize the power of giving credit to those who helped us get where we are, it was...interesting...to see who were receiving most of the credit. Most were the same (well-known) names, and most were White. A moment for us to think about and reflect. 3/

Why is it like that, and how are we actively working to change that? I don’t think we can say it’s like that because there just aren’t enough leaders of color in our field; 99% of it is bc we live in a system designed to preserve the status quo. And the status quo is...White. 4/

I’m hopeful that we will actively look for ways to bring in more voices, to be welcoming to those voices, to not be gatekeepers or wait until they’ve checked off whatever boxes we’re hoping they would, in order for those voices to be included as leaders in our CI community. 5/

I’m also hopeful that we start to notice color, that we start to ask where the diverse voices are when we see lists like this or lineups at conferences. I’m hopeful we’ll start to work on it. 6/