Dorie Profile picture
Spanish teacher. PhD in Applied Linguistics & Discourse Studies from UConn. Committed to antiracist and equity work. she/her/ella 🇵🇷
Aug 18, 2023 15 tweets 4 min read
🧵Looking to spruce up your classroom with some plants? Here are some of my very favorites that do well in classroom environments.

All photos are of my own plants ☺️ Golden pothos. If you’re new to plants, I’d say start here. These plants are so forgiving and not very fussy. Water when the soil gets dry (or if you notice the leaves dropping). Can do well in low light. Young golden pothos plant
Jan 19, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
Sending every household the same amount of Covid tests (4), regardless of how many people live there is a good example of how equality doesn’t achieve equity. That missing coma is gonna haunt me, but not as much as the missing equity does.
May 29, 2020 12 tweets 3 min read
I wrote this tweet out of frustration with EduCelebs continuing with self promotion while remaining silent about racism and inequity, especially with all that is going on right now.

But here's a story for you all... A while back I saw a tweet from an EduCeleb that said "Did you know parents only spend 3.5 min in meaningful conversation w/ child each week." The tweet went on to say that means teachers know as much about a child as their parents.
May 27, 2020 24 tweets 4 min read
I’ve been encouraged by the recent push by many big names in world lang edu to be more inclusive in conferences, webinars, blogging, etc. Many are being more intentional about ensuring racial diversity and have been public about their intentions.

I do have a concern though... It’s commonplace in education to do work for free. We all work above our contracted hours and we gladly volunteer for so many things. But this culture of working for free means that many are taking advantage of free labor.
May 25, 2020 8 tweets 5 min read
It doesn’t matter how many stories with diverse characters you bring into your classroom if all of those stories portray the same narrative. #WLBookAudit #teach4ic Yes. We want to diversify our book shelves, but if our attempts only introduce students to a single story, we may be doing more harm than good.
Dec 13, 2019 9 tweets 2 min read
There is no such thing as "culture-neutral" or "cultureless". Even books written with animal characters are not culture-neutral.
Dec 9, 2019 32 tweets 6 min read
I had a really interesting professional disagreement yesterday with some of our colleagues on here, but it's buried deep within the comments of a thread.

I'm going to reopen it here for visibility and further discussion. A 🧵 on equity within CI. The question this conversation has me considering is if Comprehensible Input (CI) approaches to teaching are *inherently* equitable.
Nov 8, 2019 16 tweets 5 min read
I was inspired by this graphic to start tracking the books I read and use in my Spanish classroom. I want to invite other World Language teachers to join me! I'll be using the hashtag #WLBookAudit to share what I learn. #langchat

Here's a thread of what I've done so far. Diversity in children's books 2018. Children of various racial makeups standing in front of mirrors to represent how many books feature characters who look like them. White, 50%; Animals 27%, African/African American 10%; Asian Pacific Islander 7%, Latinx 5%, American Indians 1%. First, if you haven't read the article that accompanies the infographic, I highly recommend it. But one important update is this version uses broken mirrors to "illustrate the continued misrepresentation of the underrepresented communities"
Sep 2, 2019 19 tweets 3 min read
I’m enjoying reading all the conversations I’m seeing on the practice of giving students “Spanish” names.

Here’s my 2¢. A thread. When I first started working where I do, I was told that I was expected to give students a Spanish name in first grade. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but as a new teacher I didn’t push back.