Advocacy for Language Education

What is advocacy? Who advocates for language education? How do we make the case for multilingualism? What can you do as a teacher to advocate for yourself, your program, your students, and your language?

Legislative Advocacy

JNCL-NCLIS

National organization for legislative advocacy in DC

https://www.languagepolicy.org

JNCL organizes annual events in which educators come together from every state and make our case to our members of Congress.

Language Advocacy Day 2025: March 3-4 in Washington, DC.

Language Advocacy Day 2024: Click to learn about the schedule, priorities, and outcomes of LAD24: www.languagepolicy.org/lad24

Our national advocacy organization for legislative action is the Joint National Committee for Languages / National Council for Language and International Studies (JNCL-NCLIS).

Professional Organizations

State Organizations - Advocacy and Public Affairs

If you teach in the U.S., then your state has an organization for language teachers, and that organization probably has an advocacy page. Here are some good examples of state advocacy pages. Keep in mind that many of the decisions that impact you and your language program take place at the state level, in the legislature and the Department of Education, not at the state level.

You can expect your state organization’s board members to be informed about important decisions and issues, and you can elevate your voice by collaborating with other educators through your state organization.

MIWLA

Our state organization in Michigan has had an excellent Public Affairs coordinator for several years, Dr. Julie Foss.

https://www.miwla.org/about-miwla/advocacy-resources

Teacher Advocacy for Language Programs

Advocacy is not only about convincing legislators to allocate funds or change laws and policies. In practical terms, advocacy overlaps with efforts around recruitment, retention, marketing, promotion, fundraising, and seeking community support. Administrators who do not have experience as or with language teachers may not value our endeavors enough to allocate resources that could go to STEAM or other initiatives. Money may be listed as the primary barrier to promoting a program, but in fact the flow of money is going to be dependent on advocacy efforts.

The challenges of advocacy present a difficult cost-benefit analysis for busy teachers, especially for small programs and LCTL programs: “If I don’t advocate for my program, it could go under, but I don’t have the time and bandwidth to work on advocacy and also keep teaching effectively.” The most vulnerable language programs, those most in need of advocacy, are the same programs in which teachers are wearing multiple hats, teaching heavy loads, lamenting the lack of supervision and collaboration, and fearing for the loss of their jobs.

Making the Case: Arguments, Data, Narratives, and Advice

We know language education is worthy of investment, but how do we convince others who are not language educators, already multilingual, or otherwise inclined to invest in multilingualism?

Resource Collections

This Padlet board began as a discussion board prompt in FLT 817 in Spring 2022. It includes resources on policy and policy makers, but many of them are here entirely to help language educators like you or your colleagues make the case to your program’s many stakeholders that language learning and multilingualism should receive as much support as they can give. I hope it will be helpful to you, feel free to share, and let us know (maflt@cal.msu.edu) if you want to recommend other posts for this board. Thanks for all your advocacy, past and potential!

Why learn a world language? Advocacy Resources @MSU_MAFLT