CLIC may finally grow its first tooth and I reached my first semi-successful year on Medium

When I first came to Mexico, I didn’t speak a word of Spanish.

I am an educator who started learning another language from scratch; an adult with a life story who added new words to past experiences; a female and a Jew with opinions to express.

I wanted to broaden my knowledge while studying Spanish. But during my experiences as a language student in Mexico, I barely learned anything relevant of the world or of myself — many of the mentioned aspects of my personality were completely ignored.

I believe these and other circumstances hinder learning and prohibit adults to develop confidence in themselves and interest in the world while practicing a new language. I am also convinced that body, identity, and intimacy are aspects that need to be included into those learning processes rather than radically excluded, which is mainly the case.

Rosh Hashana 5778 already around the corner and I can proudly (or not) count with 8 stories on my Medium blog and 4 unpublished entries:

In the past months, I´ve been working on the strategic concept of the Culture and Language Intervention Club as a social business model. This took me forever (it is still not done) and made me feel insecure about the feasibility of my venture.

It even silenced me on Medium.

Thinking about the structural aspects, revenue streams and my capacity to run a small business is scary and makes me feel uncomfortable.

In comparison to that, writing the few lines above — sharing who I am and why I care for language, migration, and identity — felt relieving, liberating, and absolutely necessary.

These few memories about learning Spanish explain why I founded CLIC — it is as simple as that. I see language acquisition as a great opportunity to keep adults engaged in learning and I am sincerely committed to bring pedagogy back into adult education.

Regarding my contributions to Medium, I guess I shouldn’t overthink this and stop looking for excuses. Sometimes, writing just seems like a lot of effort and exposure. So, here I am again, letting you know about my little world and making a new promise to share my thoughts more regularly.

Before I end my short first post after many months I want to share two events that currently excite me:

Exploring and learning at Laura Sevilla’s workshop Theater & Therapy

The basic goal of the PIA (see above) is to develop your particular identity in a foreign language (one that is different from your native one), to strengthen self-confidence as you mature as a foreign-language-speaker, and to gain communication skills in an evolving set of new contexts. While I am constantly reading new material and working on the theoretical level, I want to spend more time on broadening my personal experience and gather practical knowledge to design the pilot syllabus.

Participating in the 10th International Symposium at CEPE, UNAM

The workshop I am hosting at this 3-day academic gathering will allow me to connect to a new audience (academics and professionals) in the field of Language Acquisition and will enable me to position PIA in a completely different environment. I have had very positive experiences with the few pilot events I hosted in the past, but they only involved language learners — not teachers or scholars. I want to use this opportunity to talk about the shortcomings in traditional language teaching — and provide access points for experts to better understand their students, particularly adult students.