How language shapes educational identity and opportunityPrologue: Echoes of Expression By Amani Al Qadi and Mona ShiEpisode 4 investigates how language in education shapes opportunity and identity. Through personal stories, we'll explore the complex relationship between colonial languages, cultural preservation, and educational equity - asking who gets heard and who gets silenced in our current systems.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Act One: Language and the Colonial Classroom By Jordan DaltonOpening this episode, Jordan reflects on his time teaching English in a South African township while studying at Stellenbosch University. Through this experience, he confronts the complex relationship between language and opportunity in post-colonial contexts. His narrative reveals how English - while opening doors to economic opportunity - can simultaneously serve as a tool of cultural erosion, forcing students to choose between preserving their native language and accessing global opportunities. The experience leads him to question similar language dynamics in his own American school system.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Act Two: The Language of Resilience By Mona ShiIn Act 2, Mona explores how language shapes not just communication but reality itself, contrasting her experience teaching young children with her own education. Through her work with 4-year-olds, she discovers how subtle linguistic shifts - like adding "yet" to "I don't know" - can transform self-perception and build resilience. Yet her transactional relationship with English as a survival tool in school left her without the emotional language tools she now sees as crucial for facing global challenges.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Act Three: The Power of Many By Thao Sandra HoangRounding up this episode, Sandra explores the complex dynamics of multilingual education through her experiences at Vietnamese universities. Her story moves from a personal moment of language insecurity during a job interview to broader observations of how language hierarchies affect learning. Through examples of students navigating between Vietnamese and English, she reveals how traditional academic settings often force choices between global academic discourse and local knowledge systems, while suggesting alternative approaches that embrace linguistic diversity as a resource rather than a barrier.

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