Task 1: What’s in Your Bag?
For this assignment, I chose to photograph my purse and its contents. The items that I commonly carry with me are: AirPods, Invisaligns, hand sanitizer, lotion, Tylenol, Keys (house, car, mail, classroom), chapstick, pen, Essential Oil Roller, hair pins, corn nuts, fruit bar, Cards (credit, debit, ID, membership), and a coin purse. I also normally carry my phone, which I used to take the picture, and my planner, which I took out to use and left on my desk.
The items in my bag help me stay prepared and organized in my life as a mother to a 5-year-old boy and an elementary teacher. My keys allow me to move between my house, car, and classroom. My pen, planner, AirPods, and phone help me schedule, plan, and communicate. The corn nuts and fruit bar are in case my son is hungry while commuting to and from our school and home. The Invisaligns, hand sanitizer, lotion, Tylenol, essential oil roller, chapstick, and hair pins are self-care items, and my cards and coin purse are for purchases and identification.
The items in my bag can be considered texts because they represent my day-to-day life, from where I go to what I do. My keys, cards, and coin purse suggest that I occupy both professional and private spaces, particularly my home, car, school, and consumer spaces like the Aquarium, Starbucks, and VanDusen Gardens. I use my pen to transfer ideas from my head to my planner, and I use both to organize and plan my studies, work, and personal life. The snacks, Tylenol, lotion, Invisaligns, hand sanitizer, chapstick, hairpins, and essential oils reflect my and my son’s self-care and hygiene needs, as well as societal expectations and influences. Lastly, my phone and AirPods represent my need to stay informed and connected throughout the day. I heavily rely on these, along with my planner, to multitask and coordinate events in my day-to-day life.
My phone and AirPods are my primary means of communication, including messaging, email, apps, and online platforms and information. They also allow me to listen to music, audiobooks, and articles, and to communicate via calls, voice messages, and videos. Even though I primarily organize my life in my planner, I communicate and share information on my phone. Although the remainder of my items are not digital, they still utilize technology either in its production like my Invisaligns that were made with a 3D printer and the multilingual text printed on my items that communicate its contents, usage, and ingredients, or in its usage like my cards that are linked to member identification and digital banking systems and my car and building keys that contain microchips that communicate identification using radio frequencies. My mailbox, apartment, and classroom keys represent old technology as they are traditional metal keys that grant me access to those spaces.
The contents of my bag show that I am literate to a degree in many areas. My AirPods, phone, pen, and planner suggest that I am multimodal and able to read and write both digitally and on paper. My coin purse, keys, and various cards suggest financial and cultural literacy, as I have a home, a job, a car, and access to cultural spaces like the Art Gallery, the Symphony, and other local spaces. The remaining items, such as Tylenol, chapstick, hand sanitizer, and snacks, demonstrate my health literacy skills because they are essential to my care and well-being.
The image I would like to project is organized and composed, but the contents of my bag reveal that I require many self-care and organizational aids to achieve that image. My bag provides me with the tools that I need to multitask and manage my chaotic life as a Grad student, teacher, mother, friend, and family member while appearing calm and poised.
Fifteen or twenty-five years ago, my bag was much simpler. I had a small wristlet big enough for a thin flip phone, one key, my ID, and two bank cards. It would have reflected a time when I was younger, with fewer responsibilities and societal influences. My now larger bag reflects changes in technology, responsibilities, and expectations as I transitioned from being a student to a student who is also a teacher and single parent.
An archaeologist examining this bag might conclude that I am from the early twenty-first century based on the technology it contains. The mix of digital tools, a planner, and a pen may suggest that I am a multitasking individual who attempts to manage it with an abundance of self-care items.
Overall, the contents of my bag are indicative of who I am at the moment, and I am sure that my bag and its contents will continue to change over time, as they have from the wristlet I owned many years ago.
Task 2: Does Language Shape the Way We Think?
[1:55] Dr. Boroditsky states that languages differ in the things they require from their speaker in order to speak the language grammatically.
As a multilingual learner who speaks English, French, and Mandarin and is trying to teach my 5-year-old son those languages, I often find it difficult to explain various grammar rules to him. Like why objects in French start with ‘le’ or ‘la’ instead of ‘the’ or that in Mandarin, verbs are not conjugated because you use time words and aspect markers to differentiate when the action happened and the status of the action. When speaking in French, he often defaults to identifying items as multiples regardless of how many there are to avoid the gendered article and tries to combine Mandarin and English after I start to correct him when conjugating verbs in a sentence (ex: Can we (tomorrow in Mandarin) go to the park?).
[11:17] Dr. Boroditsky mentions that how we organize time is related to the language we read and write in.
This resonated with me because the way I write out chronological events or tasks depends on the space and format I am given, as well as the amount of information I know or need to include for each entry. If each entry is a single task, I will likely write the steps vertically, but if they are multi-stepped, I usually write the steps horizontally and then elaborate from top to bottom under each step. This may seem normal so far, but where my friends and colleagues start to question my organizational methods is the direction I take. If I know exactly what the end result is going to be, but not the tasks I need to get there, I put it at the top if I am writing vertically or on the right if I am writing horizontally. If I have a vague idea about the end result, I do the opposite. I have never understood why I did this, but watching this lecture made me wonder if it is because I grew up learning languages like English and French, which read from left to right, then up to down and Mandarin, which reads up to down, then right to left. I learned all three languages around the same time, so I wonder if my way of organizing tasks chronologically makes sense to me, because I can think and process information in different directions, and because language frames abstract ideas like time and organizes how we think about schedules (Boroditsky, 2011).
[23:35] Dr. Boroditsky discusses how people describe and perceive objects depending on the grammatical gender.
Dr. Boroditsky continues to explain that when children were asked to give objects voices, those who spoke languages with gendered nouns instinctively assigned the corresponding voices to those objects. In my experience teaching descriptive language and poetry, I have noticed the same thing. Bilingual students who speak a language with gendered nouns will associate that gender’s stereotypical features with the noun when describing it. Consequently, students who spoke only English or another language that does not gender nouns had difficulty describing non-gendered nouns and sometimes had difficulty understanding why certain students could do so with ease. Until now, I did not realize that the language these students spoke affected their ability to use descriptive language, but Boroditsky’s (2011) explanation that grammatical gender influences one’s perception definitely explains why I have taught students who were adamant that certain inanimate objects displayed certain traits and that students who had differing opinions were wrong.
[26:03] Dr. Boroditsky explains that language helps us construe and construct events
This resonated with me because I often have to explain imagery and descriptive language to students who are learning English as an additional language, as they often take the literal meaning of words in a sentence and become confused when reading a passage or a novel. I also find that students are able to explain and describe events and items differently depending on the language that they are using, the more familiar they are with the language, the more descriptive they are. In a different scenario, my son, as a young learner with limited language experience, tends to use English for simple statements with an adult he knows speaks the language or a family member, French for commands, and Irish for counting. Boroditsky (2011) describes this as cognitive flexibility, where bilingualism allows for multiple ways of thinking, and it has led me to use French to let my son know when he stops responding to or pushes the limits of instructions said in English. He is now, for better or worse, associating French instructions with immediate action, which comes in handy at social events and in emergencies.
[32:05] Dr. Boroditsky asks how we know that language is causal and explains that speakers of different languages witness the same event, but remember different things about it.
This is important to me because it made me rethink how my child, as an only child, retold events that happened where something was damaged. I used to think that he never assigned blame because there were usually only two of us, but even after attending daycare and Kindergarten, he continues to recall incidents and accidents in a more neutral construct and often has difficulty recalling who did what when an adult is trying to assess the situation after the fact. This relates to how Boroditsky (2011) explains how language can shape social and emotional understanding through memory and responsibility.
[43:55] Dr. Boroditsky reminds us that while we are capable of seeing the world in many different ways, we do not often think to look because once we start to think one way, we do not tend to look for another perspective.
As a multilingual learner and teacher, this resonated with me, especially now that I work in an inquiry-based school where projects across many subjects are inquiry-based. Usually, due to time constraints, once my colleagues and I come up with a project that suits our age group and topic, we do not change it year to year or rethink its components unless we encounter aspects that no longer work or do not work with our current group of students. Years ago, I was introduced to a method of teaching French through storytelling and fell in love with it. I have taught French using that method until this year, when I find myself teaching the same cohort for a third year in a row. This cohort was no longer as engaged as they used to be and were becoming difficult to manage as the lessons were predictable to them and less of a novelty. In addition to the unique situation of having me as their French teacher for a third year in elementary, it became clear that I needed to pivot my lessons and switch things up. Moving forward, I will try to reassess projects and modes of delivery yearly to see if I can improve them, rather than waiting until the current option fails. As Boroditsky (2011) states, in addition to being an extra communication tool, bilingualism provides cognitive flexibility.