Food, Migration, and Composition: A Writing Textbook for Multilingual Learners
Research shows that immigrants resettling in countries such as Canada tend to be healthier than those born in Canada, a phenomenon known as the healthy immigrant effect. However, their health declines over time due to dietary changes resulting from food insecurity, language barriers, difficulties accessing ingredients necessary to maintain traditional dietary practices, and a lack of understanding of Canada’s food system. This participatory action research project addresses the declining health of immigrants in Canada through the creation and free dissemination of a writing textbook for newcomers learning English.
Over the past three years, Dr. Amir Kalan taught multiple additional language writing and literacy courses in the teacher education program of McGill’s Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE). Aiming to provide an opportunity to write for authentic audiences, rather than just for class assignments, Dr. Kalan invited the pre-service teachers in these courses to create writing curricula that treat writing as a form of social action. They decided to create units with writing activities designed to help newcomers to Canada learn about the North American food system. Throughout the three years, the pre-service teachers created over 1000 pages of unit and lesson plans.
Using a community publishing approach, Dr. Kalan and nine pre-service teachers, some now practicing teachers, along with two research assistants, formed an editorial team. Inspired by these unit plans, the team is creating, editing, and publishing a writing textbook. Educators of multilingual students can use this writing textbook for teaching ideas, lessons, and units about critical food literacy. The textbook explores alternative writing genres (food memoirs, blogs, podcasts, infographics, photo essays, food advertisements, and multimodal digital compositions), critical and culturally relevant pedagogical approaches, and authentic writing and publishing opportunities. Because of the centrality of food in the lesson plans, the pre-service teachers had the opportunity to include activities in the writing process that would need to be performed in spaces outside of the traditional classroom. These spaces include retail food outlets, markets, food banks, community gardens, kitchens, farms, local restaurants, and food factories. Engagement in activities in these spaces would facilitate new social encounters for the newcomers using the textbook in their English classes. Moreover, the lessons host many activities that encourage students to interview family members, community elders, and other community members who could teach them about healthy ethnic recipes. Educators can use this free resource in elementary and secondary schools, as well as in adult language learning contexts. In turn, they can use this book to promote critical awareness about healthy eating for multilingual students new to Canada.
The central research questions of this participatory action research project are: 1) How can pre-service teachers collaborate in a community writing group to create an English writing textbook that focuses on newcomers and healthy eating? 2) What does a writing textbook for multilingual language learners focusing on critical food literacy look like?
The writers and members of the editorial team are Jordan Bourget, Alyssia Bray, Patrick Duquette, Gabriella Gratton, Zeina Jhaish, Camille Montplaisir Allen, Louise Secher, Nishat Sharmin, and Komal Waqar Ali.
Adékúnmi Ọlátúnjí is our book layout designer.
Renee Davy and Karen Andrews are the research assistants on the project.
