This week I’m talking to Dr. Liana Silva. Liana is an English teacher in Houston Texas, Chair of the Modern Language Association’s Committee on K-16 Alliances and Managing Editor of Sounding Out blog. 

We discuss:

• The best book she’s ever read, taught or learnt
• A brief introduction to her career to date and her school’s recent switch to IB
• Liana’s initial impressions of the IB curriculum and how staff and students are taking to it.
• The ways in which the school have had to amend the previous curriculum to meet the expectations of IB
• Where Liana stands on teaching traditional texts that ensure cultural capital for students v.s using texts that are more representative of global identities
• How the MLA Committee on K-16 Alliances better informs the work she does in the English classroom
• The best resource Liana has come across recently that has improved her teaching practice
• And if she could help change one thing in the U.S. for teachers, what it would be

Thanks so much to Liana for bridging the massive time difference between Houston and Hong Kong in order to offer her ideas and advice on teaching. There is a passage of audio in the recording where it sounds as if the microphone is muffled or playing up in some way but in actual fact this just a curious cat, purring at the superb observations made by Dr. Silva. It does pass quickly and doesn’t obscure the dialogue too much so please bear with it! 

If you’d like to be made aware of when more education chat like this happens then be sure to subscribe to the podcast and/or follow me on Twitter @chrisjordanhk 

Links:

The Writing-Rich High School Classroom by Jennifer Berne