Month: June 2026

Summer with bilingual education

I find summer (well, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere!) to be an exciting time in academic life.

This summer, I am especially excited because I get to return to Senegal at the end of the month. I have been graciously invited to participate in a conference organized by the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) to support the implementation of bilingual education policies in Senegal and neighboring countries. I am very much looking forward to reconnecting with a vibrant community of bilingual educators and practitioners and contributing in advancing the bilingual education agenda there! On the same occasion, I hope to make progress on my book about the militants of national languages in Senegal, those who have dedicated their lives to advocating for African languages as legitimate languages of instruction.

I am also very excited to support and help facilitate an online teacher training for the inaugural teachers of a new dual-language school in Utegi, Tanzania, called St. Felista’s Academy, together with colleagues from the University of Notre Dame. I look forward to writing more about this project soon. 🙂

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. I will share more about other projects in subsequent posts.

For me, summer is about possibility, fieldwork, and momentum.

Yay to summer!

What about you? What are your plans for the months ahead?

Wild geese

A few days ago, my sister reminded me about Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese as I was going through some difficult times. Reading it again in this context helped me process some of my grief and find some peace. But grief doesn’t just go away. It cries, lingers, comes and goes, sobs, sighs, aches, and also smiles. “Meanwhile the world goes on.“

There is something both unsettling and comforting in that thought, and perhaps that tension is one of the truest things in life. Two realities can coexist at the same time. I don’t take Mary Oliver mean that there is no one to listen or understand the sorrow. Rather, the world neither pauses for our sorrows nor does it completely abandon us in it.

I’ve always loved Mary Oliver — the way she notices and pays attention, and how deeper meanings unfold from her observations. I was incredibly lucky to hear her read her own poetry at Smith College in 2009. It was around the time her anthology Evidence: Poems was released. At that time, I didn’t know who she was, but I remember being so enchanted by her poetry and bought a copy of her book that day.

My favorite poem remains one from that anthology, entitled I want. After re-reading Wild geese, I returned to it and I was reminded of why I loved it so much. Perhaps I relate to it because there has always been a part of me that strives to be the lily, and so much of the way we are socialized today encourages us to be the lily poking up its gorgeous head above the rest. But what if we were content to be only grass?

The poem also reminds me of something my grandfather once wrote to my mother: that one does not need to strive to become a blooming flower, but rather to be as strong and resilient as the grass.

Perhaps that is one reason why these poems continue to stay with me. They remind me that there is no need to become extraordinary before belonging to the world.

We can just be.