Professor Is Honored for Contributions to Multicultural Education

By Melissa Fassel

Beloved UMass Boston professor Vivian Zamel was recognized for her career-long contributions to multicultural education at the Freedom to Learn Dinner, held at the International Institute in Boston on October 30. Presented by MATSOL (the Massachusetts Association of Teachers of Speakers of Other Languages), the award was given to just four recipients.

Not surprisingly, Zamel was thrilled to receive the award: "It is always a delight to be recognized by fellow teachers and students, especially in a local context--and to feel that the graduate students that I've taught are sharing in that honor," said Zamel.

A self-described "teacher as researcher," Zamel began her work in the late 70s when she started to explore what happened to the ESOL students she taught--focusing on the question "Why do they write the way they do?" This became the basis for her work in other ESOL courses and with graduate students who would eventually become ESOL teachers, allowing Zamel's literacy research to come full circle. Zamel then expanded her focus to include teachers across the curriculum whose linguistically diverse student population required them to modify their teaching methods. "If you imagine your work as a teacher as a process of learning itself," says Zamel, "it shifts your role completely."

One of the other four award recipients was Professor Zamel's coauthor, Bentley College professor Ruth Spack. A result of their mutual affinity for investigating writing, composing processes, and acquisition of literacy, professors Zamel and Spack have been working together since the early 80s. They've coauthored three books, including Negotiating Academic Literacies: Teaching and Learning Across Languages and Cultures, Enriching ESOL Pedagogies, and one to be released this coming spring, Crossing the Curriculum. This latest book examines the experiences of both ESOL students and the faculty that teach them, most of whom are from UMass Boston. The research focuses on what happens to linguistically diverse students in non-ESOL courses.

Image: Vivian Zamel, professor of English, was honored at the October 30 Freedom to Learn Dinner. (Photo by Harry Brett)

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