THE MEMES PROJECT GOALS

Outreach Project & Resource Hub for Educators of Refugee and other Displaced Students 

Spring 2018-2023 Project

THIS ONLINE OUTREACH PROJECT BEGINS APRIL 8, 2018.

Making Empathetic Multilingual Environments in Schools: MEMES to Support School Experiences of Refugees and other Displaced Students  

You may fill out an interest form here.

Click here for information on How to Participate.

We are educators at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW). We have created this outreach project and resource hub to support teachers of refugee, and other displaced im/migrant students in schools. You may see our background and other work on the topic here, and our bios here (François Victor Tochon) and here (Kristine Harrison).

 On this site you will find information about

• how to participate in this exciting project
  
• MEMES for educational use
• reference links
• various conflicts and other factors that lead to migration
• information about languages spoken by displaced persons
• policies in various countries that host refugees & displaced persons
• lesson plans
  

The acronym MEMES comes from the capital letters of: Making Empathetic Multilingual Environments in Schools.

By using the acronym MEMES, we hope to use a popular symbol shared ubiquitously to create support spaces and then advocate for participation and change. Our goal is to create:

• an online, easily accessible space for teachers
  
• asynchronous and weekly live support
• relevant educational materials for YOU

Join the discussion to help create pedagogies that you will benefit from while you
• share problems and difficulties, or strategies
• seek solutions—even urgent day to day problems
• find and create resources
• work toward multilingual education where teachers, students, and parents are the policymakers, listening to each other

In sum, we are creating resources for Educators of displaced, usually multilingual students. (See more information about displacement here.)

Please join this initiative! Who is Invited to Collaborate:
• Teachers (subject or language)
• School administrators, support staff, other school personnel 
• Policymakers

…Who deal with refugee and displaced students (see how we define displaced here).

International Locations: Participants from all places in the world are welcome.

We offer confidentiality if you prefer to participate discreetly.

The goal of a project and future policy like MEMES is to offset the current status quo of
1. disappearing languages and standardized education, in a context of
2. a planet of displacement & racism, violence, poverty, lack of sustainability and destruction.

Click here for information on How to Participate:

please email Dr. Kristine Harrison with questions at kmharrison@wisc.edu

PAGE REVISED 4-20-18

Meet the two researchers Dr. François Tochon and Dr. Kristine Harrison involved in this project ! This short video clip has both of them. It is the Introduction to the INLEPS 2017 Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that they organized. The conference title was Language Education Policy and the Perceived Identities of Immigrant and Refugee Children: Cultivating Distinctiveness.

REFERENCE AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION FOR THIS PAGE

This web page has a copyright. It may be referred to and quoted, or reproduced and distributed for educational purposes according to fair use legislation only if the following citation is included in the document:

This information was originally published on the website of the International Network for Language Education Policy Studies (http://www.languageeducationpolicy.org) as

Harrison, K.M. (2018). Survey Project Info: Making Empathetic Multilingual Environments in Schools: Memes to Support Refugees and Displaced Students. In F. V. Tochon (Ed.), Language Education Policy Studies (online). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin—Madison. Retrieved from: http://www.languageeducationpolicy.org (access date).