The ESL Department at Palomar College supports and stands in solidarity with our BILPOC (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and People of Color) students and colleagues and Palomar College’s Call to Action, as well as contemporary movements fighting systemic racism, discrimination, and injustice.

In the ESL Department at Palomar, our students, teachers, and staff come from all parts of the world including the US and have had their own diverse experiences with injustice, whether racial, religious, political, class, gender, sexual-preference, accent, or language based. As a department, we seek to celebrate diversity and promote equity and inclusion through intercultural exchange and respect, creating an environment in which all our students and colleagues who face or have faced discrimination feel welcome, valued, and safe.

Our individual and collective work towards the goal of antiracism includes developing, sharing, and incorporating antiracist practices and frameworks into our courses through culturally responsive and relevant texts, materials, assignments, and tasks in order to give voice to our diverse students’ perspectives and experiences. We also commit to embedding antiracist practices into our institutional and departmental support services and practices.

We continue to strive to combat systemic racism and prevent marginalization, oppression, and injustice by actively reflecting upon, acknowledging, and addressing our own biases and engaging in continued equity work in our classrooms, our college, our communities, and our world.

ESL Department Statement of Solidarity College ESL Department November 2020