Prof. Shondel Nero, Professor of Language Education at NYU Steinhardt, shares her journey from growing up in multilingual Guyana to becoming a leading scholar in language education, identity, and equity. She reflects on how personal experience shaped her commitment to linguistic justice, the role of language in sustainability and climate discourse, and the importance of centering diverse voices in education.
Lina: Thank you so much for making time for this interview! We’re excited to feature you in the first issue of our Sustainability Group newsletter. Before we begin, is there anything you’d like to share with our audience to set up the conversation?
Prof. Nero: I was born in Guyana, a former British colony in South America, just a few years before the country gained independence from Britain in 1966, and I came of age during the 1970s. Growing up in Guyana, a culturally and linguistically rich country of six different ethnoracial groups, diversity was a normal part of my life. The linguistic landscape of Guyana reflects its colonial history and ethnoracial diversity. While English is the official language, owing to British colonization, the mass vernacular is Creolese, a continuum of speech varieties composed of a blend of West African syntax, and vocabulary from British English, West African languages, Dutch, Bhojpuri, and various Ameridian languages. In my household, I heard the full spectrum of language in Guyana, along what linguists call the Creole continuum, from my mother’s folksy creolized English to my father’s more standardized British colonial English. All around me, I could hear most Guyanese seamlessly using a mixture of Creolese and English to various degrees, depending on purpose, context, education, and social class.
The post-independence era in which I came of age was a period when questions of language, cultural identity, and education were deeply intertwined. My entire K-12 schooling was under a British colonial model of education - a highly socially stratified, meritocratic, exam-driven system based on British colonial curriculum, values, pedagogy, and assessment. Through competitive national exams, which we all took at age 10, I earned a place at the top all girls’ secondary school in Guyana (Bishops’ High School). I remember I fell in love with languages from my first French class at Bishops. Something about language drew me in - the sounds, the words, the structures, the power to tell stories, the ability to communicate and connect people across cultures….
Two years later, I found myself among a group of randomly selected girls sent to the leading all-boys school, Queen’s College (QC), as part of an historic swap of students to make these two top schools co-ed, after being single sex for more than 130 years. My combined secondary school experience (two years at Bishops and five at QC) were foundational to my academic and professional journey. I thrived especially at QC, an institution that was much more than a secondary school. It was a full-fledged community with a distinct identity and value system, focused on excellence in all domains, academic and social.,. In retrospect, I realize that because QC was originally made for boys (initially the sons of colonial expatriates), who would become leaders in their fields, the school instilled values traditionally attributed to boys/men in leadership roles - confidence, assertiveness, competitiveness, taking charge. Luckily for us girls, we were welcomed into that space, albeit awkwardly at first, and were able to fully inhabit many of those values over time.
After completing secondary school , I worked for one year at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital city, because of my early and passionate interest in language, culture, and international affairs. Back then, I had ambitions of working in the Guyanese foreign service as an ambassador somewhere, but quickly got a reality check of the political minefield of foreign service work in Guyana at the time, and saw I needed to pivot to other career choices that involved language.
I went on to pursue undergraduate studies in Montréal, Canada, majoring in French and Spanish. After graduation, I moved to New York City (NYC) in 1984, where Air Canada airlines was hiring French speaking agents to book flights for French Canadian customers. Once in the U.S., I became increasingly drawn to language education as a way to contribute more meaningfully to communities while using my language skills. So, while working at Air Canada, I returned to school and pursued a Master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at Columbia University, Teachers’ College (TC).
In my first full-time teaching job in the US, I taught French and English as a Second Language (ESL) at a high school in East Harlem while teaching reading part-time to adults at Literacy Volunteers of NYC. Soon after, I was invited to teach ESL writing in the English Dept. at Long Island University (LIU)‘s Brooklyn campus, which I really enjoyed right from the start, and prompted me to return to graduate school to pursue a doctorate in applied linguistics at TC. It felt like a perfect fit to balance education with my love of language.
While teaching ESL at LIU, a simple co-incidence happened. A young man from Guyana (I call him “Charles”) was placed in my ESL writing class. So I wondered... how could someone from an “English-speaking country” be placed in an ESL class? Little did I know that question would become the spark for my doctoral dissertation research. First, it turns out that many students from the “English-speaking” Caribbean (all former British colonies) were being placed in ESL classes in NYC schools and colleges at the time. Their placement raised several questions about a fundamental premise in linguistics - the idea (from world famous American linguist, Noam Chomsky) that each language has a native speaker who knows the language intuitively. Social constructions over time worldwide added to the concept the notion that the native speaker should “look” a certain way and/or “sound” a certain way. By that logic, anyone whose language or English does not “sound” like a native speaker of American English is an ESL speaker/learner. We can see how this construction is ripe for raciolinguistic discrimination. Thus, Charles, who was a heavy Creolese speaker, was placed in my ESL class - much to his chagrin, because he self-identified as a native speaker of English, being born and raised in Guyana. Charles’ placement raised all kinds of questions for me - who’s a native speaker of any language? On what basis is that determination made, especially in schools? What are the implications for pedagogy and assessment of placing Caribbean Creole English speakers in ESL classes?
My doctoral dissertation thus became a qualitative longitudinal study of four students who were placed in ESL classes - two from Guyana and two from Jamaica - that critically explored the foregoing questions. The dissertation was subsequently published as a book, and led to a lifelong career in Applied Linguistics and Language Education where I’ve pursued related research on language and identity and language education policy. That work has taken me from LIU, to St. John’s University in Queens, where I was an associate professor of TESOL and Bilingual Education and finally, to NYU Steinhardt, where I’m currently Professor of Language Education in the Dept of Teaching and Learning - lucky for me, all schools in NYC. Looking back, I see a clear thread of language running through all of my personal and academic experiences: it has been my passport to new worlds, new learning, new research, new teaching, new communities, and new ways of understanding human connection.
Lina: Your work often explores how language, identity, and power intersect in educational spaces. How do you see language justice as part of the broader equity and sustainability conversation at Steinhardt and beyond?
Prof. Nero: Language permeates all aspects of our lives, and it’s definitely intertwined with power and identity. Historically, the language varieties that dominate societies and education are those of the people in power, so in the case of the US, that would be standardized English. Which puts marginalized speakers of languages other than English or of nonstandardized varieties of English at a disadvantage. Nowhere is that more evident than in educational spaces where multilingual students - mostly immigrants or first gen students - often struggle to get their identities and voices affirmed in school. My work has advocated for centering language diversity as the norm in classroom teaching, learning, and assessment as one way to counter that struggle, moving us towards achieving language justice for multilingual learners. My recent work has taken up this broader understanding of language to examine questions of discourse, specifically around climate and sustainability. My co-authored book, The Power of Narrative: Climate Skepticism and the Deconstruction of Science with Professor Emeritus of Environmental Education, Raul Lejano, examined the narrative and discourse of climate skepticism and how we can work towards developing broader and more inclusive discourses to mitigate the us (believers) vs. them (skeptics) divide in society to advance the conversation on climate and sustainability. Which is why our Steinhardt sustainability group was formed with interdisciplinarity as a core part of our identity, leveraging the same of our school. We bring our various disciplinary discourses to bear on our mission, research, and practices to educate for sustainable communities, acknowledging that we need a comprehensive, multifaceted approach to making more sustainable communities for all.
Lina Ma: You’ve written extensively about the experiences of speakers of Caribbean Creoles and other nonstandard varieties of English in U.S. classrooms. What do you think educators and institutions need to understand most about linguistic diversity to create more inclusive learning environments?
Prof. Nero: Traditional ways of thinking about language in applied linguistics has been that monolingualism is the norm in society (another colonial construct), which is not true at all. Research in language education in the last thirty years has forcefully acknowledged that multilingualism or linguistic diversity is the norm in society. And when we consider that we’re living in a globalized, interconnected world, institutions and educators should expect to be serving multilingual, culturally diverse, international student bodies as the norm. That means we need to normalize dispositions of openness to differences of all kinds (linguistic, cultural, racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, sexual orientation, ability, worldviews, etc). That’s easier said than done. It takes intentional work to truly, critically engage with difference, but when we do that, our research, teaching, creative practices, and assessments have a better chance to advance knowledge, solve problems, and build stronger, more inclusive and vibrant communities.
Lina Ma: In your 2020 book, The Power of Narrative, Climate Skepticism and the Deconstruction of Science, you explored how discourse and ideology shape how people perceive and respond to climate science. With climate skepticism resurfacing in public debates under the current Trump administration, how do you see linguistic and cultural factors influencing these renewed narratives?
Prof. Nero: Our book revealed that underneath the narrative of climate skepticism in the US is a deeply fractured society (culturally, ideologically, sociopolitically) that manifests in the language and discourse of both sides of the divide (pro- and anti-climate folks). That divide has only widened over time, and the return of the Trump administration (with its explicit anti-climate stance and policies) has created a context for entrenched anti-climate (really anti-science in general) views and language flourish. We see this language in mainstream and social media, many times coming from the highest level of government. In fact, “climate science” and “climate crisis” are two phrases among a growing list of “disappearing words” that have been mandated by the Trump administration. This is why in the last chapter in our book, we proposed strategies for developing more inclusive language and discourse in a society that is so culturally and politically divided.
Lina Ma: The Steinhardt Sustainability Group that you chair focuses on fostering sustainable, just, and inclusive communities. In your view, how do linguistic and cultural inclusion contribute to building socially sustainable futures?
Prof. Nero: I think it goes back to what I said above about engaging with our linguistic and cultural differences to recognize our common humanity. After all, we all share the same planet regardless of our varied differences; that means everyone’s actions or inactions affect the other in some way. So to the extent that we can work across our cultural and linguistic differences in fair and humane ways, we have a better chance of being more inclusive of everyone and building more sustainable futures together.
Lina Ma: Many of your projects involve multilingual and transnational students navigating complex educational systems. How do you approach research and teaching in ways that center the voices and agency of these students and communities?
Prof. Nero: As an immigrant and multilingual person myself, I’ve had to navigate living in three different cultures with three different educational systems. So I can totally relate to what my multilingual and transnational students are going through. My research and teaching start from assuming and normalizing differences (in knowledge, experiences, and worldviews), and I actively engage those differences in classroom content and in my research. For example, I regularly teach our Master’s degree capstone course on second language acquisition research where students learn theories and frameworks around how humans learn additional languages, and how best to support language learners in the classroom. The majority of the class are international students from China who have learned English as a foreign language. I routinely invite them to share if/how their own experiences as language learners align with the literature. The final project for the course involves developing a research proposal on some aspect of language teaching and learning in a multilingual environment. The proposal can include multilingual content. In terms of research, I’ve published several articles on Caribbean Creole English speakers, and co-authored a book with an English Professor colleague at St. John’s University on teaching vernacular literature from around the world (i.e short stories, poems, novels written in vernacular Englishes and Creoles). This book gives voice to vernacular speaking communities, and sends the message that their languages and cultures are worthy of study in the classroom.
Lina Ma: Looking ahead, what current or upcoming projects are you most excited about in your research or in the Program in Multilingual Multicultural Studies?
Prof. Nero: I’m currently working on a book-length autoethnography of my transnational life experience, covering three themes - language, identity, and education. It’s been both exciting and challenging, as I’m really taking a deep dive into how I’ve navigated three different countries and cultures, especially around identity shifts and worldviews. A lot of what I shared with you in this interview will be in the book. Also, since completing our book on climate skepticism, I’ve gotten really into writing and researching about language, discourse, and narratives permeating society, especially on the hot topics of the day like climate, politics, and education.
Lina Ma: Finally, what advice would you give to students or young scholars who want to advance linguistic justice and equity in education or sustainability work?
Prof. Nero: If you are monolingual, try learning a new language, seriously; it’s very humbling. Get out of your comfort zone and truly engage others who are, and think differently from, you in respectful ways. Get involved in community-based programs and activities that are done multilingually; it’s a small, tangible step towards linguistic justice. Advocate for essential public services to be provided in languages of the community. For emerging scholars…include multilingual and indigenous communities in your research in empowering, not extracting, ways. For example, there’s been a growing body of impactful Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) that really centers the voices and experiences of marginalized youth by including them in the research process from the beginning, aiming to empower them to become advocates for linguistic and social justice in their own communities. That can include engaging in community-based educational and arts-based programs on climate and sustainability.
