Advocacy Is Your Personal Message to the World: Reflections on our first JNCL-NCLIS Student Advocacy Academy Session
~Amanda Seewald, JNCL-NCLIS Executive Director
Last night, as we finished the first session of JNCL–NCLIS’s Student Advocacy Academy, I felt something that is hard to put into words. This program is a dream come true for me as an advocate and an educator. Watching students from across the country begin this experience together reminded me why we wanted to build it.
I stumbled into advocacy at a young age, before I really had a name for what I was doing. Throughout my life as an educator, I have become increasingly aware that we are missing something fundamental in our students’ learning experiences: opportunities to discover what matters to them and learn how to act on it.
Advocacy is communication, but it is more than that. It is knowledge sharing, but it is more than that. It is persuasion, but it is more than that. At its heart, advocacy is your own personal message to the world. It connects who you are and what you have experienced to what you believe could—and should—be possible.
Language learning adds another dimension to that message. When we learn and use another language, we encounter ways of expressing ideas, understanding experiences, and seeing the world that we might otherwise never know. We learn that our own perspective is one among many. We practice listening for meaning, navigating uncertainty, and finding connection across differences. Those experiences give us something valuable to bring to every conversation about our shared future.
The students who have chosen to participate in this Academy are making a bold statement. They are telling us that language learning and multilingualism are part of who they are, who they want to become, and what they want their world to look like. They see value in understanding others and want more people to have the opportunities that languages make possible.
JNCL-NCLIS is uniquely positioned to bring these voices together. We represent many perspectives connected by a common belief: language is a living, breathing part of who we are. It connects to every personal and professional pathway to which we aspire and is essential to our growth as individuals and as a nation.
At this moment in our nation’s history, we are called to listen, take action, and build solutions together. That work requires collaborative and creative thinking rooted in our different experiences and a willingness to understand one another. I feel honored to be leading JNCL-NCLIS along with our incredible team and Board of Directors into this very important work.
Last night, I saw students beginning to recognize the power of their own stories and the possibilities in bringing those stories together. That is what we hoped this Academy would make possible. I cannot wait to see what they choose to say to the world—and what they help change because they do.
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