Since graduating from the University of Toronto just eight years ago, Danielle Thomas has lived in Canada, Ghana and the U.S., helping students develop the tools they need to work in bilingual and bicultural environments.
“People call my personality free-spirited,” she says. “I don’t know if it is. It’s just that I do what I want to do.”
As an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Arts & Science and a member of Woodsworth College, Thomas studied French and Spanish. In her final year, a professor encouraged her to consider a master’s degree.
“I'm a first-generation university student,” she says. “I didn't even know what graduate school was.”
Thomas enrolled in the master of arts program in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, where she discovered an interest in linguistics. She wasn’t considering a PhD until Ana T. Pérez-Leroux, professor and chair of the department and director of U of T’s cognitive science program, suggested it.
“I didn’t have a background in linguistics,” she says. “But Ana took me on. She guaranteed she would support me and see me through, and she did. That changed my life.”
Thomas completed her doctoral degree in Hispanic linguistics in 2012 and began teaching at York University. In 2015, she joined her husband in Accra, Ghana, where she taught business communications at the Ghana Institute for Management and Professional Administration.
While teaching in Ghana, she was struck by the resourcefulness of the students — especially given the lack of resources.
“There is no funding. There are no photocopiers. I even had to buy paper myself,” she recalls. "Students aren’t given the resources they need. They find them."
In 2017, a new teaching opportunity brought Thomas back to North America. She moved to the U.S. to join the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is currently a lecturer of Hispanic linguistics. She has also developed initiatives to tailor the school’s Spanish program to careers outside of academia.
“A third of our students are pre-med or on the health service track,” she says. “A third are studying business and a third are in international development, politics or legal studies. Our students want to have a professional opportunity to work biculturally and bilingually in social services.”
The department now offers courses that examine the development of intercultural communication in areas such as medicine and law. Thomas teaches upper-year courses in development economics, using her own experience to explain the challenges of doing economic work in middle to lower income countries.
The program also offers two service-learning courses, which give students the opportunity to work with partners in the Spanish-speaking community, including the dual immersion elementary school.
“We work with students of Hispanic and Spanish backgrounds to support their language needs,” she says. “Students have the chance to participate and see the realities of what's going on in their community and country.”
It’s not without challenges — one being that some students are hesitant to participate. “There are cultural obstacles because many of them have never been in multicultural or bilingual settings. There’s fear around going down the road into a low-income or unfamiliar community.”
Students have the chance to participate and see the realities of what's going on in their community and country.
Thomas is there to guide students, to “try to get them to step out of their shell and reflect on what they want instead of what they’ve heard they should do.”
She has two lives now, she says. “One is my research, which is focused on linguistic development from a cognitive standpoint — why bilinguals speak and sound different than monolinguals. The other is working in the community to lessen linguistic and cultural discrimination.”
Her community work has recently undergone a sudden shift with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. To address challenges it has presented for parents, students and teachers alike, Thomas and her colleagues have been working with members of the Spanish-speaking community to offer new opportunities for learning and engagement.
“We’re working with our community partners to offer more Spanish contact virtually to families who are already overwhelmed by online learning,” she says. “Parental education is the key to having our young students advance in their learning during this period. We’re trying to bridge the gap a little by offering non-academic activities in Spanish, with the idea that mentorship relationships can form, and we can include some learning material into our ‘fun’ activities.”
Though the COVID-19 pandemic has also affected the format of post-secondary education, Thomas remains committed to helping students succeed during university and beyond.
“They’re very grade-oriented,” she says. “I try to remind them that working on their skills is what's important, and university is a safe space to do that. It’s a safe space to try new things. I'm always encouraging them to think about alternate ways — that there's just not one way to get to where you want to be. It may take longer, but there’s time for everything.”