David Cassels Johnson is a professor of multilingual education in the College of Education and a visiting professor of applied linguistics at Shanghai International Studies University.

Tell us about your hobbies/outside interests.

I’m a musician. I started playing piano, but primarily play guitar now. It’s mostly rock music. I’m in two different bands. I started playing since I was 12 and immediately started playing with other people, so it’s been an important part of my life for a long time and continues to be. I feel a little bit like I’m the sort of cliché Dad rock guy. I also like art and I like to travel. Luckily my job allows me to do a lot of traveling. I like to experience other cultures and languages and travel around the world trying new experiences. 

What is your favorite hang out place?

There are a few favorite places to hang out. The first thing that came to mind, was my basement because that’s where my instruments are and it’s quiet and it’s my space, and I like to hang out down there. My kids and I like to go the public library and then we go to the Bread Garden. That’s kind of a routine of ours. We also really love Adventure Land. We go there every summer. I take pictures on the Tornado every year. We like to hang out downtown, Rag Stock, Prairie Lights, Target.

Can you share a recent book/movie/performance that you found compelling and why?

I recently read Alison Bechdel’s new graphic novel, called The Secret to Superhuman Strength. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her. She wrote Fun Home, which was turned into a Broadway play. She’s also known for the Bechdel test; the test is whether two female characters in a movie talk about something with each other besides another male character. She writes graphic novels, but for adults. I think the juxtaposition of the images that she creates as the artist who draws the pictures and her words is interesting and surprisingly moving. 

What shaped your interest in your discipline?

I was an English as a Second Language or ESL teacher in elementary school in Seattle, WA and I realized, first of all, I wasn’t well trained to do that and I realized that I wasn’t equipped to provide those students with an equal educational opportunity. The system was failing them as well. The policies and programs that were in place for those kids didn’t give them a fair or equal chance as their native English speaking peers. So that began the journey of this educational problem that I could work on and I should learn how to do what I was doing better. That took me to a Master’s degree and eventually to the PhD program in Educational Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania where I focused on language policy. That remains my general interest: how do language policies impact educational opportunity for kids who speak minoritized languages in the United States. I work in different parts of the world as well and have an interest in the experiences of student in different parts of the world. That’s what I look back at the statement of purpose I sent to the University of Pennsylvania; I have the same statement of purpose now. Which is nice because there’s always that central focus to think about when I get caught up in the minutia of all the other things about the job. 

How would you explain to a child what you do?

I’m a college teacher. I hope to make schools better. A lot of times in academia, it doesn’t feel like we have a large impact. It feels like we’re screaming into the ether a bit. We publish these things in obscure journals that only our peers read or understand. Two things; first of all, you never know who’s going to read it. I’ll tell a quick story. I had a graduate student who wrote a paper, her first paper she ever wrote, and I was second author on the paper. She was a doctoral student at Washington State University and it was about a school in Pullman, WA and the experiences and the policies in that school and the experiences of the students in that particular school. The State Department of Education for Washington used that paper to help justify large scale educational language policies that they were trying to pass. I think that’s both encouraging that your work can have that much impact but also scary because we weren’t prepared for this to be used in that way. So the point is, you never know. Secondly, because we work so often with both pre-service and service teachers, we are having an impact. I think because we do have such a connection with schools, working with special education teachers or science teachers or, for me, language teachers and ESL teachers and bilingual education teachers, impact is more noticeable than for others. I don’t feel that stress as much as others might feel that.

In what ways have you engaged with professional activities outside the institution (local, regional, national)?

I’m a visiting professor at Shanghai International Studies University. I go there four weeks out of the year, typically during the Christmas and summer breaks, until COVID and then it became an online situation, but it’s recently started to be back in person, which is kind of exciting. I have colleagues and collaborators in different parts of the world. I give talks and get hired to teach short courses in different parts of the world; for example, I recently did something in the University of the Republic, Uruguay. When I am at Shanghai, I teach courses and collaborate with scholars there on research projects and grants. My focus for educational equity is primarily in Iowa and the United States. I think we have things to learn from other parts of the world and having those experiences with researchers and schools and different institutions and university is eye opening and helps me with what I do here. 

What is the best advice your received as a student and do you still follow that advice today?

There was a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. She wasn’t my advisor, we would just talk. She would come into work late, after 5 sometime because she had a husband that she needed to care for at home. I worked in a cubicle because graduate students didn’t’ get offices. She would say that she always had more questions. She was a very curious person. She never wanted to stop with the research. She just always had more questions and I think that curiosity is one of the central key ingredients to being a good researcher and someone who likes their job. Being a good researcher is just having an insatiable amount of curiosity, having questions and not thinking you have the answers to those questions. So that’s always driven me. In fact, the one piece of advice she gave, I didn’t listen to was don’t ever write books because the gold standard in education is journal articles and you’re not going to bet tenure based on books. I wrote books anyway. I didn’t listen to that advice and it’s been helpful to have the books that I wrote.

What changes are on the horizon for your work or your discipline?

I’m in different disciplines. I situate myself within sociolinguistics and my topic is language policy. The linguistic ecology of the United States and of Iowa is changing. We see this rapid increase in the number of kids who speak other languages besides English. Over the past two or three decades, like 600%, an incredible amount of growth. We are still behind national norms.  There are school districts in Iowa where a majority of students are not native English speakers, so there’s a lot of work to be done, here and everywhere. So, I think that’s exciting. It’s where we do have a good relationship with the programs around Iowa, particularly with the bilingual education program. In West Liberty, for example, there are always programs popping up and that’s exciting for the students and for us with the possibilities of collaboration. There’s always a need,  it continues to grow The future is bright in terms of its viability and its health. I think there’s plenty of work to be done.

In closing, what words of wisdom would you like to share, what quotation or person inspires you, what does the next chapter look like?

I worry about a lot of the educational policies that have been passed over the past few years, what can and can’t be said in public, in school libraries. I think it decreases the likelihood that college students are going to want to be teachers. Our pre-service teachers who are our undergraduate students who are full of energy and vigor and excited and committed and feeling like they’re going to go out there and change the world. In a lot of ways they do, they are. They have a huge impact on society and on kids.