This piece is part of a series by participants in the Winter 2026 Open Knowledge Fellowship, coordinated by the Mina Rees Library. Fellows will share insight into the process of converting a syllabus to openly-licensed and/or zero-cost resources, as well as their experiences teaching undergraduate courses at CUNY.

Beatrice Mundo, CUNY PhD candidate, researches the paradox of 16th-century French Italianism and Italophobia. She coordinates the digital archive: Letters of Catherine de’ Medici.

As language instructors, we often have to deal with fear. Students of all ages carry a long list of stereotypes about language learning, and many of these are so deeply rooted that they add an extra layer of complexity to our work.

Students often believe that they need the best textbook, usually an expensive one, that they must be in the perfect mood, in the right academic setting, and only under these ideal conditions will learning be possible. But more often than not, our lives are chaotic and confusing, and we are frequently in a rush. What if, as a student, I genuinely want to learn something new, French, for example, but I do not have the means to do so? What if my motivation is strong, but my resources are limited? In this case, Open Educational Resources (OER) might offer a solution.

I am increasingly convinced that we, as instructors, should work to dismantle these stereotypes of perfection associated with learning. We all know that learning is often messy: we get confused, we make mistakes, and this is all part of the process. In an era that constantly demands efficiency and perfection, we should be gentler with ourselves and practice patience.

I had the pleasure of being part of the Winter cohort of the OER Fellowship, and these reflections emerged after just three weeks of participation.

Another criticism that we, as language instructors, often encounter concerns the quality of available materials. Sometimes we find excellent resources with innovative layouts, only to discover that they are accessible but not free of rights. Other times, we encounter OER textbooks that are outdated or incomplete. In other cases, the material is pedagogically sound but does not align with our values.

This led me to question why so much high-quality material exists but is not openly licensed. I am not referring to the materials that publishers provide to instructors as complimentary resources. Rather, I am thinking about the materials created by colleagues around the world and shared on platforms or social media without clear licensing information. Misinformation, or a lack of information, seems to be the only explanation that comes to mind.

As an instructor, considering the significant amount of time I already spend brainstorming, designing lesson plans, and preparing classes, I began to think that it might actually be faster to create my own materials rather than rely on those produced by others. I am fairly certain this is a common thought among educators. Moreover, if I consider the values I want to transmit to my students, beyond teaching them French, such as how to think critically and how to learn, I would rather invest countless hours in creating my own materials than use someone else’s and later discover that it conflicts with those values or presents legal or ethical issues.

In many ways, this reflection brings me back to the fear I mentioned at the beginning: fear of not having enough, fear of not doing things “the right way.” OER does not eliminate this fear, but it invites us to work with it differently. It asks us to accept imperfection, to trust process over polish, and to see learning, not as a finished product, but as something we build together, piece by piece, even in imperfect conditions.

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