March 2025 Vol 7 Issue 3
Tell Your Story Newsletter (TYSN):
Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to Economic Immigrants
Let us help you tell your story!
Welcome Mid-March 2025!
As I prepare this issue of “Tell Your Story Newsletter,” Mark Carney has been
elected the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and just hours ago was sworn in as Canada’s 24th Prime Minister.
Recently as everyone knows, unprecedented tariffs have been levied against
Canada by US President, Donald Trump, and the oligarchs who support him,
plunging our beloved country into an unprecedented trade war and the potential for great economic loss.
And, less than one week ago, we observed (or tried to), International Women’s Day, and (for our neighbours in the UK, Australia and the US), Women’s History Month. The timing of Donald Trump’s undemocratic policies to coincide with the commemoration of women’s lives and rights is not coincidental, as becomes clear in “Article One,” this month.
Just as we need to stand up for Canada, we also need
to stand up for women: Elbows up, indeed!
In “Storytellers’ Corner,” on a lighter note, I show that whatever goes on in the world, English collective nouns (for animals in their habitat) still matter and amuse ESL/TEFL teachers like me and my students. Who says that grammar can’t be fun?
And in “Shop News,” I thank those in my social and work circles who lift me and others up, showing their integrity, generosity and kindness, that certain extreme politicians cannot fathom.
As winter grudgingly cedes (“seeds?”) to spring–local piles of snow are melting and grocery stores are selling tulips, daffodils and vegetable seeds–as we complete the first quarter of our annual revolution around the sun (2025).
How the days fly by . . . .
Despite the divisiveness that fills the news, may each of us as Canadians,
Saskatchewanians and, often, as women, rest long enough to appreciate the
blessings we receive and to feel grace and self-compassion for ourselves; may we rest in that emotional space before we work to support deserving others in our community.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Shih
Principal
Storytelling Communications
www.elizabethshih.com
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IN THIS ISSUE:
ARTICLE 1: On International Women’s Day: Women, AI and the Ever-Present Risk of Misogyny
STORYTELLERS’ CORNER: For Comic Relief: On Collective Nouns for Animals to Cheer You
SHOP NEWS
ABOUT US
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Article One: On International Women’s Day: Women, AI and the Ever-Present Risk of Misogyny
“International Women’s Day” recently passed (Saturday March 8th, 2025) and the month of March is recognized as “Women’s History Month” in the US, UK and Australia (since 1987, building on a week-long celebration that began in the 1970s).
Online sources tell us that both the day and the month are a time to
“highlight the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary
society.”
And yet, if we are to take the US Government seriously, “women” and related
words do not exist, so that such calendar observances will shortly be effaced.
US President Donald Trump and the head of his Department of Government
Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk (supported by their male oligarchy), have ordered the removal of references to women and other, increasingly marginalized groups, from all government documents.
Internationally, we have seen the rights and support of women and minorities
eroding or withdrawn by authoritarian governments. These are “rights we thought we’d entrenched in our world,” laments TEFL Org Co-founder and Director, Jennifer MacKenzie (my ESL training company). Her company’s mission has been to “drive growth through language education.”
MacKenzie noted that the observation of International Women’s Day and
Women’s History Month have been “taken over by corporates and multinationals.
In 2025, she cites, ruefully, that “NASA ordered to scrub any mention of ‘women in leadership’ ” from its websites.
And she’s right. Reporters at The New York Times (reported on March 7th, 2025) pored through 5000 pages from various US Federal agencies and found that many words had been deleted (on Presidential order) from government websites and publications.
Trump and Elon Musk, though they often claim to support “free speech,” are
happy to censor language and ideas they find offensive or insubordinate–including women and minorities.
As you know, good readers, we have returned to a political period likened to
Hitler’s Third Reich, defined by toxic masculinity, and understandable, as some
writers and critics have argued, by historians or psychoanalysts and those who
devoted to those fields.
Trump, in his effort to purge the American government of “woke” initiatives, has censored hundreds of terms from government documents, including “women,” “female,” “females,” “feminism,” alongside dozens others, such as “accessible,” “activism,” “activists,” “advocacy,” “anti-racism,” “community diversity,” “cultural sensitivity,” “disabilities,” “diversity,” “equal opportunity,” “ethnicity,” “inclusiveness,” “LGBTQ,” “mental health,” “minorities,” “non-binary,” “oppression,” “race,” “sexuality.” And on the list goes.
One only wonders why Americans have not revolted in an uprising of their own
(against Trump, that is, instead of for him, as in the January 6th, 2021 attack on
Capitol Hill).
Researchers have been scrambling to determine what public data has been deleted from government websites, multi-disciplinary electronic publications and what reasonable, thinking citizens can now do, given the psychopathology occupying the White House.
If words can disappear, the people they denote can, too . . .
Not coincidentally, we have seen a resurgence in public conversation about the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) over contemporary working life, at a time when women’s (and others’) autonomy is under threat.
Sarah Steinberg, director of Global Public Policy Partnerships at Linkedin, wrote an article recently, called, “AI is reshaping work—let’s make sure women are not left behind.”
She argues that AI will only increase its power to drive economic growth and to create skilled jobs. But if we are to “fully realize this potential, we need to ensure that women, who make up half of the global workforce, have the skills and opportunities to move into AI-driven jobs.”
That will be particularly challenging to achieve, if the term “women” and
independent women in democracy, cease to exist.
Certainly Steinberg is right that women need more opportunities to learn and
“upskill” in AI. Hiring practices need to be modified, so women are hired
according to skill or ability, and not only by prior experience or connections in
“in-demand roles.” This change, Steinberg says (based on statistics of LinkedIn’s research division), could “increase women’s representation in the applicant pool,” desperately needed, “by a full 13%.”
She also writes, we have to use “real-time data and insights” to track the evolution of jobs and to design upskilling methods “to ensure all workers” including women “are prepared for the changing economy.”
But the world also needs a fundamentally different attitude toward humanity in relation to AI.
Citing new research from LinkedIn’s Economic Graph Research Institute (data
drawn from anonymized information of the network’s 1B+ members, around the world) Steinberg says that “one in three women worldwide works in a role likely to be disrupted by Generative AI” (the type of AI that creates new content based on existing data). She adds that women are transitioning into AI-augmented roles at a lower rate” than men.
LinkedIn’s “State of Women in Leadership Report” has published that “women
occupy less than one-third of top management positions, and the rate at which
they’re filling those roles has slowed [from 2022-2024], falling to a 0.2% increase [in that time], down from 0.8% increase in the two years before that.”
Steinberg summarizes that “looking beyond leadership, increases in women’s
overall participation in the tech labour market has also fallen, from a 2.5
percentage point increase (2020 to 2022) to a 0.1 percentage point decrease from 2022 to 2024, [with women] hovering around 43.4% of all workers in our data.”
She adds that “women make up less than one-third of the AI engineering
workforce—and an even smaller share of those with AI literacy skills.” So while
AI can automate repetitive tasks like data entry and processing, ostensibly to free workers to focus on more strategic or people-focused work, AI is also disrupting industries where women are more likely situated, terminating their employment in fields “such as writing, editing, translating, and data analysis.”
Few people would dispute that the world needs to invest in skills-based training for everyone, and especially for women. The transformative capacity of Generative AI [GAI] brings both opportunities and risks (as the “Godfather of AI,” British-Canadian computer scientist, Geoffrey Hinton, has long-cautioned).
But when references to women and minorities (including minority women) are
being removed from public government records, AI skill development and hiring are not likely. Instead, Steinberg identifies this as a time when many measures of women’s economic participation and success” in the workplace “are stalling or even declining globally.”
Steinberg continues: “LinkedIn data suggest that men and women do not have
equal opportunities to benefit from [GAI’s] transformation. Across nearly all
countries, we find that women are more likely than men to work in occupations
where we expect more of the skills to be replicated and outmoded by GAI
(“disrupted” fields) and less likely to work in occupations where more of the skills will be boosted by GAI (“augmented” fields). Globally, we expect one in three women works in a role we expect to be outmoded by GAI.
Women are at risk of being left even further behind by the adoption of GAI in the workplace—in Canada, as well as the US. Yet, women know how much we have already had to fight historically to get where we are—and that fight we now must redouble for us to work where we would like to be.
In my (currently, all-women) writers’ group, we gather monthly to inspire and
encourage each other with our successes, experiences, stories—and collaboration. We use AI to varying extents. As creatives, we collectively need greater resources and more equal access to them around the table—regardless of gender, sexuality, race, class, organizational affiliation, and so on. These are basic Human Rights.
And yet in 2025, they are threatened.
Where I work to teach English-as-a-Second Language , I see women (including
online) lifting each other up, as we work in-the-trenches and, often with AI, amid the vicissitudes of daily life.
So, if the annual commemoration of “International Women’s Day” or, indeed, of
“Women’s History Month,” feels tired or somewhat “past” to you, good readers, I hope this editorial might persuade you otherwise.
Trump, Musk and their hate-filled, divisive allies targeted these dates for their
campaign to erase women and minority rights.
Their “policies” have yielded Orwellian times.
To close, a few final comments of my own:
First, a shoutout to the many amazing women in my writers’ group that I refer to above, and especially to my co-founders, Julie Barnes and Ashleigh Mattern (see their descriptions in “Shop News”).
We do exist, in-person, in (digital and other) print and in speech. We are human
rights and tech savvy when we share and publish our ideas–because of the many generations of women before us who have made it possible to do so, including locally (to name only a few Saskatonians), the late Merle McGowan, Monica Kreuger, Silvia Martini, Adele Buettner, Lillian McKay, Laura Van Loon, Gwen Ament, Annabelle Wallace. . . and the list could fill many books!
When women and minorities have the solidarity we must actively defend, human rights can and are observed and respected.
Finally, in 1993, in the Academy of Motion Picture’s “Year of Women” in film,
one of my favourite actors, the English feminist, Emma Thompson, accepted the best actress award for her role in a Merchant-Ivory production of “Howard’s End.”
Thompson said in her speech that she looked forward to a day when the industry no longer needed to so dedicate such awards, because women’s work would be so thoroughly acknowledged and integrated into the world that there would be no need.
Well, 32 years later, ditto for “International Women’s Day” and “Women’s History Month.”
Of course, with the influence of a repeated felon running the largest government in the Western world (and manipulating resources of AI to do so), we have fallen further away–not closer–from Thompson’s rallying cry of 32 years ago.
But we can still find hope and humour in our feminist political resistance to
Donald Trump. If the parallel developments of misogynistic and exclusionary politics these days feels overwhelming, consider this humourous side story, also furnished by Emma Thompson:
In 1997, when she said she associated Donald Trump only with “tasteless architecture . . . but already a boundless sense of narcissistic . . . madness,” she recounts that “Donald” phoned her one day, in her trailer, when she
was working on a film, to ask her for a date. She thought it a crank call, so replied “Oh, F- – – – off!”
When he convinced her it was actually him, she was astounded that he had gotten the number to a random phone she had never used, in a private film trailer: “So I just said I’d get back to him and hung up!”
By 2017, she quipped on a talk show that she regretted not accepting Trump’s
offer, as “If I had gone out with him for dinner, I could have [ruined his comb-over, hair-spray-heavy, orange-dyed hair]. And then we might all have known the truth . . . and then maybe HE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN PRESIDENT!” she shouted.
And now it’s your turn: what do you think about the censoring of women and
minorities from government documents, at the time of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month?
And, with that as backdrop, how are you coping in this age of AI and technological “supremacy?”
Please write in; I’d be delighted to hear from you.
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STORYTELLERS’ CORNER
STORYTELLERS’ CORNER: Words, Stories, Riddles and Jokes on Writing,
Reading and Editing . . .
This month: For Comic Relief: On Collective Nouns for Animals,
to Cheer You
Having reflected on weighty topics like misogyny and censorship in “Article One” this month, I’m pleased to share a fun point of grammar–on collective nouns for animals!
In a recent posting on LinkedIn, my colleague, (US-Based) Intercultural
Communication Coach and Trainer (and no Trump supporter), Lauren
Supraner, shared some fun knowledge about “collective nouns.”
Lauren writes: “Some estimates suggest there are around 243 collective nouns for people, animals, and things.
Languages with classifier systems (such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) do not have as many distinct collective nouns as English.
Many collective nouns in English are unknown to most speakers and rarely/never used.”
And then she shared this fun list: Are any of them new to you?
COLLECTIVE NOUNS for ANIMALS (in their native habitat, not on the dinner
table):
MAMMALS
–A pride of lions
–A herd of elephants
–A crash of rinos
–A colony of bats
–A troop of monkeys
–A pack of wolves
–A mob of kangaroos
–A scurry of squirrels
BIRDS
–A murder of crows
–A parliament of owls
–A gaggle of geese (on land)
–A skein of geese (in v-formation flight)
–A flamboyance of flamingos
–A conspiracy of ravens
–A kettle of vultures (in flight, circling)
MARINE ANIMALS
–A pod of dolphins
–A school of fish
–A shiver of sharks
–A raft of otters
–A bloom of jellyfish
–A bed of clams
INSECTS
–A swarm of bees
–An army of ants
–A kaleidoscope of butterflies
–A cloud of gnats
–(in colloquial use) A bunk of bedbugs
Speaking of dinner tables, you might try some of the lesser-known examples
(minus the bedbugs) above to charm the guests at your next party!
Please share the results with me for my next issue (lol)!
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SHOP NEWS:
Two nights ago, Shawna Nelson (CEO of Nelson Strategic Solutions and Executive Director of Downtown Saskatoon BID) and the team at Women Entrepreneurs of SK (WESK) hosted an interview with Susan Bater (Manager of Entrepreneurs with Disabilities Program, Community Futures).
Bater shared the success story of Taylor Layton, an entrepreneur with Down’s
Syndrome, who (about 10 years ago) started and ran for five years a brilliant
recycling business in Outlook, SK.
Taylor’s story infused the room with oxygen!
Her success was a perfect antidote to world politics, and highlighted the bravery and “gumption” of women entrepreneurs.
Community Futures (and its urban sister groups–“The Ability Hub” in Saskatoon) promote diversity and inclusion for women entrepreneurs with differing abilities.
Bater said that change is still needed to increase income exemption levels for
entrepreneurs on government support programs in SK (where it is little more than half of what is allowed in MB).
She said we also need to increase grants and “seeds-for-dreams” investment
opportunities for entrepreneurs with pluck and “gumption.”
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My renewed gratitude goes out this month to the two women entrepreneurs who co-founded (with me) our writers’ group–Saskatoon Freelancers’ Roundtable– more than 10 years ago this spring!
Thanks to Julie Barnes of Julie Barnes Creative Services who writes insightful
and evocative articles for “Saskatoon Home Magazine” and for the CBC, is an
agent for professional musicians and (amongst many other things) finds time
for philanthropy toward others.
Julie’s friendship and generous spirit are amazing and it is a joy to be in her
presence.
My other co-founder, Ashleigh Mattern of Vireo Creative (a website design
company), provides online marketing content for thriving business owners.
She also finds time to read voraciously, write and publish fiction and to lead
literary workshops and promote writers’ retreats in our community (and that’s
not an exhaustive list!).
I look forward to hearing a fuller update on Ashleigh’s writing when we gather
in the spring.
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As a part of outreach at my church, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian (YXE), Reverend
Roberto DeSandoli and members are striving to create a community hub with
other groups that will offer local assistance to the homeless and marginalized,
often in the downtown core.
Critics who lament the irrelevance of churches in our community need look no
further. But a major challenge remains to engage new and diverse contributors, so that long-time supporters do not burn out.
If you have resources of any kind (including time!) and would be interested in
participating in this work, please email me for further information (address
below).
While my schedule is often fully packed, I plan to contribute when I can to
literacy services.
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As a teacher to economic immigrants, I sometimes encounter well-educated,
cultured individuals who struggle with the immigration process and to find long-term, professional employment in our community.
When scheduling permits (and my family duties are manageable), I try to
connect these folk to entrepreneurs and business owners in the city (for no
affiliate fee–it is voluntary outreach).
If you are a changemaker and/or leader in YXE and have some time to spare to
assist such newcomers, please reach out to me at shih.ea@gmail.com
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Teaching ESL to economic immigrants is only possible when one has a quiet
and calm meeting space. For that, I’m especially grateful to the Saskatoon Public Library, who actively supports newcomers by sharing meeting space and its digital resources (terrific Wi-Fi!).
Library staff have helped students to download apps that improve their English skills (e.g. “Hoopla,” “Libby” and “Mango Languages”).
While the atmosphere at some branches is sometimes contentious (with
marginalized people seeking warmth indoors), welcoming staff keep meeting
spaces quiet and conflict-free, so patrons are free to learn.
Thank you, Saskatoon Public Libraries!
There are always new entrepreneurial and related success stories to celebrate.
Please send me yours to share in future issues!
But for now, this is a wrap for mid-March!
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ABOUT US:
Between 2011 and December 2018, Elizabeth Shih Communications
chronicled the stories of B2B marketing and communications on the
Prairies and across the country.
Effective January 1, 2019, I rebranded as “Storytelling Communications.”
I now help economic immigrants to secure better jobs or gain better
contracts by improving their language skills; and I help major
companies write their legacy stories.
Interested in learning more? Please contact me through my CASL-compliant website (www.elizabethshih.com).
After I receive your message, I’ll be pleased to discuss projects with you!
Please visit my website for more information: www.storytellingcommunications.ca
