I personally found the piece by Joe Suina to be incredibly powerful. While aware of many student’s feeling ostracized in the classroom, I had never before grasped the depth of those emotions. Elements that I would never have considered, such as the teacher’s perfume, the lighting in the classroom and the smell of the school, could prove discomfiting for those students that had never before been in these surroundings. Through Suina we can see the need he develops to disown his heritage and give up his family and lifestyle to fit into the hegemonic school system, and I find it very sad.
I believe that it is possible to teach in a manner that is multiculturally inclusive without adding more to the teacher’s ever-long day. I think journals are one great way. Allowing students to write freehand in the language they are most comfortable about a concept being learned in class can only serve to help make the student better understand the material. It can certainly be very difficult for a teacher to get to know all 30 (in some cases up to 45) students in a class, especially in high school when you have three of these classes for 90 minutes each. However, I think these same journals can prove helpful in getting to know students. In the beginning, the end, or for homework, allow students the time to write their thoughts about school, class and life. Allow them to discuss what they are learning about in their own language and reflect on what this knowledge means to them. I think it is important for the teacher to respond to these journal entries, so I guess here does enter the element of extra time for the teacher.
I personally would also allow my student’s to speak their own language when doing collaborative work with peers, as long as their peers could understand them. When presenting or writing a formal paper I think the student has had the opportunity to think through what they want to say and has the time to translate that into the formal Standard English that will be expected of them in society. I think in this way students understand context – when speaking with peers it is acceptable to speak in this manner and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the language I speak. However, when speaking or writing in a formal context the student will learn to codeswitch, a necessary skill to be successful in our society today.
I also appreciate the idea of bringing in individuals from outside to act as role models for students. Perhaps there is a minority student whose parent is an accountant at a local firm. Let’s bring this individual in to speak to the student’s about their career and life. This would be a source of pride for the student, a model to all students that success is possible regardless of skin color, and a source of knowledge for each and every student regarding accounting. (As I am far from a math person, that is the best example in this particular field I could come up with - sorry!) Perhaps the teacher could also assign students to interview members of the community related to the particular content area. Allow them to experience the different ways in which people speak, meet individuals that have attained success, and share these experiences with their peers.
I think if we are creative and open to our students as individuals we can find ways to teach them in a manner that is responsive to their multicultural needs. I do not believe that there is one right answer or that what works for one teacher will necessarily work for another. I believe it has to happen between each teacher and their students in each classroom as they work together to create an environment that is conducive to everyone learning to the best of their ability.
If Ebonics is a language on par with all other languages, should it not be taught and offered as an alternative to French, Spanish, Chinese, etc.? If Ebonics is equal to standard English, why should it not be the central language of education? Why should we focus on what is instead of what could be? In the same vein, other regional languages/dialects could be offered as the language of instruction or as another option for the language requirement.
Many of the linguistic markers of Ebonics/AAL are prevalent in the everyday language of people who are not African American.
Discussions surrounding education and race cannot be removed from the larger context of society. Why should it not be a valid expectation that parents have a role in getting their children ready for school and the challenges they will face academically and in life as a whole? In “My Mother’s Spanish,” Gabaldón writes, “Knowing the importance of English in this country, she made sure we would learn it” (RME p.97-8). I realize that all parents do not have the same level of education, the same amount of time to spend with their children, the same priorities when it comes to educating their children, the same outlook on life, etc. As teachers, we must teach students starting at their level, but it is impossible to say that our efforts exist in a vacuum. The experiences I have had with immigrant families and their determination that their children would do well in school, have command of the English language, and also retain their own languages has been inspiring.
What about the success of immersion programs?
The discussions about language are clearly not just about language.
Perception is nearly always more important than reality. In this case, no matter how smart/prepared/skilled you are, if your manner of speaking is perceived to be otherwise, your reality won’t match. Don’t forget that standard English speakers are also perceived in a certain way and excluded/unaccepted based on their speech. Perhaps we should not speak of reality, only perception.
Thanks to everyone for (hopefully) being honest and open. It has made for lively discussion and interesting classes.
I have spent the last 10 years telling Soldiers to speak English when they are on my time. I am pretty sure I am still going to feel that way in the classroom. I understand the concerns that were brought up in class regarding the sensitivity of the students and how they might shut down if they feel we are belittling thier culture, language, etc. This was very common in the military 20 years ago and has since been addressed and require everyone attend annual briefings that discuss this. In the army we welcome Soldiers who speak multiple languages. We have linguists who act as liasons between the military and the civilians - a very important job. But, for that same Soldier, it is imperative that s/he can communicate in English. Especially while on the battlefield. I know I wouldn't want to rely on the guy who only speaks AAE to call in a 9-line Medevac for injured Soldiers - especially if I was the one who was injured. I believe it should be the same in the classroom. Students languages and cultures are welcomed and embraced but as a teacher who is teaching out of an English text book, I would expect the students to become proficient with the key terms. I believe there are ways to do this without causing the student to be uncomfortable and still be proud of their heritage. The exercises we did last night are perfect examples of this and I hope to come up with some good ones for chemistry and physics. Another story: I lived in Sweden and noticed all the elders spoke Svenska only however, all the teens and some of the middle age adults spoke English too. I asked a Swedish colleague why the kids are starting to learn English in school - his response was, "for Sweden to compete in the international market, we must all learn English - no one else speaks Swedish but the Swedes". Like the Swedes, those who speak Ebonics are isolated from the rest of the world. There is nothing wrong with how they speak but they will be at a disadvantage if they do not learn English and how to communicate like "the majority" does.
Suggestions for teaching...hmm, chemistry and physics are pretty much driven by laws and rules but, if I were to assign a research paper I could ask the students to write about something they have learned in my class and how it applies something from their family history. ie, maybe we discussed the fermentation process so the Italian kid can research how his/her ancestors made wine and grappa. Or, the kid from Johnson county can research how moonshine was made. Chemical equations would be important to show for me to ensure that they understood the process of fermentation.
Crissy, I found the Suina article as eye-opening as it seems you did. I think the most heartbreaking part of that story was his awareness that he would have to separate himself from the culture he held so dear in order to survive/succeed in the "white world" of his school. I was also surprised by his offense to the teacher's perfume. In a class last semester, we discussed a Middle-Eastern girl who didn't wear deodorant because she liked her natural body smell and thought it was weird that Westerners try to cover it up. It's amazing how things that seem so universal to us aren't really to all people.
I had a question during last night's discussion. It is becoming more and more common for adolescents to use really derogatory terminology in their everyday speech (to be blunt, words like "slut," "whore," and "pimp" come to mind, along with lots of profanity). We also discussed last night how it is acceptable for African-Americans to call each other the "n-word." As we open our minds to allowing students to speak in "their own language" to their classmates, where do we draw the line? While these words are "wrong" in standard English, and personally offensive to me, they're fine in other dialects. Do we have strict policies about some words? If so, how do we answer a student who says "But that's fine to say where I'm from," especially when we're trying to embrace their home language?
Kevin, I just read your post. As a fellow science person, I absolutely LOVE your suggestions (and laughed out loud about your moonshine comment). One of our biggest struggles in science is making the students feel like it is relevant in their everyday lives. They think that science only consists of evolution, global warming, and cancer research. By assigning your students to write a paper about how science applies to their family history, you are not only connecting with your students and making them feel their culture is important, but you're making science REAL to them. Kudos! I'm writing your suggestion down to save for later.
Megan, I think you make an excellent point about boundaries. There is definitely a need for boundaries in the classroom, with language as with everything else. Some words simply do not belong in an academic setting (I can agree with each one you mentioned). Once again I think it comes down to the context - where is the student at and who is the student speaking with. Maybe codeswitching is a skill that we should be teaching our students to a greater degree? I guess I am in the same boat as you though, how do you draw the line between what is acceptable language use and what is not while still embracing the language? Do you go over a list of unacceptable words in the beginning of the semester? What if you missed one? Do you deal with a particular issue as it arises? What if a student inadvertently insults another student with their choice of words?
I believe that we can be accepting of other languages and incorporate them into our daily course work without sacrificing the academic nature of a classroom. The question about guidelines and policies remains a valid one and I wonder if it isn't simply a matter that we will have to figure out as we go?
"I have spent the last 10 years telling Soldiers to speak English when they are on my time. I am pretty sure I am still going to feel that way in the classroom."
I believe that your military experience will provide you with insight in many cases. However the above quote seems to imply that you plan to continue doing something (having them only speak in English) because that is what you did in the past.
In general, when applying military experience to the classroom, I think it is important to consider your goals. If your goal is to prepare soldiers for the battlefield then you may make very different instructional decisions than you would if you are helping a kid to understand Odysseus. It is also important to consider the age and developmental level of the students since they will be younger than the soldiers you trained. They may have sensitivities or lack the maturity of the soldiers you worked with.
Also I don't think anyone is saying kids shouldn't learn Standard English. Some of us are just saying that we can use the language of the child as a window to make him or her feel welcome. Translating material into a different language may also be an effective instructional tool. If a kid translated Odysseus into AAL then he would have to understand it at a deep level in order to do so. The creative process of translating (yes translating can be creative) would also make it his or her own. I believe that he or she would then be more likely to do well when taking a test on Odysseus in Standard English.
I love the moonshine idea - let's just hope that some kid doesn't build a still and say my teacher taught me how!
The discussion on what language to use in the classroom is interesting to me. My undergraduate degree was in Theatre and I want to teach theatre. As a theatre teacher I would encourage students to use other dialects and languages to create characters. In the theatre, to create a believable character, one must base that character on real life experiences and even a person he or she may know or have observed. I encourage students to study other cultures, languages, and people to create characters that are believable.However, I will probably be an English teacher, which I would love just as much. But in any classroom, students need to feel validated and important. The only way to do that is to recognize everyone's cultures and lifestyles that includes the language they speak.
I think it would be doing an injustice to the students to not teach them Standard English. Students will have to use Standard English upon entering the professional world. But we as teachers have to understand that in order for the students to listen to us and trust us we have to respect where they come from just as much as we care about where they are going. To follow up our discussion on Thursday about language, personally I would provide the students with an outlet where they can feel comfortable talking about whatever they want and how ever they want. They need a place where they can write and talk without feeling judged or feel like they are going to be graded down because they are not writing they way they are "supposed" to. We should still teach them standard English because, that is the language of the professional world, but we still have to provide them that safe outlet.
Megan, I am glad that you might be able to use that idea. It does make it more fun to learn when you can relate concepts to your own experiences.
Angie, yes, I intend to have my students do their homework and tests in English. I will be teaching HS Science (Chemistry and Physics)and believe this is the most effective way for me to teach. If they want to speak jibberish while working in groups - I could care less. If there are students who are struggling (and I believe I am pretty good at identifying those students)then I will do what I need to do to help that student out. Translating Odysseus might be a good idea in a different class - but I don't ever remember writing papers in Chemsitry or Physics. Most of the problems/HW were deriving equations. Now, if a student understood English but struggled with writing then, sure, we could work something out and try not to embarrass them. But, if the student didn't speak English at all then I would question why s/he was in my class.
While reading Lisa Delpit's article "Ebonics and Culturally Responsive Instruction" I definitely had my eyes opened to my own unawareness. The example she used where the student read a line of text and the teacher began to "correct" the student because the teacher did not realize the student was reading the text, just with the Ebonics-influenced pronunciations and grammar. I read the dialogue between the teacher and student and sat confused. I know in the same situation, I would done exactly as that teacher did. I would have assumed the student was struggling with decoding issues because I unfamiliar with the grammar and pronunciations of Ebonics. While writing my paper I realized this is one of my "blind spots". This then made me think about the complexity of the issue of social justice. I would like to think I'm a very open person. I try my best not to judge others, and to treat everyone the same way I would want to be treated. Even so, I know that at some point I will make a student feel unwelcome out of my own ignorance. Unfortunately I don't know Ebonics or Spanish or any other language for that matter. I've taken classes to learn two other languages with little success. Even though I want to provide my students with an environment where they all feel welcome, it breaks my heart to know that I could cause another student to feel the way Joe Suina felt when he went to school, simply because I'm uneducated about their culture.
We've mentioned in class how history has largely been written from a European or majority perspective. I will be teaching high-school mathematics, and I hope to provide some context for my students about where the mathematics came from and how it developed into what we study today. I think that introducing the historical perspective will provide an opportunity to explore and celebrate discoveries from different cultures. However, I will need to look beyond the history in American mathematics books--so many of the discoveries in mathematics were discovered earlier in other cultures outside of Europe, but we often credit the discovery to the European mathematicians. There are also many examples of bright women who contributed to the field but were not able to study with the men or even publish their ideas under their own names. I think that using these injustices will help empower the students who do not identify with "math people" and open a discussion about the richness of different cultures as well as explore some of the injustices and how they have predominated our historical education.
One of my concerns with sharing the ways in which history has been written, often neglecting minority or non-European cultures, is that I may invoke anger in my students towards the way their ancestors were not acknowledged. Will this cause my students to be more proud of their ancestors (which I hope to see) or feel more of the injustices society has given them? What would be a way to ensure that I encourage a positive reaction in my students while still allowing them to explore the different views of mathematics history.
Ashley: I think that sharing the real history is a very good idea. I think that you can prevent some anger by stressing that this is the way things used to be and we are trying to change this in society. Perhaps the class can even brainstorm ways to give credit where credit is due. Perhaps they can create a website, school posters, or bulletin board that tells the real history of these marginalized mathematicians.
As for my own project/class ideas: I have been trying to think of projects that really incorporate language in the class in a way that everyone is comfortable. Ideally I would like to teach computer graphics and communications type classes. Some ideas I had were: finding ads or marketing materials from daily life and translating it for their own personal lifestyle. For instance, if the ad is for a McDonald's cheeseburger, what could they change about the ad that would make it more appealing for them? The answer could be as simple as switching the language from English to Spanish, or having the model wear glasses. I think that this could be a very good project if controlled well, and it gives the students an idea of how advertising is tailored to a specific demographic.
Other ideas were designing a poster using the lyrics of their favorite song, and making the art match the feeling they get while listening to said song. They could also create an advertisement that for their favorite band to display somewhere in the school. Just a few ideas...
Friday at work I was talking to a colleague who trains teachers to teach students with learning differences how to read. I have witnessed her working with children and she has been in the field many years and also taught a good friend of mine to read when he was young (he has Dyslexia and ADHD) She helps with outreach programs and one of her areas is in Carteret Country, in a rural area of Eastern North Carolina. I was talking to her about the language issues we discussed in class yesterday and the readings, and it was fun to hear her talk about the way she approaches the issue with the students there. She says that when teachers tell students they “don’t speak correctly” she is very firm in her message to them that there is no value to one form of speech over another, and that they should not ever feel or give the message to their students that there way of communicating is in any way inferior to Standard English, which she firmly believes. She believes it is possible to explain the different contexts in which it is appropriate to use and practice different forms of speech, and for her she encourages use of Standard English in the classroom (without judgment, and recognizing the importance of starting where the children are and validating their own speech) because that will serve them well in the academic setting. Perhaps along a little bit of a different line, but I believe both ideas are inclusive of each other, I do think the idea of journaling about topics is a great idea, and allowing students to do so in their home language. I also really love the idea presented in the readings of exploring language and the structure and history of language as a topic in and of itself. I understand that for some teachers pressed for time this may not fit into curriculum they want to teach, but for me as a (at least for the moment) language teacher I think this would be a really great way to give the kids a chance to learn more about how we speak and why.
Annita, I appreciate the questions you have raised and see your point that all languages do not have equal footing or function in society (otherwise why not teach Ebonics along with Spanish or Chinese?) I agree that there is clearly not the same practicality in terms of teaching Ebonics, or a speech used by rural North Carolinians, or people living deep in the Appalachian Mountains, etc, all of whom have their own speech patterns that are certainly valid. However, teaching those on a large scale- the way Spanish for example is offered as a second language in school- would not serve the same function of hopefully increasing communication over a wide group of people. Even as I’m thinking about this my ideas are going back and forth… but I am as of now of the opinion that it is very important to stress Standard English in the classroom, and I don’t think helping children speak Standard English, and correcting them, has to be a devastating experience. So I also think that recognizing home languages and cultures is important in the classroom, and can be done without compromising Standard English instruction. On a different note, I very much support allowing native Spanish speakers to take Spanish classes in order to learn the grammar, etc, because I think this serves everyone well.
As I was doing reconnaissance for the next assignment, I found some fishing poles for sale and thought I would pick one up for my friend. I went to ask the salesmen a question and this is what happened to come out of my mouth: “I’m looking for a fishing pole, but a simple one because it is for a girl.” After realizing what I said and silently scolding myself, I decided this was great inspiration for my blog this week. It’s not that I think girls are less intelligent or mechanically inclined, but I do think most women have less confidence when it comes to mechanical things. I know if I hand a fishing pole to anyone who is intimidated by an abundance of switches, screws, and other various means of adjustment, they are going to shut down when they think something is malfunctioning. In my experience, such devices intimidate a lot of women. I think this is absolutely a society-based problem. There is still the thought that men are the ones who fix the car, mow the lawn, setup the multimedia equipment, etc. It is equally true that society is the reason the modern day man does not hesitate to fiddle with switches and knobs. Whether or not he is confident in his actions, he is expected to know what he is doing simply because he is a man. Meanwhile a lot of us have less experience and handle tools worse than the next person, regardless of sex. But, we know our masculinity is on the line. Smoke coming from under the hood? “Oh I can fix that because I have a penis!” Meanwhile when I open the hood of my truck and take a peak inside, I’m just as confused as if I were watching open heart surgery.
I forgot to mention how my story could be linked to teaching. Since my subject is math, I will probably go up against the “girls aren’t good at math” comment many times in my career. There are not many historical examples of women in mathematics that I could reference in an against sexism in mathematics, except for Hypatia from the Greek period and a handful of others who usually were burned at the stake for being witches – a big downfall to being an openly intelligent woman in the past. I suppose if a female student used her gender as an excuse for doing poorly, I could encourage her to prove that notion wrong by fulfilling her potential in my class.
I think gender issues are definitely important to discuss. Especially in math and science because like you said there aren’t many role models for students to look up. I am fortunate to be a female in the science field and when I get into the classroom, I hope that because I am a female more girls will have an interest in science and not just biology. I know that I am not a big bio person, so I hope that by showing interest in chemistry and physical science that I will inspire girls to explore science. I hope you find ways in your classroom to inspire girls and all students in general to explore and enjoy math.
I also want to comment about the fishing pole. When I was reading that I was like hey I can use a fishing pole better than my boyfriend and I actually know more about cars than he does. Luckily as a child my parents had the same expectations for the boys and girls in my family. We were all forced on family fishing trips and expected to be able to change our own oil and flat tires. I think men do not expect women to know about those things, which is unfortunate.
I hope in the future this changes (especially in the classroom) so that girls feel more comfortable taking an interest in all school subjects and are confident in the classroom.
I want to start this post commenting about standardized testing. I am a proponent of the idea being standardized testing; I think there needs to be a way to compare students across the state and nation, and I think standardized tests are a good way to accomplish this. An educational reform needs to occur in order to re-evaluate how standardized tests are used. I think high stakes testing creates an unnecessary competition between schools. Additionally, I do not think that standardized tests are the only way to accomplish comparisons between schools. I think by using multiple forms of assessment, we will be better able to compare students because their knowledge will be demonstrated in many different ways.
So, after saying my piece about standardized tests, I want to comment about the “aha” moment I had during the readings because it relates to standardized testing in the long run. I want to talk about English Language Learners. How are students supposed to learn concepts in their second language if they aren’t able to learn concepts in their primary language? DUH!! I was being ignorant. I assumed that English Language Learners would have the same level of knowledge and abilities in their own language that English speaking students had at the same grade level, but how could they? Unless they’ve come from a similar educational background in their own country, how should we expect them to have the same abilities in their own language that we have in English? The only guidance they have in their own language is from their parents, family, and friends and I know parents never taught me about past participles and verb conjugation. In saying this, I think bilingual education is necessary. Students cannot be expected to pick up English if they don’t have a strong grasp on their own language. I wish more administrators had this type of “aha” moment so that maybe we could change the way education is done. If we want this country to stand up to others in education, I think bilingual education is a must! I do think that everyone should be able to use Standard English. I agree with the class discussion that it is a tool necessary to get ahead in the world that we have created. Because of this, teachers should explore ways to incorporate the use of code switching and teach students when using Standard English. As a whole, I think this will improve the educational state of the nation.
@Rich, I think your incident at the fishing store applies to all kinds of assumptions that we make in education. We have been talking about how students from other cultures will fit into our classrooms. If we assume that students know or don't know material/skills/concepts without actually assessing them, we will be doing them a disservice. As Ashley pointed out, she is quite proficient under the hood of a car. What if a teacher spoke slowly to her and said "Now... this... is... a... wrench" but assumed a male in the class would be able to disassemble an engine on the first day? What if I spoke slowly and loudly to a Hispanic student because I assumed he would not speak English well but talked to the white students like they were all proficient in English? What if I had a white French student or a white South African student? Proper assessments are needed before we make ANY assumptions about our students.
Ashley, I think this transitions into your post about proper assessments. In another class, we have been discussing disabilities that are primarily based on culturally-biased IQ tests. How can we properly assess students without being biased against another language or culture? How can we objectively test students only in math when we give them word problems to solve? If a student scores poorly on the math test, do we really know if the problem is math or reading? I agree with you that standardized tests definitely hold value (I was grateful for them in high school because they put me on level ground with students from large high schools), but that they are seriously flawed. As I try to think through how to improve them, though, all I can do is shake my head in confusion.
A friend of mine recommends a series of books by Danica McKellar which presents math in a more girl friendly way.
She also indicates that she lets her math students come up with several mnemonic devices to remember a concept and share with the class. She said that the girls and boys usually prefer different mnemonic devices.
In addition I did some reading last semester on research that linked the amount of time a child spent playing with blocks and general fiddling around with stuff to performance in math. The more children built and fiddled with stuff as a child the better they did in math in HS. Of course boys are encouraged to do this type of play so that may be why more males are comfortable in the math arena. I can't at this time locate the references but will send them on when/if I do.
I agree there is a lot of pressure on guys to fix stuff. In my family I am often the one to go to the hardware store and look for parts and ask questions. I find the workers (mostly male) will take their time in explaining how to complete projects. And I don't feel embarrassed to ask a lot of questions. When my husband goes I think the workers assume he should know this stuff and he often comes home with the wrong thing or not enough information. I think there is a reluctance on his part to ask questions because he is expected to know this stuff.
A couple of thoughts that I had from the last class on integrating the differences in students' languages in the classroom. The idea of having journals in the classroom was mentioned in the discussion, and after I went home, I thought about this idea a little more, and I was reminded of the movie "Freedom Writers". Don't know if anyone has seen it, but if not, it is a very solid movie, and I think the people in this class would find it very relevant to ED 508 and what we're talking about now. Hilary Swank is an English teacher, and inherits the castoffs at the freshman and sophomore level at a new high school. The classroom is very racially diverse, and what she ends up using as a successful icebreaker for her students is a composition notebook for them to use as a journal. They can write whatever they want in their journals, and the teacher will only read them if they allow her to. It's an interesting idea that is based on a true story, and they tied in a lot of ideas from the "Diary of Anne Frank" into their lives. It was very intriguing to me that they brought in a piece of famous literature, and the students were given some sense of free reign in comparing/contrasting the themes in this literary work to their own lives. I felt like this was a very solid and effective way to help integrate the different cultures of the students in the classroom. If I remember correctly, they also do a version of the game where you step over the line if a given statement is true about you. A lot of good ideas in this movie that can be put into the context of this course, as well as the practical applications of teaching.
Now, I don't know about the rest of the class, but when I hear the word journal at school, I immediately think of an English classroom. I am studying to be a high school math teacher, and I know that there are a few other math people in the class as well :) I'm involved in the Noyce scholarship program here at NCSU for teaching high school math in high needs school districts, and there is an interesting concept involving journals that was put into effect last year by two student teachers in this scholarship. I don't remember all the specifics at the moment, but the idea of journals in the math classroom was set up so that students always had extra time between the end of a test and the end of the class period (usually about 15-20 minutes) to write their own reflections on anything. Usually the thoughts were kept to reflections on how prepared they felt for the test, how fair they thought the test was, where they think they could've gone right or wrong on the test, how they felt about the homework load and content, and pretty much anything else related to the math course they were in. The goal of implementing these journals was to allow students to write how they felt about math rather than just deal with numbers all the time, and based on the results of these journals, it seems to me that students really used them as a positive device to getting more out of the material in the class. Students were allowed to interpret their own struggles to the teacher in whatever way they felt best in communicating these ideas to the teacher. The student teachers analyzed these journals before the start of the next unit to try and incorporate all the students' constructive thoughts into how to improve the teaching style for the next unit. I believe this could be a great tool for teachers in subjects that don't involve a lot of writing in the curriculum because it gives every student a voice and an opportunity to be heard. Anyways, hope everyone is having a good weekend, and let me know what we can add or change about the journal idea to make it the most useful to us as future teachers.
Annita had some musings concerning the parents responsibility to prepare their children for school. This caused to think about the relationship between parents and teachers in general and in particularly when the teacher and parents come from different cultures.
First let me say that I believe education is a human right and that we must meet that child where he or she is.
That being said cooperation between the school and home is a powerful tool and we must work hard to achieve it. In my personal experience I have found that almost all parents want to help with their child's education but they may not know how to and if some cases miscommunication results in a bad relationship between the teacher and parents.
I was privileged to know a teacher who had an excellent track record in working with children and parents from all sorts of different cultures. I spent some time talking with other parents to determine why she was successful with every child and every parent.
The following is an example of her style and how she helped my family:
Mrs. W. was my son's second grade teacher. He entered second grade after a difficult kindergarten and first grade years. He could at that point read only a few words.
My husband was very irritated with the school system at that point and blamed them for my son's problems. He was in denial that my son needed special services. Part of the conflict may have originated because of cultural differences. My husband is from Iraq and the schools he grew up with were so different. However I believe the conflict originated because he was defensive and tired of listening to everything that was wrong with his son. Most of the teachers and specialists had the following approach - spend 30 seconds saying what a wonderful boy he was - spend 30 minutes talking about his problems - spend 5 minutes to say they were going to keep working on it.
Mrs W was different. First she spent time to get to know the students and played games to determine skills and abilities that might not be apparent when completing class work. When she meet with my husband and me, she spent about 20 minutes talking to us about our son's strengths. She was quite genuine and we really felt that she cared. Next she spent about 5 minutes talking about difficulties. Finally she spent about 20 minutes talking about how WE (teacher, parents, child) could work on these difficulties. It was magical. My husband came on board and under her guidance my son learned to read that year.
Mrs. W had discovered that my son had a strong visual memory and she used this to help him learn to read. She chose a reading program used for deaf children. Had she not spent the time to get to know his skills beyond traditional academics she would not have discovered this crucial piece of information that helped him learn to read.
I found the article “Discarding the Deficit Model” in Annual Editions especially interesting because I have had some experience in my own family with how the special education classifications are applied in our public schools. The explanation that the authors provide for why minorities are over represented in special education and especially in Emotional/Behavioral Disorders (EBD) was extremely insightful.
My niece is a seventh grader in a public wake county middle school. She has been classified as having a learning disability for many years now. She is allowed extra time on test, special consideration in classroom expectations, she has a resource teacher, etc. However, she much more closely exhibits behavior that falls under the EBD definition. When I asked my sister, who happens to be a doctor of Psychology, about this, she said that she did not want her daughter classified as EBD because she would receive less resources and special consideration and that there was a stigma associated with the EBD classification that she did not want her associated with.
Upon reading the article it occurred to me that for my niece, the classification she received was apparently optional. My sister was able to basically tell the school how she wanted to be classified and what interventions she wanted. I am sure that being white, educated, and upper middle class had a lot to do with this. I doubt that a minority family would be able to “work the system” in this way.
I also found the article “Discarding the Deficit Model” in Annual Editions especially interesting! To me the point that stood out the most to me was the quote on page 93 that reads "Students shouldn't need a false disability label to receive appropriate support." I think a lot of the time we are spending too much time trying to classify students' disabilities rather than stepping up to the plate to work with the students; and I mean all students. No student is at the same level in any class and they shouldn't have to have a labeled "disability" to receive help (or extra help). Although difficult, I think specialized instruction is going to be an essential part in education as the achievement gap between students continues to grow.
A lot of what we have read and discussed reminds me of the idea of critical literacy, which I think is such an interesting and important concept for teachers! It relates to Freire's ideas that students should actively construct and interrogate knowledge (whose knowledge? How do we know something is true?) instead of being forced into the “banking system” of education in which the teacher is seen as having the knowledge and fills the “empty receptacles” (the students) with it, without any questioning of that knowledge on the part of the students. This, of course, results in a cycle of inequality of injustice because it privileges certain knowledge as “truth” and ignores the rest. When people read texts (and students have to read for classes everyday!), the same thing happens – certain knowledge is expressed and presented as “truth” (and thus privileged), while other voices are silenced. That's where critical literacy comes in to encourage students to learn to challenge the norms that are represented and enforced as the status quo by texts, to learn to ask critical questions about what they read. Sounds familiar, right? Anyway, thought I'd mention this because it ties into the ideas of social justice and encourages students to realize that it's necessary to question the attitudes and beliefs that are behind all texts (whether actual print texts, or images, songs, ads, news, movies, etc.) because texts have power and can perpetuate social injustice in countless ways! If teachers can teach students with all this in mind, then they are getting at that social justice education we've been talking about!
Thanks Angie. And, I apologize that I wasn't clear in my post. When I said, "If they want to speak jibberish while working in groups - I could care less." My point was that they could communicate in any way they preferred and I wouldn't care - even if it didn't make sense. Kids will do that some times.
Lisa Delpit’s article "Ebonics and Culturally Responsive Instruction” pushed my thoughts to a new level. After reading this, the debate of whether or not Ebonics is indeed a language grew unimportant to me. Personally I believe Ebonics “is what it is.” Yes, debating over the topic at least means that we are talking about the issue, but we need to do more than talk. I whole heartedly understand some of the thoughts of it being the teacher’s responsibility to ensure that our students are prepared for college by the ability to speak “standard English,” write grammatically correct papers, and have the skills to perform well at an interview.
With the shortening school day and more demands on the teacher, I know that some teachers are wondering where they will have time to incorporate a culturally responsive instruction. However, is it really necessary for our students to address us in “standard English” 100% of the time? If time is such an issue, imagine if we gave our students a sense of belonging by allowing them to speak or journal in their own language during our class. Some teachers who teach science, math, or history may think that journaling isn’t necessary for their classrooms and believe it takes up some of their precious instructional time. However, can you imagine what kind of work you could get from students if they felt a sense of belonging and connectiveness to the classroom? I believe if we gave our students a sense of belonging, it would probably take less time for teachers to have to “teach” the material, because they students would be more involved in the instruction.
Personally, I know how I felt when I was corrected by my family members. Still to this day, I often do not use the correct grammar when I speak. I still do not feel like I can completely open up to my sister in law, because I am scared that she will correct my verb usage. The more I was corrected from her, the more I tried to pin point every mistake that she made in math (her weak subject - my stronger subject). I can totally see students shutting down for being called out when using ebonics – it happened to me!
Megan and Ashley - standardized tests...I agree with both of you on all your points. It is confusing to try to figure out a fair way to test all of our students. But, I feel something is better than nothing. My dad used to always say, "you are not going to make everyone happy" and unfortunately, this is kind of the same - it is not going to be fair for everyone and it probably will never be.
First I would like to express my displeasure with having to spell out your last name since you share the same initials with Ashley Sparango:) I emailed Dr. G and told him that I would like to use G for his last name simply because I am lazy. I will be sure to give the "other" Ashley a hard time as well. About your post and creating resentment I think that Richard and Ashley may have offered some help. As a math teacher I don't think you have to worry about teaching the history of discrimination. Just focus on Math history and make references to people like Hypatia automatic. If most teachers follow this lead then we can make the mistakes from the past ancient history. In my previous post I believe I mentioned a scientist named George Washington Carver. I discovered him myself long after I graduated college. Not having this great man discussed during my education is a real disappointment.
Ashley Sparango,
It seems that your parents may have made equal opportunity or expectations an automatic thing in your upbringing. It is funny that you use the word "forced". I used it in a sort of literal way when I described having to take some additional Liberal arts classes at ODU. I mentioned how my education and privileged status made me feel like I was being "forced". If these classes and alternative people from throughout history are included on a regular basis from now on we will all benefit and will look back and say "wow I can't believe that they didn't teach this stuff in the past".
We had some discussion in class this week about what it meant to have students learn to use "correct" english. Many voiced their opinion that it is a disservice to students to not teach them a certain proficieny. The point of this was to give them the opportunity to succeed in college and beyond. My opinion is that this is the wrong attitude. Our mission as teachers should be to help our students to achieve in the moment at hand. If this means presenting them information in a language that they can understand then it must be done. Thinking that every student should learn "correct" english so that they can succeed in higher education or a professional setting is not helping them get closer to either of those scenarios. It should not matter to us how they learn the information and we should do anything we can so that they embrace the classroom setting instead of resisting it. Much like we saw in the readings where bilingual learning students learned english much faster than other students, english speaking students who do not speak "correct" english will learn in much the same way. The important thing is that they learn or they will never move forward in the moment at hand which means they will never come close to college or a professional career where they need "correct english.
Crissy commented that she agrees/believes that teachers can incorporate multiculturalism into their classroom without adding onto their day. Call me an idealist even though I think I am being more of a realist when I say that yes teachers are continually put under ridiculous demands and have to teach a ton of curriculum in a short time period along with their students being expected to pass EOCs, BUT I think it is a cop out and just an excuse when teachers use that as the reason why they use mediocre or poor teaching methods and focus only on the test in their classroom. Yes, it is harder and more work to create an inclusive classroom that makes education fun and relevant for the students. No where does the research say that your students will test better - or more importantly learn more - if you spend all your time cramming the information on the test down their throat. Nobody, especially children and teenagers, wants to sit and be lectured at day in and day out - this is even more true if your students aren't proficient in English. Please just step out of the box! It is not about teaching more, it is about teaching differently and teaching better. There are teachers out there that teach in innovative and inclusive ways whose students pass EOCs. I certainly aspire to be one of those teachers in the classroom. I believe that each and everyone of us can reach that goal. :)
As for language in my own classroom, I completely agree with the readings that kids will shut down and tune out if you are overly critical of their language or the way they speak. I student taught high school biology this spring. Having been raised to speak Standard English, I expected that I would expect the same from my students in the classroom. In reality, I found it to be much more important to just get the students to be engaged and talking about biology then about the specific words they used. This was particularly true in my academic (lower level) class. Several students in the class were in ESL or had been in recent years. Several were African Americans who often spoke in Ebonics (which I did not recognize as such at the time). And most of the rest of them used poor grammar and lots of slang when talking and writing. It was enough of a challenge to get them to answer a question or do their work that I was not about to correct anything other than the science. It took weeks to gain their trust and get them talking - even to each other. If I had been critical of their language or other aspects of who they are, I never would have gained their trust. I really think that if I had constantly corrected them and expected them to speak in Standard English, they would have learned less if anything at all. I now see even more ways (and am learning more and more ways) I could have been more inclusive with the various languages in the class.
Music is language that everyone can appreciate. Of course as we have briefly talked about different students will identify more with certain types of music, but I do think that using music in ANY class is a great way to teach. Our hip hop & spoken word talk/work in class made me think about this. A friend of mine, Lodge McCammon, job at NC State is all about creating music based on NC's curriculum and having students make music videos using the songs. While student teaching we used his songs on atoms and on cells. Two of my classes even made music videos. Overall the students really enjoyed it and learned from it. To check out Lodge's music click on "Music Education" at http://www.iamlodge.com/. Along with the songs, Lodge has created worksheets to help teach the curriculum in them. The lyrics are all posted as well as sample videos.
Reading this particular section of rethinking multicultural education i came up with two ideas. 1) why is the book called rethinking multicultural education? to rethink it means that someone thought of it before. i know personally i never heard of multicultural education. and, from the readings, it seems like this is not something that is apart of the traditional school system. maybe i am missing some important information regarding this. 2) i never realized before reading this section of the book that i spoke ebonics. the articles by linda christensen and geneva smitherman enlightened me to the fact that i am also an ebonics speaker. i must admit that i sterotyped ebonics in the past and did not want to be associated with it. little did i know, everytime i spoke with family friends, i was not only apeaking ebonics, but also introducing it to my nieces and nephews. i was astonished to read that it is considered to be a language in and of itself. i think it is imperative for children to feel comfortable speaking their home language at school. i just don't know how to properly incorporate that into the dynamics of school.
In considering Physics or Chemistry and the use of non-standard English language, I see a couple of significant issues. First, there is a significant problem with students kind of understanding a concept, and thinking that they really understand it. I want to know that sooner rather than later so that I can speak into my students’ gaps before they and I uncover them on a test. That applies to pure English speakers and those students who have English as a second language.
As their teacher, I must understand them well to know whether they are making valid concept connections to understand whether they truly understand the material. Other than a fun activity that isn’t concerned with precise understanding, I don’t see a place to reinforce other primary languages. I think that there are more appropriate ways in these courses to acknowledge them. For instance, I am firmly committed to drawing applications from sports, music, cars, electronics, etc. from their lives in discussing particular Physics concepts. I am also committed to restructuring my instruction to use groups in a diverse classroom because of differences in culture related to learning styles. I just don’t see a place for incorporating primary language differences into these courses. I tend to agree with the statement in text I taught from, the primary language of Physics is mathematics (not English either).
I have found that students are often better at throwing numbers into equations than remembering the assumptions and exceptions associated with their application.
Second, these science classes tend to have Juniors and Seniors who are college bound. One would expect them to be quite proficient in standard English by that time (particularly when I don’t take off for grammar and spelling unless it makes the response unintelligible). In Gabaldn’s article on My Mother’s Spanish the author cites work by California legislative analysts that show that it takes between 3.4 and 7.1 years to learn English depending on the primary language (they analyzed 2.6 million tests).
Available time is a factor in determining pacing. It appears to me that in moving to a block schedule, class time was reduced by 19%. I base my calculations on 55 min classes for 2 semesters as compared to 90 minute classes for one semester. I assumed that the number of academic classes in a year remain unchanged. Each course have different requirements and I recognize that electives also have different compositions than core courses. Hence the above thoughts are related to a specific case with associated assumptions.
john- your comment reminded me of...what for it...what for it..lol one of the contestants on america's next top model. i cant remember her name, but she appeared to be an african-american female that spoke using ebonics most of the time. the other contestants would make fun of the way she spoke all the time. i started to feel badly for her and developed my own biases about her. it was not until she spoke in a separate interview that my biases were put to bed. she said that she was aware of the fact that the other girls ridiculed her because of how she spoke.she continued to see that she was very versed in "standard" english, (and she demonstrated by using standard english)but she chooses to talk like people in her neighborhood. she is a college graduate and identifies primarily with her familial surroundings. i found this very interesting and i think it goes to say that the students need to be the ones to make up their mind as to which type of english they identify with. i think as teachers our role is to always provide them options, but ultimatley the choice is theres.
I had some thoughts on our discussion from last class regarding language in the classroom. It is my opinion that we hold a responsibility to show students what is accepted in the “real” world when it comes to proper language and speech patterns. I think we, as future teachers, need to show our students that we are interested in, and truly care about their language and style of speech. After all, a student’s language is a direct reflection upon his upbringing. Constantly correcting the language and grammar of a student can be seen as an attack upon this student and his or her cultural background. If the student feels that he or she is being attacked, he or she may shut down and refuse to learn from the teacher. With all this being said, I know the importance of speaking “standard” English in the professional world. I have been on read many books on the interviewing process that is involved for most jobs in this country. In every single one of these books, they stress the importance of using “proper” English and avoiding slang terminology. Like it or not, this is the type of environment that we need to prepare our students for when they graduate high school for possible college, scholarship or job interviews. We would be doing them a great disservice if we did not enlighten them to the world that they will be entering. From my own personal experiences, which included living with an English teacher as a mother, I know what it felt like to be constantly corrected in my speech. As I grew up, I developed a sort of “mocking” language that I would use in front of my mother just to agitate her. She had instilled the rules of “proper” English in me, but I also developed my own speech patterns and language that I would use in almost every setting other than professional ones. I will use this type of philosophy in my classroom. I will allow students to speak in their “own” way as long as I can understand what they are saying and the points they are trying to make, but I will also make it clear to them that in this country, it is imperative that they learn and understand the rules to “standard” English. By stressing this point, I will be imparting my experiences of having multiple “registers” with which they can communicate with depending on the setting and environment.
ashley sparango- discussing the quote in your post "Students shouldn't need a false disability label to receive appropriate support."
i was telling some classmates in south carolina about a program designed for pre-k students. the program consist of teaching 4 year olds pretty much all of the teachings they would learn in kindergarten. however, the program is only for children with some type of learning disability. in order to be accepted into the program, the child must "fail" the test. once this occurs the student is automatically admitted. the program is so successful that many parents have had to "dummy-down" their chidren so that they could enter the program. this is similar to the above quote because in order for children to get advanced learning, they had to pretend like they were having problems. i don't know any particulars of the program, or even if it is still in existence. i just found it a little confusing that the program wasnt open to all children...just something to think about.
I too was pleased to read "Discarding the Deficit Model". This model definitely needs to be done away with. In the school where I worked this model was responsible for many children not receiving help. In one set of identical twins, who both struggled, one received 5 hours of individual help a week and the other received zero, all because of a one point difference in the test results. In other cases the student was labeled as having a low IQ and received no additional help, because it was thought the student's lack of achievement was because of the IQ (which the system views as unchangeable). Of course a child testing with a low IQ is stigmatized throughout the school career and the expectations of teachers fall. The wealthier and better educated parents paid to have their children tested privately and shared the results only with the school system if it was to the advantage of the child.
I believe that every student that struggles should receive help regardless of why. The article stated that the Response to Intervention (RTI) model is moving in that direction. I studied RTI in two of my special education classes last semester and want to share some additional information. RTI is frequently pictured as a pyramid with three tiers. The bottom tier consists of most of the students who receive high quality instruction and are achieving as expected (one model puts this at 80%). . The second tier ( often pictured as circa 15%) receive some sort of supplemental instruction because they were not successful with just pier one instruction. The top tier (pictured as circa 5%) receive intensive instruction because they were not successful at tier two. RTI is currently being interpreted very differently in schools as to how/why/when a child moves from tier to tier. Some schools reserve the expensive assessment process for those students moving from tier 2 to tier 3. This does save resources which can then be put back into teaching all children. In my special education classes the teachers who were teaching in schools using RTI were often frustrated because the administration would mandate that the child would have to receive a certain number of weeks of tier 2 instruction before being considered for tier 3. Thus the teacher often had to watch the child fail without receiving additional help. Ultimately, I believe, the entire problem comes down to resources and how we divide those out. One classroom may have 20 out of 28 children who struggle. Another classroom may only have 2 out of 28.
I found an argument made in both of your posts very interesting, and it was from an angle that I had not looked at this discussion from before. I have been viewing accepting everyone's language in the classroom as the central issue in this debate. I feel like John and Lauren both present it as getting every student to understand the content as the central issue. I think this is an important component, particularly for me at the high school level. Content after all is what I am teaching. While focusing on language would be productive (especially for me in Social Studies) the majority of what I am focusing on is the content.
If a student can tell me about the history of the Civil War or the Women's Rights movement in Ebonics or if they have to take extra time to answer in Spanish and then translate into English, should I really spend the time correcting their grammar when they clearly grasp the content? In the same breath I still think it is important for us to teach every student Standard English. I guess I am torn. Should this be a focus only in English class? Only for formal presentations and written papers? Who should get to decide?
I found your advertising connection very interesting. I studied advertising in my freshman english class in college to talk about audiences and how to promote your product (it was an engineering english class ;)...but this leads to a discussion that your students can have both in changing an ad to target themselves, and perhaps creating a product that they have to create an ad for that would target themselves. It could help students understand their own identities as well as providing a creative outlet for some of your students. They could choose what kind of ad (print, tv, radio) and where they would run the ad.
Rich & Angie, I wanted to comment on the Danica McKellar books--I used them this last semester with several of my middle school girls who weren't confident in math and didn't think that it was "cool" enough to do. The books are written for preteen/early teen girls, and she does a wonderful job encouraging this group. One example that I love is her shoe situation: you have a super cute pair of shoes that you need to really accent the perfect outfit, but it isn't practical all the time, but that pair of sneakers is your go-to item when you need to do the work fast. I think she was dealing with fractions or something like that, but I thought it did a good job drawing the reader into the chapter. I also think that having a girl role model is great for these students--she is an actress and published a paper in mathematics (by the way, she has an Erdos-Bacon number of 6 (4 and 2, respectively) for those of you who are nerdy enough like me to appreciate that! and in case you were wondering, I consider myself to have an Erdos number of 6 if I can count the publication I did, no television/movie appearances so far!) so she shows girls that it is perfectly okay to be a girl and love math. She's getting a little heat right now about her Maxim spread, however, but maybe that could appeal to yet another group...
Chrissy, I loved your idea about bringing positive role models into the classroom. I also liked what you had to say about using language in your class. I too think I will allow my students to speak in whatever language they would like while speaking in class and with their peers. Like you, I would also ask that they use more professional english when writing formal papers and assignments. I think it is very possible to teach students the differences in language you use with your peers and that which you use in formal papers. I especially liked the jeopardy game from the video we watched in class, as a means to teach students the differences.
Megan, I too am at a loss as to where to draw the line. I think you raised a very relevant question. Students are using more derogatory language, and perhaps they are more comfortable speaking that way. Should we allow them to speak that way in our classrooms if they are more likely to learn from the language they feel most comfortable with? I don't think is the case, but it does raise the question, where do you draw that line?
Ashley Sparango has already written on the same topic as I wanted to discuss, so I hope to offer an extension of her thoughts here in my post. :) Many times we assume that ELLs have a great technical/mechanical understanding of their language. This is simply not true; our reading in Rethinking Multicultural Education echos this notion. Many students often learn their language by conversations with their guardians/parents at home; they do not learn the nitty-gritty basics in grammar and usage as American students do (although I'm losing confidence in our kids here at home as far as grammar goes...). Anyway--so in order for our students to become successful ELLs, we need to first encourage them to learn the technicalities of their own language. I had a direct confrontation with this idea earlier this year in one of my tutoring sessions with an middle school ESL student. I had her do a freewrite about anything she wanted. She wasn't writing, so I gave her the suggestion of writing about what she knows like her hometown Acapulco, Mexico. She smiled and began writing. I gave her permission to write in Spanish, so she did. But, after she finished and I started reading, I was flabbergasted. Her Spanish made no real sense; words were mispelled, and grammar was off. And, that's when I had my 'aha' moment. I began giving her more reading in her native tongue, hoping that the reading would model standard grammar and usage. After some weeks, she began improving in her English writing skills! It took a great deal of time, but it was well worth it. As a side note: I think that America should offer its citizenship-seeking friends a primary school where they could learn English BEFORE entering our public schools and/or workforce. The young girl that I taught had only lived here for four months! It's insane to think what we expect from these ELLs who haven't even learned BASIC English. New jobs could be created by this new system. Standardized testing scores would go up (because after all ELLs are required to test, too!). And, the language barrier could ultimately be bridged. Just a thought...
In response to Crissy's dilemma with teaching standard English: As a pre-service high school English teacher, your words about standard English only being taught by the English teacher scares me. Standard English should be taught in all content areas. By "taught," I mean modeled. Of course, I do not think that a science teacher should be counting points off for bad grammar, but I do believe it is up to the science teacher to model standard English usage in order to better prepare our students for life and language after grade school. Yes, we may have our own dialects and languages that just work when we're code switching, but overall our nation (and almost our global community) functions on standard English. Teaching audience allows us of all content areas teach language and context. If my students are writing a traditional paper for me (the English teacher), I will grade them on their ideas/content/organization/etc AND their grammar/usage/mechanics. If my students are freewriting in their journals, I will accept the language that they use there because they are writing for a different audience: themselves. By now, I think we've beat this subject in the ground, but I wanted to offer to all subject teachers that language should be considered in ALL classes, not just the English classroom. That's WAY too much responsibility!
Some of you mentioned here in the blog and in class discussion about having the students "freewrite" or do projects using their native langauge. The evaluation issue was also broached and someone mentioned having another student who knew that person's native language and English to translate it. I really disagree with this idea. It's seems unfair to both parties (more work for one person, less for the other). Instead, I would offer that the student writing in their native language to do something in a creative way (dance, theater, video, drawings, etc.) to send his/her message to an audience that does not know their language. After all, art is universal. :) We should continue to think about creativity in the classroom in order to bolster enthusiasm and to create a no-limits, energetic learning community. In this way, the ELL student is participating in the content and using Bloom's higher orders of thinking.
Lauren – thanks for sharing your experience in the biology classroom. As a hopeful bio teacher, I am interested to hear all types of ways to engage students. I also appreciate your comment about how long it took to really get the students to trust you and get them into the material together. I don’t want to forget that even though I may not consider all possibilities in every instance, my potential as a teacher can only grow through exposure to new methods. It is easy to become frustrated, as is told by the high turnover rate for new teachers.
Marc – I, too, have been struggling with the overt methods of teaching in a multicultural way. As a future biology and perhaps earth science teacher, I definitely have been focusing on the content and been worried about how to get through it so that students have competency in the subject matter. However, I think that there are less obvious ways to ensure that all students are included in the class and in the process of learning. Language is a good place to start, as you indicated that the students’ grasp of the material is the most important. Also, having students get in groups (diverse groups) for presentations and letting them create their own examples, such as incorporating sports or different methods of transportation in physics problems. Simply incorporating their names into the test questions (ie. instead of Jimmy/Mary pushed the car, Guido/Guidistina pushed the car) shows that you are trying to connect with them. (I had a HS English teacher who always used those names in her examples.) If you talk about sound waves, you could bring in relevant music as a springboard for conversation and understanding. I think there are small ways that multicultural classrooms can be brought about; although they may not be mind-boggling, I think that these types of steps can make a big difference.
Shana, After reading the story you shared about your niece it really made me question the diagnosis of both learning disabilities and Emotional and behavioral disabilities. Is this another “White Privilege” that you have recognized? Or is this just a case of an extremely intelligent parent who knows how to work the system for the benefit of their child? Say a person of color had the knowledge, background and intellect to understand the ramifications of the different classifications of disorders. Would this person be able to dictate to the school what he or she wanted for their child? Is this something that schools are doing too often these days? Do the schools offer this information to every parent that is in this situation with their child? Could this account for the alarming increase in students with LD’s? It seems to me that this is a problem with improper diagnosing of disabilities. Even if there is a stigma associated with BED’s, I feel that we are doing the children a disservice by not correctly diagnosing them. If there is an improper diagnosis, then students may not receive the treatment and considerations that they need. I am no expert on this topic by any means, so I appreciate and insight or thoughts that this provokes.
Megan, You raise a very interesting point in your questioning about where to draw the line regarding derogatory language. I think this is something that you need address very early on and enforce consistently. I feel that most adolescents do use derogatory terms in their everyday life and this may be part of their cultural background and upbringing; however, I think that these words ARE offensive in a professional setting. If you lay down the law the first day of class and say, “derogatory language will not be used in my classroom” and give the consequences of such actions. Then students will understand what is and isn’t acceptable. It may not be this simple, but I feel that when my students come to my high school chemistry class, they will know what is appropriate to say in class and what is not. It is a tough situation and the line definitely needs to be drawn. I guess where each teacher draws it depends on how you manage your classroom. I know that those negative, derogatory words will not be allowed in my classroom, and I will ensure the students will have a clear picture of what is acceptable and what is not.
Shana & Colby & others on special ed discussion - I do think that there are differences in the way that people address their child's educational needs, even for those in the "regular" classroom. I would also think that some of these characteristics could be generalizable across groups, but I don't know what categories that would be. My nephew is in special ed, and I think that his parents rely on the teachers and school to make the appropriate decisions. Whether this is some aspect of culture (they are 1st generation immigrants) or partly a result of their socio-economic status (middle class? - I don't know where the boundaries are) or from multiple factors, I don't know. I think that the perception of power by the administration could definitely change the way thay students are treated or the resources that are allocated to any certain program. One of my cousins lives in western NC, and she has a physcial disability. Her mother had to fight and get the media and courts involved to ensure that her daughter had the means just to move around the school (ramps, etc).
Just to clarify my point regarding the question on the teaching of standard English. I by no means think Standard English should only be taught in English class, my question was "where the focus should be." Obviously as teachers we will always model Standard English and correct grammar, regardless of our particular content area. I think the overall point I was attempting to make is that in other content areas - when the class is discussing a topic or a student is answering a question, I wonder about the benefits of spending time correcting the students grammar or having the student re-phrase their answer in Standard English, if the content of their answer was correct. If the student grasps the concept I am trying to teach I do not believe I should make an issue of their choice of words or make them apprehensive about answering questions in my class in the future. As I have stated previously in this blog, I believe formal papers and presentations should be completed in grammatically correct Standard English in all content areas because this is an essential skill for students to possess in our society today.
I would also like to say that I am a proponent of cross-discipline teaching. When I become a teacher I hope to work with colleagues in various content areas, especially English, in order to enrich the lessons in my own classroom. I think this promotes a deeper and more meaningful learning for students, allowing them more time to contemplate ideas and develop a richer and more complex view of various concepts.
Megan and others on where to draw the line on derogatory language- This is an interesting question, and also brings up the question of what viewpoints and attitudes can be expressed in the classroom. For example, there may be some cultures or even just individual households that have very different viewpoints from my own, and I wonder what should be expressed, and when it is appropriate to intervene. I guess my inclination is to think that with derogatory language I would not allow it, and would speak to students individually if I heard them using it to ask their opinion on it and what it means, and then to explain why I don’t believe it is appropriate in the classroom (or anywhere perhaps!) Unless it is not being used in a derogatory way, but rather as part of a poem or project or such to express their views or experiences. For example, one of my students (an African American female and a junior in high school) shared a poem with me this year that she had written for a school project (not for my class- I taught her Spanish) that used quite a few terms that normally I would not allow students to use in class. However, she used them to make a point about her own views and I commended her efforts to make sense of her experiences and communicate that to others. However, if I overhear comments that are unkind or prejudiced (towards Mexican Americans and Jews are ones I hear sometimes) I will talk to that student individually about what they have said, how it could be very hurtful to others, etc, and I do not allow it.
In response to Colby: In the readings, I remember there was a section that discussed Learning Disabled (LD) students in comparison to Educable Mental Retardation (EMR) students and Emotional/Behavioural Disorders (EBD) students. If I read correctly, it seems that this was clearly a white privilege issue. Many white parents did not like the stigma associated with the EMR and EBD labels. They also wanted their students to have more help, so the LR title was created. Of course, this is based on the article in the Annual Editions book, and I don't know the full history. Regardless, I think it's really disturbing that there is favoritism to such a degree. I am not in the school system, nor is any of my family, so I don't know how Wake county or the state deals this LD, EMR, or EBD students. I hope this answers some of your questions. And please someone correct me if I'm wrong!
In response the everyone: I know that we all seem to agree that it will be ok to allow students to talk in their home language when they are talking to friends in their class. I agree with this. However, I wonder if this could eventually cause problems. I'm not a Spanish speaker, so how will I know what they are saying is appropriate conversation for school? When I was in college, I had many classes with two girls that spoke German and English fluently. Often when they wanted to talk about someone in the class, they would switch from English to German. Because I didn't understand them, I felt uncomfortable when they did this because I wondered what they were trying to hide.
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading everyone's comments about Ebonics on this thread. As a capable speaker of Ebonics I will say that reading the articles in RME, specifically the article that broke down the pattern of Ebonics and the article that translated Ebonics into "Standard English", was almost insulting.
It's hard to explain, but for me, and I grew up in a white neighborhood, a middle-class town, and my father, black, since-retired, a college-graduate chemist for a major pharmaceutical company, did not speak Ebonics. Maybe a few phrases, but really, most of the Ebonics I learned was from fictional literary characters, or from listening to people speak Ebonics, whether that was in NYC on the subway, or in passing.
My first point is, I don't have a strong cultural connection to Ebonics, as in, its not the language of my home or even my community. But it is the language of African-Americans all over the world. I think that is what separates it from a North Carolinian accent or phrasing thats specific to a mountain town or region. Ebonics is spoken all over the world, and I think that slides it closer to "language" than dialect.
My second point is this. If I can learn Ebonics and understand rap lyrics, or 4th grade children from a community where Ebonics is spoken prevalently, than anyone can. Thats where I felt insulted from. Ebonics is not insanely abstract. It's just an "easier", more relaxed way of communicating for many people. To need articles written that helps future teachers "translate" the meaning of "Yo Momma", in my point of view, is similar to needing an article written for people to know how to order from a sidewalk hotdog stand. You only need to participate in the experience, and things will become much more clear.
To relate it to a classroom.... Ebonics is not difficult to understand. In many examples from articles or from our classroom, people have talked about teachers correcting students, even though the students got the content right! Arguably, comprehension is the most important aspect of communication for education. You can always teach code-switching in speaking or writing, and it will be much easier to do so if the student understands the content.
From my reaction to the articles I mentioned above, I believe it is important for teachers to absorb or listen to all student languages because the insult and "why are they talking to me like i'm a child" reaction I got from the readings, I think, would be similar to the reaction you would get from a student that felt you didn't respect the language of their home, community, or culture.
@ Rich, Megan, and Angie regarding the fishing pole::::
I was recently in an interview/training for a K-5 summer camp program and one of the activities for training we did was to talk about what we can expect from the boys and girls of each age group. Most counselors talked about 7-9 year old boys being very active and getting muddy and scraped, while 7-9 year old girls were described as timid and "more excited for arts & crafts." 10-14 year old boys were described as emotional, possibly angry, about their changing body, while girls were described as "cliquey" and emotional as well.
Of course I spoke up, but, even at young ages children are being grouped according to what has been said in the past. Even if it was true for the majority, that doesn't mean everyone is going to behave that way. Some girls might get dirtier than boys. Most boys love arts & crafts. Girls get angry, and boys form cliques as well.
I was saddened to see these "Expectations" laid out with such gender biases and stereotypes because it changes othe lens of what counselors would look for. If they saw a girl getting rough, she would be a "rough girl" rather than just a girl. These categories force people who don't fit into the categories into a new designation, which is based on their "outlier" behavior, rather than them as a whole individual.
I did speak up, and talk about how the only thing we can really expect from our campers is that they will be varied, from different backgrounds, and with different likes and dislikes, and the only thought we should pre-form about a camper is that they are going to have an awesome time, and I, as a counselor need to provide everyone with equal opportunities to participate and have a blast.
These stereotypes about men and women are horrible. When the majority of the world is divided into only two groups, and each group forms biases about the other, how can we expect social justice for all the many religions, or all of the socio-economic backgrounds? Even on an elemental level of human being, there is a stereotype of "can't fish, or can't knit". I can knit and my girlfriend is a more capable fisher than I.
My thoughts reference to what Genise said about encouraging students to use other dialects and languages to create characters and drawing on observations and experiences with other cultures. If a student is expected to create a character from a different culture based on what the student has heard about or observed, how do they avoid making it a caricature? How does someone with no genuine experience with a culture weed through all the stereotypes to find the true properties that make a culture special and unique?
Re: Lauren
In regards to what you said about music being language that everyone can appreciate, and different students identifying more with certain types of music. It made me think about the nature of our tastes in music. Is one genre of music inherently harsher on the average American’s ears (hip-hop and death metal are the first examples that come to mind, although I do listen to both), or is it all just taste. Could more melodic music be considered less harsh to most? I like all music, but smooth jazz rubs me the wrong way no matter how melodic it is. This just gave me a great idea for a math project I could have my students do. They could survey a spectrum of individuals on how they would rate some various songs and see if they could find a way to predict if a certain demographic or generally all demographics would appreciate a song. They could base it on beats per minute, number of instruments, gender of singer, number of singers, etc. This would be a good introduction to correlation using both numerical and categorical data. At the same time students will be exposed to various genres of music, and reflect on why they may say “I hate rap”, or “I can’t stand pop music.”
Joni, I definitely agree with what you're saying about the journals in class. It kind of tied in with what I was talking about with the math journals. I think journals can be implemented in classes of all subjects as a means for the students to express how they view the material in class and their level of understanding. As long as the students stay respectful and are willing to be honest in their free-writing journals, the teachers can take so much from that on how to best instruct the students from what they write. Also, as to your point on students shutting down when corrected, I have seen this same kind of situation with one of my younger cousins always being corrected by his mother for speaking incorrectly. The way she comes down on him for misusing certain words (he's only 7) makes him shut down and seem very quiet when I see him. I think the shutting down happens on a lot of different levels, and it could happen pretty easily in the classroom setting. I enjoyed reading your post, reminded me of a couple different situations that I've witnessed too.
Katrina, I am totally on board with your point on how much we expect from ELL learners in the schools and workforce right now. We expect them to understand all the complexities and rules of standard English without teaching them the fundamental principles of the language. As a math guy, I relate this to trying to teach someone calculus without showing them how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Students have to understand the basics before they can move onto understanding more extensive grammatical concepts in standard English. I think there is a lot to take from this idea, and maybe starting with after-school programs to help teach these ELL students the basics of standard English would be a good starting point. Awesome idea though!!!
Andrea - As we were talking about in class, you may speak ebonics with your family and friends, but in class you use extremely well spoken standard english. I assume that this is because of your education. I am a math teacher and personally do not see myself correcting someone’s speach during a math lesson. However, even in math there are sometimes written assignments that require more than just numerical answers, and I do think that I would require these to be in correct standard english. I agree with the position that we owe our students the training that will help them best succeed. Since you speak both ebonics and standard english, do you agree with this? And do you recall instances in which a way of speaking that was acceptable at home was corrected in school? If so, did it make you feel differently towards those teachers or about your own language use?
In response to Ashley Sparango's comment about her "aha" moment - I completely agree! It's so important that we realize that students need to have strong backgrounds in their native language before we can expect them to speak English and learn so many subjects in English.
This reminds me of a point I had wanted to make in my post earlier but it wasn't really related. From our discussion about whether we'd allow students to use their own languages in class or if we would be strict about requiring "Standard English," it sounded like (and I could be wrong) maybe some people who will teach subjects other than English see the teaching of "Standard English" as the responsibility of English teachers only. To a certain extent, students' language education isn't (obviously) as much of science, math, and history teachers' responsibility, but I think it should be a HUGE concern for teachers of every single subject. Students will never get the amount of practice they need with "Standard English," the language that will (as unfair as it is) likely provide them with the most college and job opportunities if they only receive opportunities to learn to code-switch in their English classes. Also, every standardized test also ultimately tests reading and writing, so students need all the practice they can get! It's not just the English teachers' responsibility to teach "Standard English"... I certainly agree that we all need to validate and respect students' own language but in turn, we also need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to ensure that they are never unable to reach any dream they have simply because they do not have the language skills that the "real world" expects and requires.
In response to Taylor's post about journals - I think that sounds like a GREAT idea! As a future English teachers, I love journals for the classroom, and it makes me happy to hear that teachers are using them in other subjects. I think that sounds like a great idea for math classes, just to give students their own space to talk about whatever they want, but especially to explore their attitudes toward math.
I definitely think that teachers of all subjects can put journals to good use. Teaching students to reflect on their learning and their thoughts and feelings as they learn is such a great idea because they are then doing metacognitive work and using those higher order thinking skills. Also, just getting all that practice with writing is good for students - no matter how informal it is!
Thank you for posting that! I hope that, like you said, other teachers will see that journals aren't just for English classes! :)
Gideon - While I agree that stereotypes can be very misleading and can lead to individuals being classified unfairly, to a certain extent it would be difficult to avoid this. Human beings evolved to classify and sort things so that we could respond to them faster. I think that as long as we remain aware of the short comings of stereotypes and are always on the lookout for the "exceptions", (which often are probably more numerous than the rule), then stereotypes can still be a useful was to understand students before you have the opportunity to know them better as individuals.
Gideon, I had the hardest time pinpointing how I felt about Ebonics and was struggling with what I would say if someone asked me. But, after reading your post, I think you made it pretty clear to me and I thank you. When you wrote "It's just an "easier", more relaxed way of communicating for many people." it was like I was Newton getting hit on the head with an apple. It is a casual form of communication. I don't think Ebonics should be classified as a different language. They just say things a little different and that is cool. Experience it and appreciated it for what it is.
On a side note - I asked my wife what she thought of Ebonics and she said, "nothing is wrong with it but you wouldn't see a professional research paper written in Ebonics, just as you wouldn't use ya'll or yens or dudes.
It would seem to me that there will be a school policy related to respect for others that would touch on the use of profane language. The words are by their nature offensive, and commonly used to put down another, even if in a playful manner. I do not believe it can be tolerated. It is an area that needs administration support, however, because it cannot be one teacher’s crusade.
Shana & others on special education:
Disabilities issue and labels is certainly complicated. The RTI method is a process to differentiate students who can respond to quality teaching (if they were not receiving it) or respond to interventions and be successful. It is related to a Federal law and the labels provide “qualifications” to receive special “help.” It is more personal for me, because I have a daughter who has some special needs. She is bright, reads people quickly, strong willed/manipulate. Our Neuropsychologist stated that she is the type of child who can take over a class, and that she needs to be challenged. She is regularly in a power struggle with the teacher (over the past 5+ years – all with experienced teachers). Since we have been in a private school for the past 3 years she has not been assessed for an IEP, but she displays all of the symptoms of BED. Even though she has been sent to the principal’s office on several occasions, sent home on a few and regularly disrupted the teacher’s ability to provide instruction. She has averaged about 95% and based on Stanford Achievement test 99% for reading and comprehension (reading and comprehending books 2 grades above current grade). She will not be allowed to return to the school that she’s been attending. I have been unable to provide a good fit for her, because in general those schools which work with socially and emotionally delayed children are focused on those who are significantly learning delayed. I am concerned of the stigma that a BED label would create. On the flip side, when a student refuses to accept the authority of the teacher and disrupts the class, the school needs a way to provide additional structure and support so the student and classmates can learn.
Anita:
Small clarification. I seek to discover my student’s interests and then I the actively include those in examples and demonstrations to make the material relevant for them. I also engage the class in dialogue, striving to discuss questions they have related to the concepts being covered, even when they are more peripheral. At times, I will turn a student question into an outside class assignment, for extra credit (task offered to entire class) it is interesting, relevant, but I don’t want to spend class time on it. Along that line of thinking, a typical text will look at rifles and bullets in addressing Newton’s 3rd law and conservation of momentum. I wonder how the example is viewed through an inner city lens. Having grown up in a farm community in the Midwest, hunting was common for many but is certainly different than areas where guns are primarily used as weapons against each other.
In another class I'm taking, we talked about language disorders (I'm a special ed. person) and problems with comprehension and expression. I know in class we talked about rules and how languages are made upon these. But, I feel like what Gideon said above, about how he learned whatever ebonics he knows from elsewhere, not the home. I find it interesting that we also discussed in a past class, how we talk more like our peers than we do our parents. I heard ebonics also referred to as "Black English Vernacular" and had never heard of that before in my life.
I believe you bring up great points about what it is that we should be doing as teachers. It may be more work to create these "ideal" classrooms that include everyone but this initial effort on our part will make things easier for us. We will become more effective teachers and won't have as much pressure regarding grades etc. The job of being an "ideal" teacher never ends but if we start off on the right (no pun intended) foot then the future will be easier for us and our students.
Katrina, You brought up a point about all teachers needing to teach english. Dr. G called me out when I said that I didn't have to worry about teaching english as much as my english teaching colleages. I am not sure that I was able to explain this in class. I honestly due believe that it is my job just as much as any other to ensure that all my students speak and write english, know math, social studies, art, etc. By modeling the correct elements of everything my students need to succeed I help them to learn. I also work with other teachers on students who might need extra help. This collaborative effort is the only way that we could hope to have every student succeed. As a new teacher I would think that taking an interest in students abilities in all subjects would be a way to payback my colleagues for all the help that I will need from them.
I like your view of Ebonics as a more laid back way of speaking, but I think you contradict yourself. Calling Ebonics a relaxed form of speaking implies that it is a relaxed form of a specific language. So, even though you prefer to call Ebonics such and refer to it as a language, I think that calling it relaxed implies that it's a dialect.
Like Kevin, I really appreciate your post and view of Ebonics. The description of Ebonics being an easier more relaxed style of communicating was definitely very powerful. I will def. use that description when talking about Ebonics to people who "just don't get it," because I think it is very eye opening. However, as a white person who has communicated using Ebonics, I'm not sure if I would classify Ebonics as a language of African Americans. While I understand your viewpoint and where you are coming from, I just thought I provide my perspective that Ebonics is a language of many different cultures.
Regarding your views on translating freewriting/journals: I thought the same thing when we discussed doing presentations in other languages. One student would be doing nearly double the work that the rest are doing. It also struck me as odd that I would have to rely on a student to translate for another. Not that I don't want to trust them, but I'm that much more skeptical when I can't understand the original language.
Marc, You said that you seek to discover your student’s interest and include them in class, and I think that is the most important thing that teachers can do. I know some people brought up in class that there is enough time in the day to take away from instructional time to do this, but it’s so important. As we have read, creating a positive classroom environment that is inclusive for everyone is essential for learning. Getting to know our students is the first step in doing this. For instance, currently I am student teaching at an elementary school. I use the information that I learn everyday from my students and utilize that info in word problems, prompts, etc. Their eyes light up when I use things that they are interested in and especially their own names, and they become super excited. I guess it allows them to relate to the work, which is one reason why they are excited. It may be easier for me to get to know my students, because I am in a classroom setting where I have the same students all day. However, a simple hello, email, blogs, homework, journals, etc can show a teacher a lot about a student. As teachers who strive for excellence…I think getting to know the “REAL” sides of our students is essential! Joni
Kevin, I love the idea of having your students write a paper tying physics/chemistry into their own culture. As Megan pointed out one of the most important things we need to do as science teachers is make science relevant to our students.
Taylor, I loved the movie "Freedom Writers" (and just about every other movie about a cool teacher). I haven't thought about it in a while. Thanks for bringing it up. My high school English teacher my junior year had us do a similar type journal. Occasionally she gave us specific assignments but we generally had a lot of freedom about what to write. We also had the option of her not reading any page we didn't want. (We did not tie it into Anne Frank though.) We were also expected/allowed to be creative with our journals - using magazine pictures or anything else we wanted to add to it. I actually still have mine. I like the idea of using a journal in math class. Journals are becoming more common in science classes. At the nature center I used to teach at, many of our summer camps included a daily journal.
Rich, I am a girl who is good in math and to confirm Angie's comment built things and tinkered with stuff as a kid. :) I am glad I could inspire a brilliant idea for teaching math. What a fun way to bring music and relevance into your class. You could turn it into a pretty big project researching the connections between music and math.
I am sorry you are having such difficulty with finding an appropriate placement for your daughter. Given her apparent intelligence, I am wondering if her behavior issues are related to how challenged she is as a student? I ask because I know of several children with similar intelligence/behavior profiles who have gone on to do well once sufficiently challenged.
On improper language. I have a friend who teaches in a particularly difficult environment who regularly consults the online Urban Dictionary to learn the meaning of what her kids are saying. Eye-opening to say the least.
Kids get the message very quickly as to whether they will be accepted by a teacher or not.
I distinctly remember being told by several classmates that the Chemistry teacher at my high school did not like girls in his class. He never gave them A's. Needless to say, wanting an A - I took Genetics. Funny thing is - when I've taught science to children, I seem to gravitate to Chemistry...
I've always thought that the TPR method of teaching language should be explored further. TPR (Total Physical Response) is a way of teaching language that is similar to the way that we learn our native language - through commands. The wild and cool thing about TPR is that with this method, older children and adults seems to learn language even faster than young children.
I wonder how well our ESL and ELL students would do if we provided before and after school tutoring using TPR or other research-based language teaching methods.
This teacher, Chris Gable, is a middle school English Language Arts and Social Studies teacher, but I think that all teachers can learn something from his example.
http://s135703916.onlinehome.us/04_mhs_gable.mov
Discusses the SIOP Model (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) for English learners. Our state has quite a robust SIOP program underway. To learn more and to see some excellent scaffolding, watch this high school science teacher from Lee County Schools.
@Katrina, I really liked that you mentioned using art to teach ESL students since "art is universal." I am currently taking a science illustration class and writing a research paper on using art with ESL students. I'm not going to bore everyone with all my findings, but I will say the research is really supportive!
Interestingly I had the opposite experiences in High School Chemistry. On the first day of class our male chemistry teacher said that he believed that girls had an innate ability to do well in Chemistry. He said he thought Madame Curie (a Chemist) had been the smartest person ever alive and that he wished he was born earlier so he could have married her. He apologized in advance to the boys, as he said that if they missed a question he would know that they had no clue as to the answer, but if a girl missed a question he would be inclined to think that she had just made a careless mistake and cut her some slack.
Anyway I received an "A" in Chemistry that year and received the class award. However I understood very little about Chemistry.
Also along Teresa's lines of thought.. is there a pattern as to when your daughter tries to take over in the classroom? Is it when she is feeling bored.. or perhaps something else. Also if she tries this at home is there a pattern?
I have worked (one on one) with several children with strong oppositional behavior and academic difficulties. Although my job was to work on the academic difficulties we had to deal with the opposition in order to be productive. I found in all cases they became more oppositional when they felt that things were out of their control either at home, at school or in our session, or with health problems. After building up a rapport with them, I was able to point this connection out to them. So when the strong waves of opposition came I was able to pause, talk if they wanted, and negotiate what level of control I would give them (i.e. you choose what we do next).
Their parents reported things were better at school with teachers who spent time talking with them about their interests .. but the same with other teachers who did not care to get to know them.
A book I found helpful in working with all my students is "The Motivation Breakthrough" by Rick Lavoie. This book shows you how to do a motivation profile on yourself and your students. Some traditionally used motivators (praise, stickers) are actually insulting and counterproductive for some students.
My thoughts are with you as you seek the right place for your daughter
Much like the American Idol contestant you mentioned I think we will find most often that we no very little about our students upon first inspection. Much like we no little about anyone else at first. This is why stereotypes are so damaging. In college I had a lot of friends on the football team. As we know football players are dumb right? Well many of them are very smart. The important thing is that we approach each of our students and don't pass judgment on them until we have spoken to them in a setting that allows them to drop their social persona and perhaps let us see a different side of them. At the same time we may find that the way they act is going to be the way they act all the time. Either way I think out students will have a lot to show us that they do not display to their friends.
I had a similar experience in the classroom this past spring. If any of us expect to walk into a classroom and have the entire classroom be versed in standard English we need a smack in the head. This is NOT going to happen (maybe at a private school). The classroom I was in was an academic 10th grade biology class and I found that most of the students did not use standard English. I did not interact with the students much because I was just observing, but when I did I did not find it difficult to change what voice I used or to ask a question in Spanish. As beginning teachers I think we need to make sure we are prepared to adapt to our students and not expect them to adapt to us. This is not as hard as it may seem to many and our students will appreciate it and gain more from our instruction.
I think you have the right idea, when you say that respecting the child's home language is one of the more important issues we need to keep in mind. Beyond that, I think it's mostly just fluff. The student will be able to tell when you're giving them the appropriate amount of attention and according them the respect they deserve. Our "multiculturalism" will naturally show up in the lessons we teach, and the ideas we have for activities.
One thing I would comment on, that I've read about so far, is the journals. If the journals are in the students home language, then I would imagine you don't speak it, and can't actually examine what they wrote, and potentially respond to it. But regardless, just having the journals there for the student to write in, could be a good time soak, let's say if the lesson ends 5 minutes short, or you have to run out of class for some reason. But expecting it to be a reflection on what the lesson was on, might be asking too much, since you wouldn't be able to understand it.
So I still haven't completely made up my mind on the "ebonics in the classroom" debate. I do think it is important for students to learn standard English, as most "adult job" employers will likely discriminate based on the type of language people use. Maybe that's unfortunate, but it's a reality. However, I don't think I will require students to speak formally in my classroom. This will be hard for me, too, as I am constantly correcting people's grammar in my head (occasionally I slip up and say it out loud). I want my students to learn as much as possible in every subject, but as a science teacher it will be my responsibility to make sure they know science in particular. It will already be difficult to cover all of the objectives listed in the NCSCS, and taking time to correct students' speech would only slow down progress in the science classroom even more. Also, I want my students to engage in conversation, and if they feel that I am going to call them out on the "incorrect" way they say something, they are less likely to speak up, which hinders their learning. I wouldn't expect an English teacher to take time out of his or her class to correct a student's flawed understanding of a scientific concept. Standard English needs to be learned in the English classroom.
Ashley S, I also got a lot out of reading the "Discarding the Deficit Model" article, and completely agree with your statement that teachers aren't willing to "step up to the plate" when it comes to students with different needs. I was appalled by the teacher who referred half of her African-American students to special education because they wouldn't stay in their seats. She simply didn't care enough about those children to attempt to understand why they were behaving in a manner she was not accustomed to.
John, I can kind of see your point about making sure students succeed in the moment, especially with so much focus on set course objectives. But I think we have a responsibility as teachers to prepare our students for life as well. I'm having trouble collecting my thoughts on this matter right now, but I will explain in more detail later.
Last week I had the opportunity to proctor exams for special ed students in a Wake County Middle School. At the end of the session, the special ed teacher left to take two students to the extended time room. I was left with the remaining 7 students for about 20 minutes. I introduced the "Murder Frog" game which we started playing. However, one very active student wanted to see if he could make people laugh. Since he obviously was hyperactive at that point, and was going to want to take over regardless of what I said, I chose to let him do his act in front of the other students as I thought it would be a harmless diversion while we waited for the teacher to return. Things were going fine with him acting out various parts in an attempt to get students to laugh. But then, he started to mumble and talk funny so that I could not understand what he was saying. This went on for about a minute - and then I asked him: "Who are you playing?" He stated he was "Playing an Indian - you know one of those people with the dot in the middle of their heads." Frankly, I was shocked and uncertain what to do. I was proctoring in a school where I am not a parent nor a teacher. And yet here was an issue that needed to be addressed. I addressed it briefly by stating that the behavior was inappropriate, but I am wondering how my ED 508 classmates would have responded. Immediately after I made this statement, the teacher returned to the classroom and I prepared to leave. I contemplated speaking to the teacher - but she had been very rude and dismissive of me already. What would you have done?
As I reflect back on this experience, I realize that I need to prepare for such shocking and difficult teachable moments. What do we say to educate students - without alienating them?
@ Teresa This has happened to me before on several occasions and I don't ever know what to say when that time comes. I’m always shocked and caught off guard. I had a student in after- school last year (3rd grader) who made remarks like this often. This reminded me of your encounter. One day I complimented his new hair cut saying how much we liked it and how appropriate for summer it was. He replied that, “Some black guy did it” implying that he did not like his new hair cut OR the person who cut it. Maybe this even relates to what we discussed in class about how the kids chose the darker men to be the bad men. I never know how to respond in situations! At the time another teacher was (thankfully) there to hear his reply to my hair-compliment and react with wide eyes and a mouth open as I did. We both addressed him briefly, stating that there was really no need for him to tell us the color of the person who cut his hair. We nicely asked him why he responded that way without aleinating him, truly curious as to what brought that on. We acted curious and question-provoking as to not make him feel like he said a terrible-awful thing (hoping he wouldn’t be afriad or shut us off). I think sometimes kid’s just don’t think about what they’re saying. No filters. My theory that it’s kind of what makes kids so awesome to work with: they don’t care and will say the first thing that comes to mind, good or bad. Although this is a charming quality when those things are sincere and adorable, they should be aware of what they say (and how the say it) as they grow older. I think the best way would be to address it like you did, saying that it is inappropriate to make fun of others who are different. Then, take that child aside (maybe at a later time?) and ask them why they thought those things about someone else. I guess addressing these things is something I need to work on.
As far as working in my teaching area, special education leaves room for diversity. It's interesting to think about parallels between gender, ethnicity and race. Also, equality/equal treatment/non-bias for those with disabilities. I'm a little intimidated to face the possibility of working with high school students because I feel like it could be the most challenging arena for me. Mainly due to inexperience. Many of the children I work with at the elementary school I work at are LD in reading and/or ELL/ESL students with reading difficulty. The ESL kids I work with are behind on their reading because their parents don't speak fluent English, and therefore don't practice enough at home (most are on a 2nd grade leave in 3rd grade). They are very smart, capable children. Although the school is a bilingual (immersion in most grades) charter school and diversity is very much celebrated, there is always room for improvement.
One theme I have drawn from this class thus far (and from prior experiences) is that in order to successfully cater to a diverse group of students, a really good instructional strategy is to vary the teaching style. In doing so, one’s goals as an instructor have a much higher chance of being met. By using numerous teaching styles within one given class session (i.e. lecture format, group discussion, etc.), the instructor will be able to reach a much higher proportion of students.
Apart from this practical aspect that a varied approach harbors, I do also think that it makes the classroom experience far more interesting. I personally pay much better attention in class due to the fact that we do not sit in our desks as passive recipients of information. The fact that we are often prompted to engage (even physically sometimes) in the classroom material and activities always keeps me thinking. This even makes the brief 10 to 15 minute lectures a welcome practice, as it gives us a chance to take in and process what we have learned (or are about to learn).
That’s a pretty interesting situation you were presented with. Regarding your teacher/mentor, I don’t know how I would handle that, given that she already was seemingly unresponsive to your input.
As far as the student is concerned, I would challenge you to consider the concept of positionality, as we have discussed in class. While the student’s performance could be deemed offensive by some (and should most definitely be addressed), we should consider that the student himself most likely did not have any malice behind his actions. To him, it is quite possible that he was acting out what he understood about that culture—to him, that language probably does indeed sound like a bunch of jibberish. For this reason, I think it would be much more productive to explain to him the reason why this action may be inappropriate, rather than to simply shut him down. This, of course, is easier said than done, especially in the context of a hyper-active individual.
What has worked best for me in the past is to teach and advise using examples. In this case, you could show him that if someone else began to imitate him, he may find this hurtful. In doing so, you are giving him the opportunity to experience why his actions may be offensive, and he this will have a better chance of actually understanding why what he did was inappropriate, rather than simply taking your word for it.
Your discussion on diversity as it relates to Special Education (also my area of study) got me thinking…It just dawned on me that we often make special efforts to cater to the diverse student population in a Special Education setting, simply because we already assume that we will be dealing with a lot of “less than ordinary” learning styles by the very nature of this type of classroom. However, I think it is a huge oversight on many educators’ parts to not apply the same sort of mindset in their other classrooms. In other words, it seems as though the focus of many special ed teachers is to cater to different learning styles, when in reality this should be a universal focus for any classroom setting.
Going back to the general theme of this course (diversity), what I have drawn from it is that the entire population harbors some level of diversity. I think many of us make the common mistake of associating the word “diversity” in conjunction with the word “minority.” In this regard, we are stating that there really only is a small portion of the student population that is different in any way. If one digs deep enough, it is easy to find that there is a lot of variation in learning styles within most students.
I meant to post this earlier and I'll probably post it again in the next blog about the whole two Ashleys with the same initials thing. If you want to write AJS or AJo or Ashley Jo or whatever that is fine with me. I realize that Ashley Sparango is a lot to type haha
Interesting article on the upcoming World Cup match in South Africa. Fantastic story of sport helping to heal divisions. The movie "Invictus" details the rugby team championship in 1995 and what it meant for South African healing. "30 for 30" is the documentary of the same event.
I personally found the piece by Joe Suina to be incredibly powerful. While aware of many student’s feeling ostracized in the classroom, I had never before grasped the depth of those emotions. Elements that I would never have considered, such as the teacher’s perfume, the lighting in the classroom and the smell of the school, could prove discomfiting for those students that had never before been in these surroundings. Through Suina we can see the need he develops to disown his heritage and give up his family and lifestyle to fit into the hegemonic school system, and I find it very sad.
ReplyDeleteI believe that it is possible to teach in a manner that is multiculturally inclusive without adding more to the teacher’s ever-long day. I think journals are one great way. Allowing students to write freehand in the language they are most comfortable about a concept being learned in class can only serve to help make the student better understand the material. It can certainly be very difficult for a teacher to get to know all 30 (in some cases up to 45) students in a class, especially in high school when you have three of these classes for 90 minutes each. However, I think these same journals can prove helpful in getting to know students. In the beginning, the end, or for homework, allow students the time to write their thoughts about school, class and life. Allow them to discuss what they are learning about in their own language and reflect on what this knowledge means to them. I think it is important for the teacher to respond to these journal entries, so I guess here does enter the element of extra time for the teacher.
I personally would also allow my student’s to speak their own language when doing collaborative work with peers, as long as their peers could understand them. When presenting or writing a formal paper I think the student has had the opportunity to think through what they want to say and has the time to translate that into the formal Standard English that will be expected of them in society. I think in this way students understand context – when speaking with peers it is acceptable to speak in this manner and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the language I speak. However, when speaking or writing in a formal context the student will learn to codeswitch, a necessary skill to be successful in our society today.
I also appreciate the idea of bringing in individuals from outside to act as role models for students. Perhaps there is a minority student whose parent is an accountant at a local firm. Let’s bring this individual in to speak to the student’s about their career and life. This would be a source of pride for the student, a model to all students that success is possible regardless of skin color, and a source of knowledge for each and every student regarding accounting. (As I am far from a math person, that is the best example in this particular field I could come up with - sorry!) Perhaps the teacher could also assign students to interview members of the community related to the particular content area. Allow them to experience the different ways in which people speak, meet individuals that have attained success, and share these experiences with their peers.
I think if we are creative and open to our students as individuals we can find ways to teach them in a manner that is responsive to their multicultural needs. I do not believe that there is one right answer or that what works for one teacher will necessarily work for another. I believe it has to happen between each teacher and their students in each classroom as they work together to create an environment that is conducive to everyone learning to the best of their ability.
Random thoughts, not necessarily opinions…
ReplyDeleteIf Ebonics is a language on par with all other languages, should it not be taught and offered as an alternative to French, Spanish, Chinese, etc.? If Ebonics is equal to standard English, why should it not be the central language of education? Why should we focus on what is instead of what could be? In the same vein, other regional languages/dialects could be offered as the language of instruction or as another option for the language requirement.
Many of the linguistic markers of Ebonics/AAL are prevalent in the everyday language of people who are not African American.
Discussions surrounding education and race cannot be removed from the larger context of society. Why should it not be a valid expectation that parents have a role in getting their children ready for school and the challenges they will face academically and in life as a whole? In “My Mother’s Spanish,” Gabaldón writes, “Knowing the importance of English in this country, she made sure we would learn it” (RME p.97-8). I realize that all parents do not have the same level of education, the same amount of time to spend with their children, the same priorities when it comes to educating their children, the same outlook on life, etc. As teachers, we must teach students starting at their level, but it is impossible to say that our efforts exist in a vacuum. The experiences I have had with immigrant families and their determination that their children would do well in school, have command of the English language, and also retain their own languages has been inspiring.
What about the success of immersion programs?
The discussions about language are clearly not just about language.
Perception is nearly always more important than reality. In this case, no matter how smart/prepared/skilled you are, if your manner of speaking is perceived to be otherwise, your reality won’t match. Don’t forget that standard English speakers are also perceived in a certain way and excluded/unaccepted based on their speech. Perhaps we should not speak of reality, only perception.
Thanks to everyone for (hopefully) being honest and open. It has made for lively discussion and interesting classes.
I have spent the last 10 years telling Soldiers to speak English when they are on my time. I am pretty sure I am still going to feel that way in the classroom. I understand the concerns that were brought up in class regarding the sensitivity of the students and how they might shut down if they feel we are belittling thier culture, language, etc. This was very common in the military 20 years ago and has since been addressed and require everyone attend annual briefings that discuss this.
ReplyDeleteIn the army we welcome Soldiers who speak multiple languages. We have linguists who act as liasons between the military and the civilians - a very important job. But, for that same Soldier, it is imperative that s/he can communicate in English. Especially while on the battlefield. I know I wouldn't want to rely on the guy who only speaks AAE to call in a 9-line Medevac for injured Soldiers - especially if I was the one who was injured. I believe it should be the same in the classroom. Students languages and cultures are welcomed and embraced but as a teacher who is teaching out of an English text book, I would expect the students to become proficient with the key terms. I believe there are ways to do this without causing the student to be uncomfortable and still be proud of their heritage. The exercises we did last night are perfect examples of this and I hope to come up with some good ones for chemistry and physics.
Another story: I lived in Sweden and noticed all the elders spoke Svenska only however, all the teens and some of the middle age adults spoke English too. I asked a Swedish colleague why the kids are starting to learn English in school - his response was, "for Sweden to compete in the international market, we must all learn English - no one else speaks Swedish but the Swedes".
Like the Swedes, those who speak Ebonics are isolated from the rest of the world. There is nothing wrong with how they speak but they will be at a disadvantage if they do not learn English and how to communicate like "the majority" does.
Suggestions for teaching...hmm, chemistry and physics are pretty much driven by laws and rules but, if I were to assign a research paper I could ask the students to write about something they have learned in my class and how it applies something from their family history. ie, maybe we discussed the fermentation process so the Italian kid can research how his/her ancestors made wine and grappa. Or, the kid from Johnson county can research how moonshine was made. Chemical equations would be important to show for me to ensure that they understood the process of fermentation.
Crissy, I found the Suina article as eye-opening as it seems you did. I think the most heartbreaking part of that story was his awareness that he would have to separate himself from the culture he held so dear in order to survive/succeed in the "white world" of his school. I was also surprised by his offense to the teacher's perfume. In a class last semester, we discussed a Middle-Eastern girl who didn't wear deodorant because she liked her natural body smell and thought it was weird that Westerners try to cover it up. It's amazing how things that seem so universal to us aren't really to all people.
ReplyDeleteI had a question during last night's discussion. It is becoming more and more common for adolescents to use really derogatory terminology in their everyday speech (to be blunt, words like "slut," "whore," and "pimp" come to mind, along with lots of profanity). We also discussed last night how it is acceptable for African-Americans to call each other the "n-word." As we open our minds to allowing students to speak in "their own language" to their classmates, where do we draw the line? While these words are "wrong" in standard English, and personally offensive to me, they're fine in other dialects. Do we have strict policies about some words? If so, how do we answer a student who says "But that's fine to say where I'm from," especially when we're trying to embrace their home language?
Kevin, I just read your post. As a fellow science person, I absolutely LOVE your suggestions (and laughed out loud about your moonshine comment). One of our biggest struggles in science is making the students feel like it is relevant in their everyday lives. They think that science only consists of evolution, global warming, and cancer research. By assigning your students to write a paper about how science applies to their family history, you are not only connecting with your students and making them feel their culture is important, but you're making science REAL to them. Kudos! I'm writing your suggestion down to save for later.
ReplyDeleteMegan, I think you make an excellent point about boundaries. There is definitely a need for boundaries in the classroom, with language as with everything else. Some words simply do not belong in an academic setting (I can agree with each one you mentioned). Once again I think it comes down to the context - where is the student at and who is the student speaking with. Maybe codeswitching is a skill that we should be teaching our students to a greater degree? I guess I am in the same boat as you though, how do you draw the line between what is acceptable language use and what is not while still embracing the language? Do you go over a list of unacceptable words in the beginning of the semester? What if you missed one? Do you deal with a particular issue as it arises? What if a student inadvertently insults another student with their choice of words?
ReplyDeleteI believe that we can be accepting of other languages and incorporate them into our daily course work without sacrificing the academic nature of a classroom. The question about guidelines and policies remains a valid one and I wonder if it isn't simply a matter that we will have to figure out as we go?
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteIn response to your post:
"I have spent the last 10 years telling Soldiers to speak English when they are on my time. I am pretty sure I am still going to feel that way in the classroom."
I believe that your military experience will provide you with insight in many cases. However the above quote seems to imply that you plan to continue doing something (having them only speak in English) because that is what you did in the past.
In general, when applying military experience to the classroom, I think it is important to consider your goals. If your goal is to prepare soldiers for the battlefield then you may make very different instructional decisions than you would if you are helping a kid to understand Odysseus. It is also important to consider the age and developmental level of the students since they will be younger than the soldiers you trained. They may have sensitivities or lack the maturity of the soldiers you worked with.
Also I don't think anyone is saying kids shouldn't learn Standard English. Some of us are just saying that we can use the language of the child as a window to make him or her feel welcome. Translating material into a different language may also be an effective instructional tool. If a kid translated Odysseus into AAL then he would have to understand it at a deep level in order to do so. The creative process of translating (yes translating can be creative) would also make it his or her own. I believe that he or she would then be more likely to do well when taking a test on Odysseus in Standard English.
I love the moonshine idea - let's just hope that some kid doesn't build a still and say my teacher taught me how!
This is Genise:
ReplyDeleteThe discussion on what language to use in the classroom is interesting to me. My undergraduate degree was in Theatre and I want to teach theatre. As a theatre teacher I would encourage students to use other dialects and languages to create characters. In the theatre, to create a believable character, one must base that character on real life experiences and even a person he or she may know or have observed. I encourage students to study other cultures, languages, and people to create characters that are believable.However, I will probably be an English teacher, which I would love just as much. But in any classroom, students need to feel validated and important. The only way to do that is to recognize everyone's cultures and lifestyles that includes the language they speak.
I think it would be doing an injustice to the students to not teach them Standard English. Students will have to use Standard English upon entering the professional world. But we as teachers have to understand that in order for the students to listen to us and trust us we have to respect where they come from just as much as we care about where they are going. To follow up our discussion on Thursday about language, personally I would provide the students with an outlet where they can feel comfortable talking about whatever they want and how ever they want. They need a place where they can write and talk without feeling judged or feel like they are going to be graded down because they are not writing they way they are "supposed" to. We should still teach them standard English because, that is the language of the professional world, but we still have to provide them that safe outlet.
Megan, I am glad that you might be able to use that idea. It does make it more fun to learn when you can relate concepts to your own experiences.
ReplyDeleteAngie, yes, I intend to have my students do their homework and tests in English. I will be teaching HS Science (Chemistry and Physics)and believe this is the most effective way for me to teach. If they want to speak jibberish while working in groups - I could care less. If there are students who are struggling (and I believe I am pretty good at identifying those students)then I will do what I need to do to help that student out.
Translating Odysseus might be a good idea in a different class - but I don't ever remember writing papers in Chemsitry or Physics. Most of the problems/HW were deriving equations. Now, if a student understood English but struggled with writing then, sure, we could work something out and try not to embarrass them. But, if the student didn't speak English at all then I would question why s/he was in my class.
While reading Lisa Delpit's article "Ebonics and Culturally Responsive Instruction" I definitely had my eyes opened to my own unawareness. The example she used where the student read a line of text and the teacher began to "correct" the student because the teacher did not realize the student was reading the text, just with the Ebonics-influenced pronunciations and grammar. I read the dialogue between the teacher and student and sat confused. I know in the same situation, I would done exactly as that teacher did. I would have assumed the student was struggling with decoding issues because I unfamiliar with the grammar and pronunciations of Ebonics. While writing my paper I realized this is one of my "blind spots". This then made me think about the complexity of the issue of social justice. I would like to think I'm a very open person. I try my best not to judge others, and to treat everyone the same way I would want to be treated. Even so, I know that at some point I will make a student feel unwelcome out of my own ignorance. Unfortunately I don't know Ebonics or Spanish or any other language for that matter. I've taken classes to learn two other languages with little success. Even though I want to provide my students with an environment where they all feel welcome, it breaks my heart to know that I could cause another student to feel the way Joe Suina felt when he went to school, simply because I'm uneducated about their culture.
ReplyDeleteWe've mentioned in class how history has largely been written from a European or majority perspective. I will be teaching high-school mathematics, and I hope to provide some context for my students about where the mathematics came from and how it developed into what we study today. I think that introducing the historical perspective will provide an opportunity to explore and celebrate discoveries from different cultures. However, I will need to look beyond the history in American mathematics books--so many of the discoveries in mathematics were discovered earlier in other cultures outside of Europe, but we often credit the discovery to the European mathematicians. There are also many examples of bright women who contributed to the field but were not able to study with the men or even publish their ideas under their own names. I think that using these injustices will help empower the students who do not identify with "math people" and open a discussion about the richness of different cultures as well as explore some of the injustices and how they have predominated our historical education.
ReplyDeleteOne of my concerns with sharing the ways in which history has been written, often neglecting minority or non-European cultures, is that I may invoke anger in my students towards the way their ancestors were not acknowledged. Will this cause my students to be more proud of their ancestors (which I hope to see) or feel more of the injustices society has given them? What would be a way to ensure that I encourage a positive reaction in my students while still allowing them to explore the different views of mathematics history.
Ashley: I think that sharing the real history is a very good idea. I think that you can prevent some anger by stressing that this is the way things used to be and we are trying to change this in society. Perhaps the class can even brainstorm ways to give credit where credit is due. Perhaps they can create a website, school posters, or bulletin board that tells the real history of these marginalized mathematicians.
ReplyDeleteAs for my own project/class ideas: I have been trying to think of projects that really incorporate language in the class in a way that everyone is comfortable. Ideally I would like to teach computer graphics and communications type classes. Some ideas I had were: finding ads or marketing materials from daily life and translating it for their own personal lifestyle. For instance, if the ad is for a McDonald's cheeseburger, what could they change about the ad that would make it more appealing for them? The answer could be as simple as switching the language from English to Spanish, or having the model wear glasses. I think that this could be a very good project if controlled well, and it gives the students an idea of how advertising is tailored to a specific demographic.
Other ideas were designing a poster using the lyrics of their favorite song, and making the art match the feeling they get while listening to said song. They could also create an advertisement that for their favorite band to display somewhere in the school. Just a few ideas...
Friday at work I was talking to a colleague who trains teachers to teach students with learning differences how to read. I have witnessed her working with children and she has been in the field many years and also taught a good friend of mine to read when he was young (he has Dyslexia and ADHD) She helps with outreach programs and one of her areas is in Carteret Country, in a rural area of Eastern North Carolina. I was talking to her about the language issues we discussed in class yesterday and the readings, and it was fun to hear her talk about the way she approaches the issue with the students there. She says that when teachers tell students they “don’t speak correctly” she is very firm in her message to them that there is no value to one form of speech over another, and that they should not ever feel or give the message to their students that there way of communicating is in any way inferior to Standard English, which she firmly believes. She believes it is possible to explain the different contexts in which it is appropriate to use and practice different forms of speech, and for her she encourages use of Standard English in the classroom (without judgment, and recognizing the importance of starting where the children are and validating their own speech) because that will serve them well in the academic setting.
ReplyDeletePerhaps along a little bit of a different line, but I believe both ideas are inclusive of each other, I do think the idea of journaling about topics is a great idea, and allowing students to do so in their home language. I also really love the idea presented in the readings of exploring language and the structure and history of language as a topic in and of itself. I understand that for some teachers pressed for time this may not fit into curriculum they want to teach, but for me as a (at least for the moment) language teacher I think this would be a really great way to give the kids a chance to learn more about how we speak and why.
Annita,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the questions you have raised and see your point that all languages do not have equal footing or function in society (otherwise why not teach Ebonics along with Spanish or Chinese?) I agree that there is clearly not the same practicality in terms of teaching Ebonics, or a speech used by rural North Carolinians, or people living deep in the Appalachian Mountains, etc, all of whom have their own speech patterns that are certainly valid. However, teaching those on a large scale- the way Spanish for example is offered as a second language in school- would not serve the same function of hopefully increasing communication over a wide group of people. Even as I’m thinking about this my ideas are going back and forth… but I am as of now of the opinion that it is very important to stress Standard English in the classroom, and I don’t think helping children speak Standard English, and correcting them, has to be a devastating experience. So I also think that recognizing home languages and cultures is important in the classroom, and can be done without compromising Standard English instruction. On a different note, I very much support allowing native Spanish speakers to take Spanish classes in order to learn the grammar, etc, because I think this serves everyone well.
As I was doing reconnaissance for the next assignment, I found some fishing poles for sale and thought I would pick one up for my friend. I went to ask the salesmen a question and this is what happened to come out of my mouth: “I’m looking for a fishing pole, but a simple one because it is for a girl.” After realizing what I said and silently scolding myself, I decided this was great inspiration for my blog this week.
ReplyDeleteIt’s not that I think girls are less intelligent or mechanically inclined, but I do think most women have less confidence when it comes to mechanical things. I know if I hand a fishing pole to anyone who is intimidated by an abundance of switches, screws, and other various means of adjustment, they are going to shut down when they think something is malfunctioning. In my experience, such devices intimidate a lot of women. I think this is absolutely a society-based problem. There is still the thought that men are the ones who fix the car, mow the lawn, setup the multimedia equipment, etc.
It is equally true that society is the reason the modern day man does not hesitate to fiddle with switches and knobs. Whether or not he is confident in his actions, he is expected to know what he is doing simply because he is a man. Meanwhile a lot of us have less experience and handle tools worse than the next person, regardless of sex. But, we know our masculinity is on the line. Smoke coming from under the hood? “Oh I can fix that because I have a penis!” Meanwhile when I open the hood of my truck and take a peak inside, I’m just as confused as if I were watching open heart surgery.
I forgot to mention how my story could be linked to teaching. Since my subject is math, I will probably go up against the “girls aren’t good at math” comment many times in my career. There are not many historical examples of women in mathematics that I could reference in an against sexism in mathematics, except for Hypatia from the Greek period and a handful of others who usually were burned at the stake for being witches – a big downfall to being an openly intelligent woman in the past. I suppose if a female student used her gender as an excuse for doing poorly, I could encourage her to prove that notion wrong by fulfilling her potential in my class.
ReplyDelete@ Rich
ReplyDeleteI think gender issues are definitely important to discuss. Especially in math and science because like you said there aren’t many role models for students to look up. I am fortunate to be a female in the science field and when I get into the classroom, I hope that because I am a female more girls will have an interest in science and not just biology. I know that I am not a big bio person, so I hope that by showing interest in chemistry and physical science that I will inspire girls to explore science. I hope you find ways in your classroom to inspire girls and all students in general to explore and enjoy math.
I also want to comment about the fishing pole. When I was reading that I was like hey I can use a fishing pole better than my boyfriend and I actually know more about cars than he does. Luckily as a child my parents had the same expectations for the boys and girls in my family. We were all forced on family fishing trips and expected to be able to change our own oil and flat tires. I think men do not expect women to know about those things, which is unfortunate.
I hope in the future this changes (especially in the classroom) so that girls feel more comfortable taking an interest in all school subjects and are confident in the classroom.
I want to start this post commenting about standardized testing. I am a proponent of the idea being standardized testing; I think there needs to be a way to compare students across the state and nation, and I think standardized tests are a good way to accomplish this. An educational reform needs to occur in order to re-evaluate how standardized tests are used. I think high stakes testing creates an unnecessary competition between schools. Additionally, I do not think that standardized tests are the only way to accomplish comparisons between schools. I think by using multiple forms of assessment, we will be better able to compare students because their knowledge will be demonstrated in many different ways.
ReplyDeleteSo, after saying my piece about standardized tests, I want to comment about the “aha” moment I had during the readings because it relates to standardized testing in the long run. I want to talk about English Language Learners. How are students supposed to learn concepts in their second language if they aren’t able to learn concepts in their primary language? DUH!! I was being ignorant. I assumed that English Language Learners would have the same level of knowledge and abilities in their own language that English speaking students had at the same grade level, but how could they? Unless they’ve come from a similar educational background in their own country, how should we expect them to have the same abilities in their own language that we have in English? The only guidance they have in their own language is from their parents, family, and friends and I know parents never taught me about past participles and verb conjugation. In saying this, I think bilingual education is necessary. Students cannot be expected to pick up English if they don’t have a strong grasp on their own language. I wish more administrators had this type of “aha” moment so that maybe we could change the way education is done. If we want this country to stand up to others in education, I think bilingual education is a must! I do think that everyone should be able to use Standard English. I agree with the class discussion that it is a tool necessary to get ahead in the world that we have created. Because of this, teachers should explore ways to incorporate the use of code switching and teach students when using Standard English. As a whole, I think this will improve the educational state of the nation.
@Rich, I think your incident at the fishing store applies to all kinds of assumptions that we make in education. We have been talking about how students from other cultures will fit into our classrooms. If we assume that students know or don't know material/skills/concepts without actually assessing them, we will be doing them a disservice. As Ashley pointed out, she is quite proficient under the hood of a car. What if a teacher spoke slowly to her and said "Now... this... is... a... wrench" but assumed a male in the class would be able to disassemble an engine on the first day? What if I spoke slowly and loudly to a Hispanic student because I assumed he would not speak English well but talked to the white students like they were all proficient in English? What if I had a white French student or a white South African student? Proper assessments are needed before we make ANY assumptions about our students.
ReplyDeleteAshley, I think this transitions into your post about proper assessments. In another class, we have been discussing disabilities that are primarily based on culturally-biased IQ tests. How can we properly assess students without being biased against another language or culture? How can we objectively test students only in math when we give them word problems to solve? If a student scores poorly on the math test, do we really know if the problem is math or reading? I agree with you that standardized tests definitely hold value (I was grateful for them in high school because they put me on level ground with students from large high schools), but that they are seriously flawed. As I try to think through how to improve them, though, all I can do is shake my head in confusion.
Richard,
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine recommends a series of books by Danica McKellar which presents math in a more girl friendly way.
She also indicates that she lets her math students come up with several mnemonic devices to remember a concept and share with the class. She said that the girls and boys usually prefer different mnemonic devices.
In addition I did some reading last semester on research that linked the amount of time a child spent playing with blocks and general fiddling around with stuff to performance in math. The more children built and fiddled with stuff as a child the better they did in math in HS. Of course boys are encouraged to do this type of play so that may be why more males are comfortable in the math arena. I can't at this time locate the references but will send them on when/if I do.
I agree there is a lot of pressure on guys to fix stuff. In my family I am often the one to go to the hardware store and look for parts and ask questions. I find the workers (mostly male) will take their time in explaining how to complete projects. And I don't feel embarrassed to ask a lot of questions. When my husband goes I think the workers assume he should know this stuff and he often comes home with the wrong thing or not enough information. I think there is a reluctance on his part to ask questions because he is expected to know this stuff.
A couple of thoughts that I had from the last class on integrating the differences in students' languages in the classroom. The idea of having journals in the classroom was mentioned in the discussion, and after I went home, I thought about this idea a little more, and I was reminded of the movie "Freedom Writers". Don't know if anyone has seen it, but if not, it is a very solid movie, and I think the people in this class would find it very relevant to ED 508 and what we're talking about now. Hilary Swank is an English teacher, and inherits the castoffs at the freshman and sophomore level at a new high school. The classroom is very racially diverse, and what she ends up using as a successful icebreaker for her students is a composition notebook for them to use as a journal. They can write whatever they want in their journals, and the teacher will only read them if they allow her to. It's an interesting idea that is based on a true story, and they tied in a lot of ideas from the "Diary of Anne Frank" into their lives. It was very intriguing to me that they brought in a piece of famous literature, and the students were given some sense of free reign in comparing/contrasting the themes in this literary work to their own lives. I felt like this was a very solid and effective way to help integrate the different cultures of the students in the classroom. If I remember correctly, they also do a version of the game where you step over the line if a given statement is true about you. A lot of good ideas in this movie that can be put into the context of this course, as well as the practical applications of teaching.
ReplyDeleteNow, I don't know about the rest of the class, but when I hear the word journal at school, I immediately think of an English classroom. I am studying to be a high school math teacher, and I know that there are a few other math people in the class as well :) I'm involved in the Noyce scholarship program here at NCSU for teaching high school math in high needs school districts, and there is an interesting concept involving journals that was put into effect last year by two student teachers in this scholarship. I don't remember all the specifics at the moment, but the idea of journals in the math classroom was set up so that students always had extra time between the end of a test and the end of the class period (usually about 15-20 minutes) to write their own reflections on anything. Usually the thoughts were kept to reflections on how prepared they felt for the test, how fair they thought the test was, where they think they could've gone right or wrong on the test, how they felt about the homework load and content, and pretty much anything else related to the math course they were in. The goal of implementing these journals was to allow students to write how they felt about math rather than just deal with numbers all the time, and based on the results of these journals, it seems to me that students really used them as a positive device to getting more out of the material in the class. Students were allowed to interpret their own struggles to the teacher in whatever way they felt best in communicating these ideas to the teacher. The student teachers analyzed these journals before the start of the next unit to try and incorporate all the students' constructive thoughts into how to improve the teaching style for the next unit. I believe this could be a great tool for teachers in subjects that don't involve a lot of writing in the curriculum because it gives every student a voice and an opportunity to be heard. Anyways, hope everyone is having a good weekend, and let me know what we can add or change about the journal idea to make it the most useful to us as future teachers.
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI respect your decision to use Sandard English to teach your science classes.
But I object to you referring to different ways of communicating as "jibberish".
Annita had some musings concerning the parents responsibility to prepare their children for school. This caused to think about the relationship between parents and teachers in general and in particularly when the teacher and parents come from different cultures.
ReplyDeleteFirst let me say that I believe education is a human right and that we must meet that child where he or she is.
That being said cooperation between the school and home is a powerful tool and we must work hard to achieve it. In my personal experience I have found that almost all parents want to help with their child's education but they may not know how to and if some cases miscommunication results in a bad relationship between the teacher and parents.
I was privileged to know a teacher who had an excellent track record in working with children and parents from all sorts of different cultures. I spent some time talking with other parents to determine why she was successful with every child and every parent.
The following is an example of her style and how she helped my family:
Mrs. W. was my son's second grade teacher. He entered second grade after a difficult kindergarten and first grade years. He could at that point read only a few words.
My husband was very irritated with the school system at that point and blamed them for my son's problems. He was in denial that my son needed special services. Part of the conflict may have originated because of cultural differences. My husband is from Iraq and the schools he grew up with were so different. However I believe the conflict originated because he was defensive and tired of listening to everything that was wrong with his son. Most of the teachers and specialists had the following approach - spend 30 seconds saying what a wonderful boy he was - spend 30 minutes talking about his problems - spend 5 minutes to say they were going to keep working on it.
Mrs W was different. First she spent time to get to know the students and played games to determine skills and abilities that might not be apparent when completing class work. When she meet with my husband and me, she spent about 20 minutes talking to us about our son's strengths. She was quite genuine and we really felt that she cared. Next she spent about 5 minutes talking about difficulties. Finally she spent about 20 minutes talking about how WE (teacher, parents, child) could work on these difficulties. It was magical. My husband came on board and under her guidance my son learned to read that year.
Mrs. W had discovered that my son had a strong visual memory and she used this to help him learn to read. She chose a reading program used for deaf children. Had she not spent the time to get to know his skills beyond traditional academics she would not have discovered this crucial piece of information that helped him learn to read.
I found the article “Discarding the Deficit Model” in Annual Editions especially interesting because I have had some experience in my own family with how the special education classifications are applied in our public schools. The explanation that the authors provide for why minorities are over represented in special education and especially in Emotional/Behavioral Disorders (EBD) was extremely insightful.
ReplyDeleteMy niece is a seventh grader in a public wake county middle school. She has been classified as having a learning disability for many years now. She is allowed extra time on test, special consideration in classroom expectations, she has a resource teacher, etc. However, she much more closely exhibits behavior that falls under the EBD definition. When I asked my sister, who happens to be a doctor of Psychology, about this, she said that she did not want her daughter classified as EBD because she would receive less resources and special consideration and that there was a stigma associated with the EBD classification that she did not want her associated with.
Upon reading the article it occurred to me that for my niece, the classification she received was apparently optional. My sister was able to basically tell the school how she wanted to be classified and what interventions she wanted. I am sure that being white, educated, and upper middle class had a lot to do with this. I doubt that a minority family would be able to “work the system” in this way.
@ Shana
ReplyDeleteI also found the article “Discarding the Deficit Model” in Annual Editions especially interesting! To me the point that stood out the most to me was the quote on page 93 that reads "Students shouldn't need a false disability label to receive appropriate support." I think a lot of the time we are spending too much time trying to classify students' disabilities rather than stepping up to the plate to work with the students; and I mean all students. No student is at the same level in any class and they shouldn't have to have a labeled "disability" to receive help (or extra help). Although difficult, I think specialized instruction is going to be an essential part in education as the achievement gap between students continues to grow.
A lot of what we have read and discussed reminds me of the idea of critical literacy, which I think is such an interesting and important concept for teachers! It relates to Freire's ideas that students should actively construct and interrogate knowledge (whose knowledge? How do we know something is true?) instead of being forced into the “banking system” of education in which the teacher is seen as having the knowledge and fills the “empty receptacles” (the students) with it, without any questioning of that knowledge on the part of the students. This, of course, results in a cycle of inequality of injustice because it privileges certain knowledge as “truth” and ignores the rest. When people read texts (and students have to read for classes everyday!), the same thing happens – certain knowledge is expressed and presented as “truth” (and thus privileged), while other voices are silenced. That's where critical literacy comes in to encourage students to learn to challenge the norms that are represented and enforced as the status quo by texts, to learn to ask critical questions about what they read. Sounds familiar, right? Anyway, thought I'd mention this because it ties into the ideas of social justice and encourages students to realize that it's necessary to question the attitudes and beliefs that are behind all texts (whether actual print texts, or images, songs, ads, news, movies, etc.) because texts have power and can perpetuate social injustice in countless ways! If teachers can teach students with all this in mind, then they are getting at that social justice education we've been talking about!
ReplyDeleteThanks Angie. And, I apologize that I wasn't clear in my post. When I said, "If they want to speak jibberish while working in groups - I could care less." My point was that they could communicate in any way they preferred and I wouldn't care - even if it didn't make sense. Kids will do that some times.
ReplyDeleteLisa Delpit’s article "Ebonics and Culturally Responsive Instruction” pushed my thoughts to a new level. After reading this, the debate of whether or not Ebonics is indeed a language grew unimportant to me. Personally I believe Ebonics “is what it is.” Yes, debating over the topic at least means that we are talking about the issue, but we need to do more than talk. I whole heartedly understand some of the thoughts of it being the teacher’s responsibility to ensure that our students are prepared for college by the ability to speak “standard English,” write grammatically correct papers, and have the skills to perform well at an interview.
ReplyDeleteWith the shortening school day and more demands on the teacher, I know that some teachers are wondering where they will have time to incorporate a culturally responsive instruction. However, is it really necessary for our students to address us in “standard English” 100% of the time? If time is such an issue, imagine if we gave our students a sense of belonging by allowing them to speak or journal in their own language during our class. Some teachers who teach science, math, or history may think that journaling isn’t necessary for their classrooms and believe it takes up some of their precious instructional time. However, can you imagine what kind of work you could get from students if they felt a sense of belonging and connectiveness to the classroom? I believe if we gave our students a sense of belonging, it would probably take less time for teachers to have to “teach” the material, because they students would be more involved in the instruction.
Personally, I know how I felt when I was corrected by my family members. Still to this day, I often do not use the correct grammar when I speak. I still do not feel like I can completely open up to my sister in law, because I am scared that she will correct my verb usage. The more I was corrected from her, the more I tried to pin point every mistake that she made in math (her weak subject - my stronger subject). I can totally see students shutting down for being called out when using ebonics – it happened to me!
Megan and Ashley - standardized tests...I agree with both of you on all your points. It is confusing to try to figure out a fair way to test all of our students. But, I feel something is better than nothing. My dad used to always say, "you are not going to make everyone happy" and unfortunately, this is kind of the same - it is not going to be fair for everyone and it probably will never be.
ReplyDeleteAshley Swandby,
ReplyDeleteFirst I would like to express my displeasure with having to spell out your last name since you share the same initials with Ashley Sparango:) I emailed Dr. G and told him that I would like to use G for his last name simply because I am lazy. I will be sure to give the "other" Ashley a hard time as well.
About your post and creating resentment I think that Richard and Ashley may have offered some help. As a math teacher I don't think you have to worry about teaching the history of discrimination. Just focus on Math history and make references to people like Hypatia automatic. If most teachers follow this lead then we can make the mistakes from the past ancient history. In my previous post I believe I mentioned a scientist named George Washington Carver. I discovered him myself long after I graduated college. Not having this great man discussed during my education is a real disappointment.
Ashley Sparango,
It seems that your parents may have made equal opportunity or expectations an automatic thing in your upbringing. It is funny that you use the word "forced". I used it in a sort of literal way when I described having to take some additional Liberal arts classes at ODU. I mentioned how my education and privileged status made me feel like I was being "forced". If these classes and alternative people from throughout history are included on a regular basis from now on we will all benefit and will look back and say "wow I can't believe that they didn't teach this stuff in the past".
We had some discussion in class this week about what it meant to have students learn to use "correct" english. Many voiced their opinion that it is a disservice to students to not teach them a certain proficieny. The point of this was to give them the opportunity to succeed in college and beyond. My opinion is that this is the wrong attitude. Our mission as teachers should be to help our students to achieve in the moment at hand. If this means presenting them information in a language that they can understand then it must be done. Thinking that every student should learn "correct" english so that they can succeed in higher education or a professional setting is not helping them get closer to either of those scenarios. It should not matter to us how they learn the information and we should do anything we can so that they embrace the classroom setting instead of resisting it. Much like we saw in the readings where bilingual learning students learned english much faster than other students, english speaking students who do not speak "correct" english will learn in much the same way. The important thing is that they learn or they will never move forward in the moment at hand which means they will never come close to college or a professional career where they need "correct english.
ReplyDeleteCrissy commented that she agrees/believes that teachers can incorporate multiculturalism into their classroom without adding onto their day. Call me an idealist even though I think I am being more of a realist when I say that yes teachers are continually put under ridiculous demands and have to teach a ton of curriculum in a short time period along with their students being expected to pass EOCs, BUT I think it is a cop out and just an excuse when teachers use that as the reason why they use mediocre or poor teaching methods and focus only on the test in their classroom. Yes, it is harder and more work to create an inclusive classroom that makes education fun and relevant for the students. No where does the research say that your students will test better - or more importantly learn more - if you spend all your time cramming the information on the test down their throat. Nobody, especially children and teenagers, wants to sit and be lectured at day in and day out - this is even more true if your students aren't proficient in English. Please just step out of the box! It is not about teaching more, it is about teaching differently and teaching better. There are teachers out there that teach in innovative and inclusive ways whose students pass EOCs. I certainly aspire to be one of those teachers in the classroom. I believe that each and everyone of us can reach that goal. :)
ReplyDeleteAs for language in my own classroom, I completely agree with the readings that kids will shut down and tune out if you are overly critical of their language or the way they speak. I student taught high school biology this spring. Having been raised to speak Standard English, I expected that I would expect the same from my students in the classroom. In reality, I found it to be much more important to just get the students to be engaged and talking about biology then about the specific words they used. This was particularly true in my academic (lower level) class. Several students in the class were in ESL or had been in recent years. Several were African Americans who often spoke in Ebonics (which I did not recognize as such at the time). And most of the rest of them used poor grammar and lots of slang when talking and writing. It was enough of a challenge to get them to answer a question or do their work that I was not about to correct anything other than the science. It took weeks to gain their trust and get them talking - even to each other. If I had been critical of their language or other aspects of who they are, I never would have gained their trust. I really think that if I had constantly corrected them and expected them to speak in Standard English, they would have learned less if anything at all. I now see even more ways (and am learning more and more ways) I could have been more inclusive with the various languages in the class.
Music is language that everyone can appreciate. Of course as we have briefly talked about different students will identify more with certain types of music, but I do think that using music in ANY class is a great way to teach. Our hip hop & spoken word talk/work in class made me think about this. A friend of mine, Lodge McCammon, job at NC State is all about creating music based on NC's curriculum and having students make music videos using the songs. While student teaching we used his songs on atoms and on cells. Two of my classes even made music videos. Overall the students really enjoyed it and learned from it. To check out Lodge's music click on "Music Education" at http://www.iamlodge.com/. Along with the songs, Lodge has created worksheets to help teach the curriculum in them. The lyrics are all posted as well as sample videos.
Reading this particular section of rethinking multicultural education i came up with two ideas.
ReplyDelete1) why is the book called rethinking multicultural education? to rethink it means that someone thought of it before. i know personally i never heard of multicultural education. and, from the readings, it seems like this is not something that is apart of the traditional school system. maybe i am missing some important information regarding this.
2) i never realized before reading this section of the book that i spoke ebonics. the articles by linda christensen and geneva smitherman enlightened me to the fact that i am also an ebonics speaker. i must admit that i sterotyped ebonics in the past and did not want to be associated with it. little did i know, everytime i spoke with family friends, i was not only apeaking ebonics, but also introducing it to my nieces and nephews. i was astonished to read that it is considered to be a language in and of itself. i think it is imperative for children to feel comfortable speaking their home language at school. i just don't know how to properly incorporate that into the dynamics of school.
In considering Physics or Chemistry and the use of non-standard English language, I see a couple of significant issues. First, there is a significant problem with students kind of understanding a concept, and thinking that they really understand it. I want to know that sooner rather than later so that I can speak into my students’ gaps before they and I uncover them on a test. That applies to pure English speakers and those students who have English as a second language.
ReplyDeleteAs their teacher, I must understand them well to know whether they are making valid concept connections to understand whether they truly understand the material. Other than a fun activity that isn’t concerned with precise understanding, I don’t see a place to reinforce other primary languages. I think that there are more appropriate ways in these courses to acknowledge them. For instance, I am firmly committed to drawing applications from sports, music, cars, electronics, etc. from their lives in discussing particular Physics concepts. I am also committed to restructuring my instruction to use groups in a diverse classroom because of differences in culture related to learning styles. I just don’t see a place for incorporating primary language differences into these courses. I tend to agree with the statement in text I taught from, the primary language of Physics is mathematics (not English either).
I have found that students are often better at throwing numbers into equations than remembering the assumptions and exceptions associated with their application.
Second, these science classes tend to have Juniors and Seniors who are college bound. One would expect them to be quite proficient in standard English by that time (particularly when I don’t take off for grammar and spelling unless it makes the response unintelligible). In Gabaldn’s article on My Mother’s Spanish the author cites work by California legislative analysts that show that it takes between 3.4 and 7.1 years to learn English depending on the primary language (they analyzed 2.6 million tests).
Available time is a factor in determining pacing. It appears to me that in moving to a block schedule, class time was reduced by 19%. I base my calculations on 55 min classes for 2 semesters as compared to 90 minute classes for one semester. I assumed that the number of academic classes in a year remain unchanged. Each course have different requirements and I recognize that electives also have different compositions than core courses. Hence the above thoughts are related to a specific case with associated assumptions.
john-
ReplyDeleteyour comment reminded me of...what for it...what for it..lol one of the contestants on america's next top model. i cant remember her name, but she appeared to be an african-american female that spoke using ebonics most of the time. the other contestants would make fun of the way she spoke all the time. i started to feel badly for her and developed my own biases about her. it was not until she spoke in a separate interview that my biases were put to bed. she said that she was aware of the fact that the other girls ridiculed her because of how she spoke.she continued to see that she was very versed in "standard" english, (and she demonstrated by using standard english)but she chooses to talk like people in her neighborhood. she is a college graduate and identifies primarily with her familial surroundings. i found this very interesting and i think it goes to say that the students need to be the ones to make up their mind as to which type of english they identify with. i think as teachers our role is to always provide them options, but ultimatley the choice is theres.
I had some thoughts on our discussion from last class regarding language in the classroom. It is my opinion that we hold a responsibility to show students what is accepted in the “real” world when it comes to proper language and speech patterns. I think we, as future teachers, need to show our students that we are interested in, and truly care about their language and style of speech. After all, a student’s language is a direct reflection upon his upbringing. Constantly correcting the language and grammar of a student can be seen as an attack upon this student and his or her cultural background. If the student feels that he or she is being attacked, he or she may shut down and refuse to learn from the teacher. With all this being said, I know the importance of speaking “standard” English in the professional world. I have been on read many books on the interviewing process that is involved for most jobs in this country. In every single one of these books, they stress the importance of using “proper” English and avoiding slang terminology. Like it or not, this is the type of environment that we need to prepare our students for when they graduate high school for possible college, scholarship or job interviews. We would be doing them a great disservice if we did not enlighten them to the world that they will be entering.
ReplyDeleteFrom my own personal experiences, which included living with an English teacher as a mother, I know what it felt like to be constantly corrected in my speech. As I grew up, I developed a sort of “mocking” language that I would use in front of my mother just to agitate her. She had instilled the rules of “proper” English in me, but I also developed my own speech patterns and language that I would use in almost every setting other than professional ones. I will use this type of philosophy in my classroom. I will allow students to speak in their “own” way as long as I can understand what they are saying and the points they are trying to make, but I will also make it clear to them that in this country, it is imperative that they learn and understand the rules to “standard” English. By stressing this point, I will be imparting my experiences of having multiple “registers” with which they can communicate with depending on the setting and environment.
ashley sparango-
ReplyDeletediscussing the quote in your post "Students shouldn't need a false disability label to receive appropriate support."
i was telling some classmates in south carolina about a program designed for pre-k students. the program consist of teaching 4 year olds pretty much all of the teachings they would learn in kindergarten. however, the program is only for children with some type of learning disability. in order to be accepted into the program, the child must "fail" the test. once this occurs the student is automatically admitted. the program is so successful that many parents have had to "dummy-down" their chidren so that they could enter the program. this is similar to the above quote because in order for children to get advanced learning, they had to pretend like they were having problems. i don't know any particulars of the program, or even if it is still in existence. i just found it a little confusing that the program wasnt open to all children...just something to think about.
Shana, Ashley Sparango, and Andrea,
ReplyDeleteI too was pleased to read "Discarding the Deficit Model". This model definitely needs to be done away with. In the school where I worked this model was responsible for many children not receiving help. In one set of identical twins, who both struggled, one received 5 hours of individual help a week and the other received zero, all because of a one point difference in the test results. In other cases the student was labeled as having a low IQ and received no additional help, because it was thought the student's lack of achievement was because of the IQ (which the system views as unchangeable). Of course a child testing with a low IQ is stigmatized throughout the school career and the expectations of teachers fall. The wealthier and better educated parents paid to have their children tested privately and shared the results only with the school system if it was to the advantage of the child.
I believe that every student that struggles should receive help regardless of why. The article stated that the Response to Intervention (RTI) model is moving in that direction. I studied RTI in two of my special education classes last semester and want to share some additional information. RTI is frequently pictured as a pyramid with three tiers. The bottom tier consists of most of the students who receive high quality instruction and are achieving as expected (one model puts this at 80%). . The second tier ( often pictured as circa 15%) receive some sort of supplemental instruction because they were not successful with just pier one instruction. The top tier (pictured as circa 5%) receive intensive instruction because they were not successful at tier two. RTI is currently being interpreted very differently in schools as to how/why/when a child moves from tier to tier. Some schools reserve the expensive assessment process for those students moving from tier 2 to tier 3. This does save resources which can then be put back into teaching all children. In my special education classes the teachers who were teaching in schools using RTI were often frustrated because the administration would mandate that the child would have to receive a certain number of weeks of tier 2 instruction before being considered for tier 3. Thus the teacher often had to watch the child fail without receiving additional help.
Ultimately, I believe, the entire problem comes down to resources and how we divide those out. One classroom may have 20 out of 28 children who struggle. Another classroom may only have 2 out of 28.
In response to John and Lauren's post -
ReplyDeleteI found an argument made in both of your posts very interesting, and it was from an angle that I had not looked at this discussion from before. I have been viewing accepting everyone's language in the classroom as the central issue in this debate. I feel like John and Lauren both present it as getting every student to understand the content as the central issue. I think this is an important component, particularly for me at the high school level. Content after all is what I am teaching. While focusing on language would be productive (especially for me in Social Studies) the majority of what I am focusing on is the content.
If a student can tell me about the history of the Civil War or the Women's Rights movement in Ebonics or if they have to take extra time to answer in Spanish and then translate into English, should I really spend the time correcting their grammar when they clearly grasp the content? In the same breath I still think it is important for us to teach every student Standard English. I guess I am torn. Should this be a focus only in English class? Only for formal presentations and written papers? Who should get to decide?
Jessica--
ReplyDeleteI found your advertising connection very interesting. I studied advertising in my freshman english class in college to talk about audiences and how to promote your product (it was an engineering english class ;)...but this leads to a discussion that your students can have both in changing an ad to target themselves, and perhaps creating a product that they have to create an ad for that would target themselves. It could help students understand their own identities as well as providing a creative outlet for some of your students. They could choose what kind of ad (print, tv, radio) and where they would run the ad.
Rich & Angie,
I wanted to comment on the Danica McKellar books--I used them this last semester with several of my middle school girls who weren't confident in math and didn't think that it was "cool" enough to do. The books are written for preteen/early teen girls, and she does a wonderful job encouraging this group. One example that I love is her shoe situation: you have a super cute pair of shoes that you need to really accent the perfect outfit, but it isn't practical all the time, but that pair of sneakers is your go-to item when you need to do the work fast. I think she was dealing with fractions or something like that, but I thought it did a good job drawing the reader into the chapter. I also think that having a girl role model is great for these students--she is an actress and published a paper in mathematics (by the way, she has an Erdos-Bacon number of 6 (4 and 2, respectively) for those of you who are nerdy enough like me to appreciate that! and in case you were wondering, I consider myself to have an Erdos number of 6 if I can count the publication I did, no television/movie appearances so far!) so she shows girls that it is perfectly okay to be a girl and love math. She's getting a little heat right now about her Maxim spread, however, but maybe that could appeal to yet another group...
Chrissy,
ReplyDeleteI loved your idea about bringing positive role models into the classroom. I also liked what you had to say about using language in your class. I too think I will allow my students to speak in whatever language they would like while speaking in class and with their peers. Like you, I would also ask that they use more professional english when writing formal papers and assignments. I think it is very possible to teach students the differences in language you use with your peers and that which you use in formal papers. I especially liked the jeopardy game from the video we watched in class, as a means to teach students the differences.
Megan,
I too am at a loss as to where to draw the line. I think you raised a very relevant question. Students are using more derogatory language, and perhaps they are more comfortable speaking that way. Should we allow them to speak that way in our classrooms if they are more likely to learn from the language they feel most comfortable with? I don't think is the case, but it does raise the question, where do you draw that line?
Ashley Sparango has already written on the same topic as I wanted to discuss, so I hope to offer an extension of her thoughts here in my post. :)
ReplyDeleteMany times we assume that ELLs have a great technical/mechanical understanding of their language. This is simply not true; our reading in Rethinking Multicultural Education echos this notion. Many students often learn their language by conversations with their guardians/parents at home; they do not learn the nitty-gritty basics in grammar and usage as American students do (although I'm losing confidence in our kids here at home as far as grammar goes...). Anyway--so in order for our students to become successful ELLs, we need to first encourage them to learn the technicalities of their own language. I had a direct confrontation with this idea earlier this year in one of my tutoring sessions with an middle school ESL student. I had her do a freewrite about anything she wanted. She wasn't writing, so I gave her the suggestion of writing about what she knows like her hometown Acapulco, Mexico. She smiled and began writing. I gave her permission to write in Spanish, so she did. But, after she finished and I started reading, I was flabbergasted. Her Spanish made no real sense; words were mispelled, and grammar was off. And, that's when I had my 'aha' moment. I began giving her more reading in her native tongue, hoping that the reading would model standard grammar and usage. After some weeks, she began improving in her English writing skills! It took a great deal of time, but it was well worth it.
As a side note: I think that America should offer its citizenship-seeking friends a primary school where they could learn English BEFORE entering our public schools and/or workforce. The young girl that I taught had only lived here for four months! It's insane to think what we expect from these ELLs who haven't even learned BASIC English. New jobs could be created by this new system. Standardized testing scores would go up (because after all ELLs are required to test, too!). And, the language barrier could ultimately be bridged. Just a thought...
In response to Crissy's dilemma with teaching standard English:
ReplyDeleteAs a pre-service high school English teacher, your words about standard English only being taught by the English teacher scares me. Standard English should be taught in all content areas. By "taught," I mean modeled. Of course, I do not think that a science teacher should be counting points off for bad grammar, but I do believe it is up to the science teacher to model standard English usage in order to better prepare our students for life and language after grade school. Yes, we may have our own dialects and languages that just work when we're code switching, but overall our nation (and almost our global community) functions on standard English. Teaching audience allows us of all content areas teach language and context. If my students are writing a traditional paper for me (the English teacher), I will grade them on their ideas/content/organization/etc AND their grammar/usage/mechanics. If my students are freewriting in their journals, I will accept the language that they use there because they are writing for a different audience: themselves. By now, I think we've beat this subject in the ground, but I wanted to offer to all subject teachers that language should be considered in ALL classes, not just the English classroom. That's WAY too much responsibility!
Some of you mentioned here in the blog and in class discussion about having the students "freewrite" or do projects using their native langauge. The evaluation issue was also broached and someone mentioned having another student who knew that person's native language and English to translate it. I really disagree with this idea. It's seems unfair to both parties (more work for one person, less for the other). Instead, I would offer that the student writing in their native language to do something in a creative way (dance, theater, video, drawings, etc.) to send his/her message to an audience that does not know their language. After all, art is universal. :) We should continue to think about creativity in the classroom in order to bolster enthusiasm and to create a no-limits, energetic learning community. In this way, the ELL student is participating in the content and using Bloom's higher orders of thinking.
ReplyDeleteLauren – thanks for sharing your experience in the biology classroom. As a hopeful bio teacher, I am interested to hear all types of ways to engage students. I also appreciate your comment about how long it took to really get the students to trust you and get them into the material together. I don’t want to forget that even though I may not consider all possibilities in every instance, my potential as a teacher can only grow through exposure to new methods. It is easy to become frustrated, as is told by the high turnover rate for new teachers.
ReplyDeleteMarc – I, too, have been struggling with the overt methods of teaching in a multicultural way. As a future biology and perhaps earth science teacher, I definitely have been focusing on the content and been worried about how to get through it so that students have competency in the subject matter. However, I think that there are less obvious ways to ensure that all students are included in the class and in the process of learning. Language is a good place to start, as you indicated that the students’ grasp of the material is the most important. Also, having students get in groups (diverse groups) for presentations and letting them create their own examples, such as incorporating sports or different methods of transportation in physics problems. Simply incorporating their names into the test questions (ie. instead of Jimmy/Mary pushed the car, Guido/Guidistina pushed the car) shows that you are trying to connect with them. (I had a HS English teacher who always used those names in her examples.) If you talk about sound waves, you could bring in relevant music as a springboard for conversation and understanding. I think there are small ways that multicultural classrooms can be brought about; although they may not be mind-boggling, I think that these types of steps can make a big difference.
Shana,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the story you shared about your niece it really made me question the diagnosis of both learning disabilities and Emotional and behavioral disabilities. Is this another “White Privilege” that you have recognized? Or is this just a case of an extremely intelligent parent who knows how to work the system for the benefit of their child? Say a person of color had the knowledge, background and intellect to understand the ramifications of the different classifications of disorders. Would this person be able to dictate to the school what he or she wanted for their child? Is this something that schools are doing too often these days? Do the schools offer this information to every parent that is in this situation with their child? Could this account for the alarming increase in students with LD’s? It seems to me that this is a problem with improper diagnosing of disabilities. Even if there is a stigma associated with BED’s, I feel that we are doing the children a disservice by not correctly diagnosing them. If there is an improper diagnosis, then students may not receive the treatment and considerations that they need. I am no expert on this topic by any means, so I appreciate and insight or thoughts that this provokes.
Megan,
ReplyDeleteYou raise a very interesting point in your questioning about where to draw the line regarding derogatory language. I think this is something that you need address very early on and enforce consistently. I feel that most adolescents do use derogatory terms in their everyday life and this may be part of their cultural background and upbringing; however, I think that these words ARE offensive in a professional setting. If you lay down the law the first day of class and say, “derogatory language will not be used in my classroom” and give the consequences of such actions. Then students will understand what is and isn’t acceptable. It may not be this simple, but I feel that when my students come to my high school chemistry class, they will know what is appropriate to say in class and what is not. It is a tough situation and the line definitely needs to be drawn. I guess where each teacher draws it depends on how you manage your classroom. I know that those negative, derogatory words will not be allowed in my classroom, and I will ensure the students will have a clear picture of what is acceptable and what is not.
Shana & Colby & others on special ed discussion - I do think that there are differences in the way that people address their child's educational needs, even for those in the "regular" classroom. I would also think that some of these characteristics could be generalizable across groups, but I don't know what categories that would be. My nephew is in special ed, and I think that his parents rely on the teachers and school to make the appropriate decisions. Whether this is some aspect of culture (they are 1st generation immigrants) or partly a result of their socio-economic status (middle class? - I don't know where the boundaries are) or from multiple factors, I don't know. I think that the perception of power by the administration could definitely change the way thay students are treated or the resources that are allocated to any certain program. One of my cousins lives in western NC, and she has a physcial disability. Her mother had to fight and get the media and courts involved to ensure that her daughter had the means just to move around the school (ramps, etc).
ReplyDeleteKatrina,
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify my point regarding the question on the teaching of standard English. I by no means think Standard English should only be taught in English class, my question was "where the focus should be." Obviously as teachers we will always model Standard English and correct grammar, regardless of our particular content area. I think the overall point I was attempting to make is that in other content areas - when the class is discussing a topic or a student is answering a question, I wonder about the benefits of spending time correcting the students grammar or having the student re-phrase their answer in Standard English, if the content of their answer was correct. If the student grasps the concept I am trying to teach I do not believe I should make an issue of their choice of words or make them apprehensive about answering questions in my class in the future. As I have stated previously in this blog, I believe formal papers and presentations should be completed in grammatically correct Standard English in all content areas because this is an essential skill for students to possess in our society today.
I would also like to say that I am a proponent of cross-discipline teaching. When I become a teacher I hope to work with colleagues in various content areas, especially English, in order to enrich the lessons in my own classroom. I think this promotes a deeper and more meaningful learning for students, allowing them more time to contemplate ideas and develop a richer and more complex view of various concepts.
Megan and others on where to draw the line on derogatory language-
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting question, and also brings up the question of what viewpoints and attitudes can be expressed in the classroom. For example, there may be some cultures or even just individual households that have very different viewpoints from my own, and I wonder what should be expressed, and when it is appropriate to intervene. I guess my inclination is to think that with derogatory language I would not allow it, and would speak to students individually if I heard them using it to ask their opinion on it and what it means, and then to explain why I don’t believe it is appropriate in the classroom (or anywhere perhaps!) Unless it is not being used in a derogatory way, but rather as part of a poem or project or such to express their views or experiences. For example, one of my students (an African American female and a junior in high school) shared a poem with me this year that she had written for a school project (not for my class- I taught her Spanish) that used quite a few terms that normally I would not allow students to use in class. However, she used them to make a point about her own views and I commended her efforts to make sense of her experiences and communicate that to others. However, if I overhear comments that are unkind or prejudiced (towards Mexican Americans and Jews are ones I hear sometimes) I will talk to that student individually about what they have said, how it could be very hurtful to others, etc, and I do not allow it.
In response to Colby: In the readings, I remember there was a section that discussed Learning Disabled (LD) students in comparison to Educable Mental Retardation (EMR) students and Emotional/Behavioural Disorders (EBD) students. If I read correctly, it seems that this was clearly a white privilege issue. Many white parents did not like the stigma associated with the EMR and EBD labels. They also wanted their students to have more help, so the LR title was created. Of course, this is based on the article in the Annual Editions book, and I don't know the full history. Regardless, I think it's really disturbing that there is favoritism to such a degree. I am not in the school system, nor is any of my family, so I don't know how Wake county or the state deals this LD, EMR, or EBD students. I hope this answers some of your questions. And please someone correct me if I'm wrong!
ReplyDeleteIn response the everyone: I know that we all seem to agree that it will be ok to allow students to talk in their home language when they are talking to friends in their class. I agree with this. However, I wonder if this could eventually cause problems. I'm not a Spanish speaker, so how will I know what they are saying is appropriate conversation for school? When I was in college, I had many classes with two girls that spoke German and English fluently. Often when they wanted to talk about someone in the class, they would switch from English to German. Because I didn't understand them, I felt uncomfortable when they did this because I wondered what they were trying to hide.
How would you tackle this possible problem?
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading everyone's comments about Ebonics on this thread. As a capable speaker of Ebonics I will say that reading the articles in RME, specifically the article that broke down the pattern of Ebonics and the article that translated Ebonics into "Standard English", was almost insulting.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to explain, but for me, and I grew up in a white neighborhood, a middle-class town, and my father, black, since-retired, a college-graduate chemist for a major pharmaceutical company, did not speak Ebonics. Maybe a few phrases, but really, most of the Ebonics I learned was from fictional literary characters, or from listening to people speak Ebonics, whether that was in NYC on the subway, or in passing.
My first point is, I don't have a strong cultural connection to Ebonics, as in, its not the language of my home or even my community. But it is the language of African-Americans all over the world. I think that is what separates it from a North Carolinian accent or phrasing thats specific to a mountain town or region. Ebonics is spoken all over the world, and I think that slides it closer to "language" than dialect.
My second point is this. If I can learn Ebonics and understand rap lyrics, or 4th grade children from a community where Ebonics is spoken prevalently, than anyone can. Thats where I felt insulted from. Ebonics is not insanely abstract. It's just an "easier", more relaxed way of communicating for many people. To need articles written that helps future teachers "translate" the meaning of "Yo Momma", in my point of view, is similar to needing an article written for people to know how to order from a sidewalk hotdog stand. You only need to participate in the experience, and things will become much more clear.
To relate it to a classroom....
Ebonics is not difficult to understand. In many examples from articles or from our classroom, people have talked about teachers correcting students, even though the students got the content right! Arguably, comprehension is the most important aspect of communication for education. You can always teach code-switching in speaking or writing, and it will be much easier to do so if the student understands the content.
From my reaction to the articles I mentioned above, I believe it is important for teachers to absorb or listen to all student languages because the insult and "why are they talking to me like i'm a child" reaction I got from the readings, I think, would be similar to the reaction you would get from a student that felt you didn't respect the language of their home, community, or culture.
@ Rich, Megan, and Angie regarding the fishing pole::::
ReplyDeleteI was recently in an interview/training for a K-5 summer camp program and one of the activities for training we did was to talk about what we can expect from the boys and girls of each age group. Most counselors talked about 7-9 year old boys being very active and getting muddy and scraped, while 7-9 year old girls were described as timid and "more excited for arts & crafts." 10-14 year old boys were described as emotional, possibly angry, about their changing body, while girls were described as "cliquey" and emotional as well.
Of course I spoke up, but, even at young ages children are being grouped according to what has been said in the past. Even if it was true for the majority, that doesn't mean everyone is going to behave that way. Some girls might get dirtier than boys. Most boys love arts & crafts. Girls get angry, and boys form cliques as well.
I was saddened to see these "Expectations" laid out with such gender biases and stereotypes because it changes othe lens of what counselors would look for. If they saw a girl getting rough, she would be a "rough girl" rather than just a girl. These categories force people who don't fit into the categories into a new designation, which is based on their "outlier" behavior, rather than them as a whole individual.
I did speak up, and talk about how the only thing we can really expect from our campers is that they will be varied, from different backgrounds, and with different likes and dislikes, and the only thought we should pre-form about a camper is that they are going to have an awesome time, and I, as a counselor need to provide everyone with equal opportunities to participate and have a blast.
These stereotypes about men and women are horrible. When the majority of the world is divided into only two groups, and each group forms biases about the other, how can we expect social justice for all the many religions, or all of the socio-economic backgrounds? Even on an elemental level of human being, there is a stereotype of "can't fish, or can't knit". I can knit and my girlfriend is a more capable fisher than I.
Re: Genise
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts reference to what Genise said about encouraging students to use other dialects and languages to create characters and drawing on observations and experiences with other cultures.
If a student is expected to create a character from a different culture based on what the student has heard about or observed, how do they avoid making it a caricature? How does someone with no genuine experience with a culture weed through all the stereotypes to find the true properties that make a culture special and unique?
Re: Lauren
In regards to what you said about music being language that everyone can appreciate, and different students identifying more with certain types of music. It made me think about the nature of our tastes in music. Is one genre of music inherently harsher on the average American’s ears (hip-hop and death metal are the first examples that come to mind, although I do listen to both), or is it all just taste. Could more melodic music be considered less harsh to most? I like all music, but smooth jazz rubs me the wrong way no matter how melodic it is.
This just gave me a great idea for a math project I could have my students do. They could survey a spectrum of individuals on how they would rate some various songs and see if they could find a way to predict if a certain demographic or generally all demographics would appreciate a song. They could base it on beats per minute, number of instruments, gender of singer, number of singers, etc. This would be a good introduction to correlation using both numerical and categorical data. At the same time students will be exposed to various genres of music, and reflect on why they may say “I hate rap”, or “I can’t stand pop music.”
Joni,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with what you're saying about the journals in class. It kind of tied in with what I was talking about with the math journals. I think journals can be implemented in classes of all subjects as a means for the students to express how they view the material in class and their level of understanding. As long as the students stay respectful and are willing to be honest in their free-writing journals, the teachers can take so much from that on how to best instruct the students from what they write. Also, as to your point on students shutting down when corrected, I have seen this same kind of situation with one of my younger cousins always being corrected by his mother for speaking incorrectly. The way she comes down on him for misusing certain words (he's only 7) makes him shut down and seem very quiet when I see him. I think the shutting down happens on a lot of different levels, and it could happen pretty easily in the classroom setting. I enjoyed reading your post, reminded me of a couple different situations that I've witnessed too.
Katrina,
I am totally on board with your point on how much we expect from ELL learners in the schools and workforce right now. We expect them to understand all the complexities and rules of standard English without teaching them the fundamental principles of the language. As a math guy, I relate this to trying to teach someone calculus without showing them how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Students have to understand the basics before they can move onto understanding more extensive grammatical concepts in standard English. I think there is a lot to take from this idea, and maybe starting with after-school programs to help teach these ELL students the basics of standard English would be a good starting point. Awesome idea though!!!
Andrea - As we were talking about in class, you may speak ebonics with your family and friends, but in class you use extremely well spoken standard english. I assume that this is because of your education. I am a math teacher and personally do not see myself correcting someone’s speach during a math lesson. However, even in math there are sometimes written assignments that require more than just numerical answers, and I do think that I would require these to be in correct standard english. I agree with the position that we owe our students the training that will help them best succeed. Since you speak both ebonics and standard english, do you agree with this? And do you recall instances in which a way of speaking that was acceptable at home was corrected in school? If so, did it make you feel differently towards those teachers or about your own language use?
ReplyDeleteIn response to Ashley Sparango's comment about her "aha" moment - I completely agree! It's so important that we realize that students need to have strong backgrounds in their native language before we can expect them to speak English and learn so many subjects in English.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a point I had wanted to make in my post earlier but it wasn't really related. From our discussion about whether we'd allow students to use their own languages in class or if we would be strict about requiring "Standard English," it sounded like (and I could be wrong) maybe some people who will teach subjects other than English see the teaching of "Standard English" as the responsibility of English teachers only. To a certain extent, students' language education isn't (obviously) as much of science, math, and history teachers' responsibility, but I think it should be a HUGE concern for teachers of every single subject. Students will never get the amount of practice they need with "Standard English," the language that will (as unfair as it is) likely provide them with the most college and job opportunities if they only receive opportunities to learn to code-switch in their English classes. Also, every standardized test also ultimately tests reading and writing, so students need all the practice they can get! It's not just the English teachers' responsibility to teach "Standard English"... I certainly agree that we all need to validate and respect students' own language but in turn, we also need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to ensure that they are never unable to reach any dream they have simply because they do not have the language skills that the "real world" expects and requires.
In response to Taylor's post about journals - I think that sounds like a GREAT idea! As a future English teachers, I love journals for the classroom, and it makes me happy to hear that teachers are using them in other subjects. I think that sounds like a great idea for math classes, just to give students their own space to talk about whatever they want, but especially to explore their attitudes toward math.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that teachers of all subjects can put journals to good use. Teaching students to reflect on their learning and their thoughts and feelings as they learn is such a great idea because they are then doing metacognitive work and using those higher order thinking skills. Also, just getting all that practice with writing is good for students - no matter how informal it is!
Thank you for posting that! I hope that, like you said, other teachers will see that journals aren't just for English classes! :)
Gideon - While I agree that stereotypes can be very misleading and can lead to individuals being classified unfairly, to a certain extent it would be difficult to avoid this. Human beings evolved to classify and sort things so that we could respond to them faster. I think that as long as we remain aware of the short comings of stereotypes and are always on the lookout for the "exceptions", (which often are probably more numerous than the rule), then stereotypes can still be a useful was to understand students before you have the opportunity to know them better as individuals.
ReplyDeleteGideon, I had the hardest time pinpointing how I felt about Ebonics and was struggling with what I would say if someone asked me. But, after reading your post, I think you made it pretty clear to me and I thank you. When you wrote "It's just an "easier", more relaxed way of communicating for many people." it was like I was Newton getting hit on the head with an apple. It is a casual form of communication. I don't think Ebonics should be classified as a different language. They just say things a little different and that is cool. Experience it and appreciated it for what it is.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note - I asked my wife what she thought of Ebonics and she said, "nothing is wrong with it but you wouldn't see a professional research paper written in Ebonics, just as you wouldn't use ya'll or yens or dudes.
Megan/others:
ReplyDeleteIt would seem to me that there will be a school policy related to respect for others that would touch on the use of profane language. The words are by their nature offensive, and commonly used to put down another, even if in a playful manner. I do not believe it can be tolerated. It is an area that needs administration support, however, because it cannot be one teacher’s crusade.
Shana & others on special education:
Disabilities issue and labels is certainly complicated. The RTI method is a process to differentiate students who can respond to quality teaching (if they were not receiving it) or respond to interventions and be successful. It is related to a Federal law and the labels provide “qualifications” to receive special “help.” It is more personal for me, because I have a daughter who has some special needs. She is bright, reads people quickly, strong willed/manipulate. Our Neuropsychologist stated that she is the type of child who can take over a class, and that she needs to be challenged. She is regularly in a power struggle with the teacher (over the past 5+ years – all with experienced teachers). Since we have been in a private school for the past 3 years she has not been assessed for an IEP, but she displays all of the symptoms of BED. Even though she has been sent to the principal’s office on several occasions, sent home on a few and regularly disrupted the teacher’s ability to provide instruction. She has averaged about 95% and based on Stanford Achievement test 99% for reading and comprehension (reading and comprehending books 2 grades above current grade). She will not be allowed to return to the school that she’s been attending. I have been unable to provide a good fit for her, because in general those schools which work with socially and emotionally delayed children are focused on those who are significantly learning delayed. I am concerned of the stigma that a BED label would create. On the flip side, when a student refuses to accept the authority of the teacher and disrupts the class, the school needs a way to provide additional structure and support so the student and classmates can learn.
Anita:
Small clarification. I seek to discover my student’s interests and then I the actively include those in examples and demonstrations to make the material relevant for them. I also engage the class in dialogue, striving to discuss questions they have related to the concepts being covered, even when they are more peripheral. At times, I will turn a student question into an outside class assignment, for extra credit (task offered to entire class) it is interesting, relevant, but I don’t want to spend class time on it.
Along that line of thinking, a typical text will look at rifles and bullets in addressing Newton’s 3rd law and conservation of momentum. I wonder how the example is viewed through an inner city lens. Having grown up in a farm community in the Midwest, hunting was common for many but is certainly different than areas where guns are primarily used as weapons against each other.
In another class I'm taking, we talked about language disorders (I'm a special ed. person) and problems with comprehension and expression. I know in class we talked about rules and how languages are made upon these. But, I feel like what Gideon said above, about how he learned whatever ebonics he knows from elsewhere, not the home.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that we also discussed in a past class, how we talk more like our peers than we do our parents. I heard ebonics also referred to as "Black English Vernacular" and had never heard of that before in my life.
John & Lauren,
ReplyDeleteI believe you bring up great points about what it is that we should be doing as teachers. It may be more work to create these "ideal" classrooms that include everyone but this initial effort on our part will make things easier for us. We will become more effective teachers and won't have as much pressure regarding grades etc. The job of being an "ideal" teacher never ends but if we start off on the right (no pun intended) foot then the future will be easier for us and our students.
Katrina,
You brought up a point about all teachers needing to teach english. Dr. G called me out when I said that I didn't have to worry about teaching english as much as my english teaching colleages. I am not sure that I was able to explain this in class. I honestly due believe that it is my job just as much as any other to ensure that all my students speak and write english, know math, social studies, art, etc. By modeling the correct elements of everything my students need to succeed I help them to learn. I also work with other teachers on students who might need extra help. This collaborative effort is the only way that we could hope to have every student succeed. As a new teacher I would think that taking an interest in students abilities in all subjects would be a way to payback my colleagues for all the help that I will need from them.
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ReplyDelete@ Gideon
ReplyDeleteI like your view of Ebonics as a more laid back way of speaking, but I think you contradict yourself. Calling Ebonics a relaxed form of speaking implies that it is a relaxed form of a specific language. So, even though you prefer to call Ebonics such and refer to it as a language, I think that calling it relaxed implies that it's a dialect.
@ Gideon
ReplyDeleteLike Kevin, I really appreciate your post and view of Ebonics. The description of Ebonics being an easier more relaxed style of communicating was definitely very powerful. I will def. use that description when talking about Ebonics to people who "just don't get it," because I think it is very eye opening. However, as a white person who has communicated using Ebonics, I'm not sure if I would classify Ebonics as a language of African Americans. While I understand your viewpoint and where you are coming from, I just thought I provide my perspective that Ebonics is a language of many different cultures.
@ Katrina
ReplyDeleteRegarding your views on translating freewriting/journals: I thought the same thing when we discussed doing presentations in other languages. One student would be doing nearly double the work that the rest are doing. It also struck me as odd that I would have to rely on a student to translate for another. Not that I don't want to trust them, but I'm that much more skeptical when I can't understand the original language.
Marc,
ReplyDeleteYou said that you seek to discover your student’s interest and include them in class, and I think that is the most important thing that teachers can do. I know some people brought up in class that there is enough time in the day to take away from instructional time to do this, but it’s so important. As we have read, creating a positive classroom environment that is inclusive for everyone is essential for learning. Getting to know our students is the first step in doing this. For instance, currently I am student teaching at an elementary school. I use the information that I learn everyday from my students and utilize that info in word problems, prompts, etc. Their eyes light up when I use things that they are interested in and especially their own names, and they become super excited. I guess it allows them to relate to the work, which is one reason why they are excited. It may be easier for me to get to know my students, because I am in a classroom setting where I have the same students all day. However, a simple hello, email, blogs, homework, journals, etc can show a teacher a lot about a student. As teachers who strive for excellence…I think getting to know the “REAL” sides of our students is essential!
Joni
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of having your students write a paper tying physics/chemistry into their own culture. As Megan pointed out one of the most important things we need to do as science teachers is make science relevant to our students.
Taylor,
I loved the movie "Freedom Writers" (and just about every other movie about a cool teacher). I haven't thought about it in a while. Thanks for bringing it up. My high school English teacher my junior year had us do a similar type journal. Occasionally she gave us specific assignments but we generally had a lot of freedom about what to write. We also had the option of her not reading any page we didn't want. (We did not tie it into Anne Frank though.) We were also expected/allowed to be creative with our journals - using magazine pictures or anything else we wanted to add to it. I actually still have mine. I like the idea of using a journal in math class. Journals are becoming more common in science classes. At the nature center I used to teach at, many of our summer camps included a daily journal.
Rich,
I am a girl who is good in math and to confirm Angie's comment built things and tinkered with stuff as a kid. :)
I am glad I could inspire a brilliant idea for teaching math. What a fun way to bring music and relevance into your class. You could turn it into a pretty big project researching the connections between music and math.
Marc -
ReplyDeleteI am sorry you are having such difficulty with finding an appropriate placement for your daughter. Given her apparent intelligence, I am wondering if her behavior issues are related to how challenged she is as a student? I ask because I know of several children with similar intelligence/behavior profiles who have gone on to do well once sufficiently challenged.
Megan/others
ReplyDeleteOn improper language. I have a friend who teaches in a particularly difficult environment who regularly consults the online Urban Dictionary to learn the meaning of what her kids are saying. Eye-opening to say the least.
Rich/ others on gender issue in math & science
ReplyDeleteKids get the message very quickly as to whether they will be accepted by a teacher or not.
I distinctly remember being told by several classmates that the Chemistry teacher at my high school did not like girls in his class. He never gave them A's. Needless to say, wanting an A - I took Genetics. Funny thing is - when I've taught science to children, I seem to gravitate to Chemistry...
Katrina/others on teaching English
ReplyDeleteI've always thought that the TPR method of teaching language should be explored further. TPR (Total Physical Response) is a way of teaching language that is similar to the way that we learn our native language - through commands. The wild and cool thing about TPR is that with this method, older children and adults seems to learn language even faster than young children.
I wonder how well our ESL and ELL students would do if we provided before and after school tutoring using TPR or other research-based language teaching methods.
Pulled from ECI 541
ReplyDeleteTwo great videos on language and instruction.
This teacher, Chris Gable, is a middle school English Language Arts and Social Studies teacher, but I think that all teachers can learn something from his example.
http://s135703916.onlinehome.us/04_mhs_gable.mov
Discusses the SIOP Model (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) for English learners. Our state has quite a robust SIOP program underway. To learn more and to see some excellent scaffolding, watch this high school science teacher from Lee County Schools.
http://s135703916.onlinehome.us/06_mhs_lee_county.mov
@Katrina, I really liked that you mentioned using art to teach ESL students since "art is universal." I am currently taking a science illustration class and writing a research paper on using art with ESL students. I'm not going to bore everyone with all my findings, but I will say the research is really supportive!
ReplyDeleteTeresa,
ReplyDeleteOn Chemistry....
Interestingly I had the opposite experiences in High School Chemistry. On the first day of class our male chemistry teacher said that he believed that girls had an innate ability to do well in Chemistry. He said he thought Madame Curie (a Chemist) had been the smartest person ever alive and that he wished he was born earlier so he could have married her. He apologized in advance to the boys, as he said that if they missed a question he would know that they had no clue as to the answer, but if a girl missed a question he would be inclined to think that she had just made a careless mistake and cut her some slack.
Anyway I received an "A" in Chemistry that year and received the class award. However I understood very little about Chemistry.
Marc,
ReplyDeleteAlso along Teresa's lines of thought.. is there a pattern as to when your daughter tries to take over in the classroom? Is it when she is feeling bored.. or perhaps something else. Also if she tries this at home is there a pattern?
I have worked (one on one) with several children with strong oppositional behavior and academic difficulties. Although my job was to work on the academic difficulties we had to deal with the opposition in order to be productive. I found in all cases they became more oppositional when they felt that things were out of their control either at home, at school or in our session, or with health problems. After building up a rapport with them, I was able to point this connection out to them. So when the strong waves of opposition came I was able to pause, talk if they wanted, and negotiate what level of control I would give them (i.e. you choose what we do next).
Their parents reported things were better at school with teachers who spent time talking with them about their interests .. but the same with other teachers who did not care to get to know them.
A book I found helpful in working with all my students is "The Motivation Breakthrough" by Rick Lavoie. This book shows you how to do a motivation profile on yourself and your students. Some traditionally used motivators (praise, stickers) are actually insulting and counterproductive for some students.
My thoughts are with you as you seek the right place for your daughter
@Andrea
ReplyDeleteMuch like the American Idol contestant you mentioned I think we will find most often that we no very little about our students upon first inspection. Much like we no little about anyone else at first. This is why stereotypes are so damaging. In college I had a lot of friends on the football team. As we know football players are dumb right? Well many of them are very smart. The important thing is that we approach each of our students and don't pass judgment on them until we have spoken to them in a setting that allows them to drop their social persona and perhaps let us see a different side of them. At the same time we may find that the way they act is going to be the way they act all the time. Either way I think out students will have a lot to show us that they do not display to their friends.
@Lauren
ReplyDeleteI had a similar experience in the classroom this past spring. If any of us expect to walk into a classroom and have the entire classroom be versed in standard English we need a smack in the head. This is NOT going to happen (maybe at a private school). The classroom I was in was an academic 10th grade biology class and I found that most of the students did not use standard English. I did not interact with the students much because I was just observing, but when I did I did not find it difficult to change what voice I used or to ask a question in Spanish. As beginning teachers I think we need to make sure we are prepared to adapt to our students and not expect them to adapt to us. This is not as hard as it may seem to many and our students will appreciate it and gain more from our instruction.
Gideon,
ReplyDeleteI think you have the right idea, when you say that respecting the child's home language is one of the more important issues we need to keep in mind. Beyond that, I think it's mostly just fluff. The student will be able to tell when you're giving them the appropriate amount of attention and according them the respect they deserve. Our "multiculturalism" will naturally show up in the lessons we teach, and the ideas we have for activities.
One thing I would comment on, that I've read about so far, is the journals. If the journals are in the students home language, then I would imagine you don't speak it, and can't actually examine what they wrote, and potentially respond to it. But regardless, just having the journals there for the student to write in, could be a good time soak, let's say if the lesson ends 5 minutes short, or you have to run out of class for some reason. But expecting it to be a reflection on what the lesson was on, might be asking too much, since you wouldn't be able to understand it.
-Kyle
This is Brandon
ReplyDeleteSo I still haven't completely made up my mind on the "ebonics in the classroom" debate. I do think it is important for students to learn standard English, as most "adult job" employers will likely discriminate based on the type of language people use. Maybe that's unfortunate, but it's a reality. However, I don't think I will require students to speak formally in my classroom. This will be hard for me, too, as I am constantly correcting people's grammar in my head (occasionally I slip up and say it out loud). I want my students to learn as much as possible in every subject, but as a science teacher it will be my responsibility to make sure they know science in particular. It will already be difficult to cover all of the objectives listed in the NCSCS, and taking time to correct students' speech would only slow down progress in the science classroom even more. Also, I want my students to engage in conversation, and if they feel that I am going to call them out on the "incorrect" way they say something, they are less likely to speak up, which hinders their learning. I wouldn't expect an English teacher to take time out of his or her class to correct a student's flawed understanding of a scientific concept. Standard English needs to be learned in the English classroom.
Ashley S,
I also got a lot out of reading the "Discarding the Deficit Model" article, and completely agree with your statement that teachers aren't willing to "step up to the plate" when it comes to students with different needs. I was appalled by the teacher who referred half of her African-American students to special education because they wouldn't stay in their seats. She simply didn't care enough about those children to attempt to understand why they were behaving in a manner she was not accustomed to.
John,
I can kind of see your point about making sure students succeed in the moment, especially with so much focus on set course objectives. But I think we have a responsibility as teachers to prepare our students for life as well. I'm having trouble collecting my thoughts on this matter right now, but I will explain in more detail later.
Interesting article on gender bias in science and math and what the test scores show.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/science/08tier.html
So here's my reflection for the week.
ReplyDeleteLast week I had the opportunity to proctor exams for special ed students in a Wake County Middle School. At the end of the session, the special ed teacher left to take two students to the extended time room. I was left with the remaining 7 students for about 20 minutes. I introduced the "Murder Frog" game which we started playing. However, one very active student wanted to see if he could make people laugh. Since he obviously was hyperactive at that point, and was going to want to take over regardless of what I said, I chose to let him do his act in front of the other students as I thought it would be a harmless diversion while we waited for the teacher to return. Things were going fine with him acting out various parts in an attempt to get students to laugh. But then, he started to mumble and talk funny so that I could not understand what he was saying. This went on for about a minute - and then I asked him: "Who are you playing?" He stated he was "Playing an Indian - you know one of those people with the dot in the middle of their heads." Frankly, I was shocked and uncertain what to do. I was proctoring in a school where I am not a parent nor a teacher. And yet here was an issue that needed to be addressed. I addressed it briefly by stating that the behavior was inappropriate, but I am wondering how my ED 508 classmates would have responded. Immediately after I made this statement, the teacher returned to the classroom and I prepared to leave. I contemplated speaking to the teacher - but she had been very rude and dismissive of me already. What would you have done?
As I reflect back on this experience, I realize that I need to prepare for such shocking and difficult teachable moments. What do we say to educate students - without alienating them?
@ Teresa
ReplyDeleteThis has happened to me before on several occasions and I don't ever know what to say when that time comes. I’m always shocked and caught off guard.
I had a student in after- school last year (3rd grader) who made remarks like this often. This reminded me of your encounter. One day I complimented his new hair cut saying how much we liked it and how appropriate for summer it was. He replied that, “Some black guy did it” implying that he did not like his new hair cut OR the person who cut it. Maybe this even relates to what we discussed in class about how the kids chose the darker men to be the bad men.
I never know how to respond in situations!
At the time another teacher was (thankfully) there to hear his reply to my hair-compliment and react with wide eyes and a mouth open as I did.
We both addressed him briefly, stating that there was really no need for him to tell us the color of the person who cut his hair. We nicely asked him why he responded that way without aleinating him, truly curious as to what brought that on. We acted curious and question-provoking as to not make him feel like he said a terrible-awful thing (hoping he wouldn’t be afriad or shut us off). I think sometimes kid’s just don’t think about what they’re saying. No filters. My theory that it’s kind of what makes kids so awesome to work with: they don’t care and will say the first thing that comes to mind, good or bad. Although this is a charming quality when those things are sincere and adorable, they should be aware of what they say (and how the say it) as they grow older.
I think the best way would be to address it like you did, saying that it is inappropriate to make fun of others who are different. Then, take that child aside (maybe at a later time?) and ask them why they thought those things about someone else. I guess addressing these things is something I need to work on.
As far as working in my teaching area, special education leaves room for diversity. It's interesting to think about parallels between gender, ethnicity and race. Also, equality/equal treatment/non-bias for those with disabilities. I'm a little intimidated to face the possibility of working with high school students because I feel like it could be the most challenging arena for me. Mainly due to inexperience. Many of the children I work with at the elementary school I work at are LD in reading and/or ELL/ESL students with reading difficulty. The ESL kids I work with are behind on their reading because their parents don't speak fluent English, and therefore don't practice enough at home (most are on a 2nd grade leave in 3rd grade). They are very smart, capable children.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the school is a bilingual (immersion in most grades) charter school and diversity is very much celebrated, there is always room for improvement.
One theme I have drawn from this class thus far (and from prior experiences) is that in order to successfully cater to a diverse group of students, a really good instructional strategy is to vary the teaching style. In doing so, one’s goals as an instructor have a much higher chance of being met. By using numerous teaching styles within one given class session (i.e. lecture format, group discussion, etc.), the instructor will be able to reach a much higher proportion of students.
ReplyDeleteApart from this practical aspect that a varied approach harbors, I do also think that it makes the classroom experience far more interesting. I personally pay much better attention in class due to the fact that we do not sit in our desks as passive recipients of information. The fact that we are often prompted to engage (even physically sometimes) in the classroom material and activities always keeps me thinking. This even makes the brief 10 to 15 minute lectures a welcome practice, as it gives us a chance to take in and process what we have learned (or are about to learn).
Teresa,
ReplyDeleteThat’s a pretty interesting situation you were presented with. Regarding your teacher/mentor, I don’t know how I would handle that, given that she already was seemingly unresponsive to your input.
As far as the student is concerned, I would challenge you to consider the concept of positionality, as we have discussed in class. While the student’s performance could be deemed offensive by some (and should most definitely be addressed), we should consider that the student himself most likely did not have any malice behind his actions. To him, it is quite possible that he was acting out what he understood about that culture—to him, that language probably does indeed sound like a bunch of jibberish. For this reason, I think it would be much more productive to explain to him the reason why this action may be inappropriate, rather than to simply shut him down. This, of course, is easier said than done, especially in the context of a hyper-active individual.
What has worked best for me in the past is to teach and advise using examples. In this case, you could show him that if someone else began to imitate him, he may find this hurtful. In doing so, you are giving him the opportunity to experience why his actions may be offensive, and he this will have a better chance of actually understanding why what he did was inappropriate, rather than simply taking your word for it.
Christina,
ReplyDeleteYour discussion on diversity as it relates to Special Education (also my area of study) got me thinking…It just dawned on me that we often make special efforts to cater to the diverse student population in a Special Education setting, simply because we already assume that we will be dealing with a lot of “less than ordinary” learning styles by the very nature of this type of classroom. However, I think it is a huge oversight on many educators’ parts to not apply the same sort of mindset in their other classrooms. In other words, it seems as though the focus of many special ed teachers is to cater to different learning styles, when in reality this should be a universal focus for any classroom setting.
Going back to the general theme of this course (diversity), what I have drawn from it is that the entire population harbors some level of diversity. I think many of us make the common mistake of associating the word “diversity” in conjunction with the word “minority.” In this regard, we are stating that there really only is a small portion of the student population that is different in any way. If one digs deep enough, it is easy to find that there is a lot of variation in learning styles within most students.
Thanasi - very nice response to my post. In future circumstances, I think I'll take you up on your suggestion.
ReplyDeleteI meant to post this earlier and I'll probably post it again in the next blog about the whole two Ashleys with the same initials thing. If you want to write AJS or AJo or Ashley Jo or whatever that is fine with me. I realize that Ashley Sparango is a lot to type haha
ReplyDeleteInteresting article on the upcoming World Cup match in South Africa. Fantastic story of sport helping to heal divisions. The movie "Invictus" details the rugby team championship in 1995 and what it meant for South African healing. "30 for 30" is the documentary of the same event.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/sports/soccer/10iht-SRCUP.html?adxnnl=1&ref=global-home&adxnnlx=1276113605-BpWxxNm/+Zc4aJHTkHnEqw