Language is a powerful tool we use every day. We can build someone up with our language or destroy someone’s self-worth. Teaching in a school where the population is 95% African American these articles reached out to me and made me reflect on my own teaching practices. I find it important to embrace student difference and encourage students to express who they are. Students need to trust you as the teacher before you the teacher begin to tear their self-worth down just for the way they talk. While reading Delpit’s “No Kinda Sense” I began to think how each and every one of my students come to school feeling this same way as Delpits daughter only many of them don’t have the filter to language change just because they are at school. They come to school with the tools modeled at home and that is all they know. Is this truly a race ideal? I don’t believe that it is. Within our own families we have our own dialect and language we use. The only difference is we come to school and the community knowing how to use the two interchangeably.
To build the trust and relationship with our students that we want we must first build it into the curriculum that we teach. If we want students to react and respond a certain way we must relate to the students first and build a common trust they share with the teacher. It is then that you can reach the child and model a language that will become common in the learning community. Students need to feel comfortable in their environment then they can be successful.
When reading Dowdy’s article I immediately thought about my Hispanic students and how they must feel. They too have been brought to the United Stated to succeed and become better. They are thrown into the language that often makes no sense and expected to compete with their fellow classmates. Once again I think this goes back to the teacher and what kind of environment they build within their own classroom. Of course children will always have difficulty with English as it is their second language, but I think it is important to foster an interest in the other students to want to know their language too. The other students shouldn’t look at their language as strange or weird. This is what I have done in my own classroom and my English speaking students love to learn Spanish. They are always asking “how do you say this?” I couldn’t imagine how Dowdy felt being alienated from her own language and expected to speak English. The way we speak is part of our own identity and I think it is important to foster that is children when they are young.
Kara Scott
Comments (3)
It's amazing what ESL students can accomplish. Here they are having to perform educational tasks in another language. They are expected to make the grade and pass end-of-year exams just like everyone else. When they leave school, they are immersed in another culture and use another language. I don't know how they do it!
Making connections and building trust with our students is crucial. Many ESL students won't speak a word until they feel comfortable in the environment. I have had some students who would not utter a sound, and if I asked them a question they would only shrug their shoulders. Now those same students can talk a mile a minute and give the best hugs. Those student-teacher connections are huge, no matter the ethnicity.
Posted by Carol Holt | June 6, 2011 6:36 PM
Posted on June 6, 2011 18:36
Kara, I also work in a school where a large percentage of our population is African American. My students are very young and unlike Dowdy, are unaware of a difference between “home language” and “public language.” It is refreshing to listen and experience their innocence about language. It is amazing what they will share with you if they feel comfortable and accepted. Sometime I do catch myself wanting to correct them, while at the same time remembering that for many of them this is there first experience being around Standard English. Language and our use/understanding of it is vital to be successful in today’s society. My hope is for my students to feel supported and comfortable enough to express themselves and still connect with the language example I try to set daily.
Posted by Ruth Ann Timmons | June 7, 2011 9:50 PM
Posted on June 7, 2011 21:50
Good thoughts here, Kara! I like that you were able to incorporate "home culture" into the way that you are thinking about the readings and your own teaching situation. I think this statement of yours is crucial to good teaching: "I think it is important to foster an interest in the other students to want to know their language too. The other students shouldn’t look at their language as strange or weird." I always wonder: What if the "common culture" in our schools evolved so that all children were bilingual?
Posted by Dr. Jackson | June 9, 2011 9:57 AM
Posted on June 9, 2011 09:57