RES 5530: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (Spring 2009)

For the first 8 years of my life I grew up in Staten Island, New York. While I lived there I went to a Catholic elementary school, St. Joseph’s, that was part of the church I attended with my family. For those 8 years my home language matched my school language. I don’t remember ever feeling out of place in my classroom because of my language and I never felt that my language was a burden that I had to overcome. However, at the end of my third grade year, our family left Staten Island for the small town of King, NC. At that time King was quite small and had only 1 stoplight, a Hardee’s and a Waffle House. The differences between King and a borough of New York City were enormous. It started out with the pizza and then school started.

My first day was pretty rough. It didn’t take long for me to learn that both my accent and my language were quite different from the other students in my class. I have to admit that the differences in language were quickly solved but the differences in accent still follow me a little. I remember sitting in class on the first day. I had my new book bag, pencils and lunch box. My mom realized how hard the move had been on my brother and I so buying new school supplies seemed to be a way to make it easier. Anyway, I’m sitting in my seat and the teacher announces to the class, “Ok, let’s put our pencils up.” Well I, who was trying hard to be the best student ever, put my pencil up in the air. As I looked around the classroom, I was the only one with my pencil up in the air and the only one that everyone’s eyes seemed to be on. Looking back I know this is a small moment but it did impact me and it’s a memory I keep with me.

After that day I got better at learning the new language around me. The hardest saying to learn was “What you know good?”. I still don’t ever say this one, but if I’m asked this question I know how to answer it. The differences in my accent stayed around much longer and kids in my class, who became my best friends, still ask me to say certain words because I say my vowels a little differently –in my opinion I say them more distinctly -but that’s an argument for another day. Even my teachers would ask me to say certain words because they just wanted to hear how I said it and then they would mimic what I said afterward, along with a little chuckle. As an adult I don’t really mind it anymore when something I say comes out differently, but as a kid it got old fast.

Now that I have told this story, I have to follow it up by saying that I would never compare my experience to those of Dowdy and Smith. As children they had to deal with many deeper issues that at times went beyond the language. Both Dowdy and Smith were forced to choose which was more important – their home language and culture or fitting into and succeeding in the dominant culture. Children shouldn’t be asked to make that choice – the value and intelligence of an individual should not be judged by their language but instead their language should be considered as a gift, a resource that they bring to the classroom. Children need the support of their teacher to nurture and develop the person they are to be and in doing so they need a teacher that values and appreciates the story that they bring to the classroom. Our classrooms are full of students from different cultures and communities and in those differences we can find an unbelievable amount of knowledge to be shared. Our language is one of the first things we learn from our family and in school it is one of the first things that others notice about us. If a student’s first experiences using language in school are marked with ridicule it isn’t surprising that many of our students choose to remain silent. If we want all of our students to feel comfortable in discussing and sharing what they know and what they have learned, then we need to make sure we allow them to speak loudly with the language they know the best. To end I feel the need to put in one of the MANY thoughtful quotes written by both authors:

So, for the colonized speaker, the issue is not really about whether she has a language or not. The issue is about having enough opportunity to practice that language in “legitimate” communications. The central concern is about having the freedom to go back and forth from the home language to the public language without feeling a sense of inferiority. The issue is about letting colonized people communicate in their many spheres of communication, and not limiting them to jazz, reggae, samba, calypso, and zouk. Let the Head Girl be a good Masai and the cricketer hit the ball beyond the boundary ovuh dyuh (p. 13).

Amie Snow