There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all. Michel Foucault
This quote is the one that is most meaningful to me after taking this class. I will admit, when I first read the syllabus at the beginning of the course none of the quotes had any meaning to me at all! Now, having completed all of the readings, and almost completed the course it was tough to choose which quote had influenced my thinking the most! To me this quote has multiple meanings and implications.
First of all, this quote reminds me of my own narrow thinking prior to taking this class! As a middle-class, female, white educator sometimes it gets so easy to find myself in the box with only a peep hole to see out of! In many cases in my career and in my life I don’t think that I had considered many of the things that students from backgrounds different than my own go through in attaining and maintaining literacy. I wasn’t raised in a wealthy family, but we always had the things that we needed and usually a few of the things that we wanted too. Because I was raised in a rather middle-class environment I thought that I should easily be able to relate to those above me and below me, you know, since I was from the middle…interesting but ignorant thinking! This quote is special to me because through our readings I have learned that, yes, I can think differently and I can and will recognize that there are things experienced by students of mine that l will have to move out of my comfort zone to understand. Second, this quote is freeing for me when I think about the students that fit the working class, or minority category. For those kids this quote shows that just because they are born into a certain race, class, or gender they are not sentenced to a given future. They can overcome their circumstances and be successful in becoming literate at home and school. Thank goodness our readings have shed light for us as educators on how we can make this happen!
Before writing this paper I sat down to take some time to reflect and ask myself what things have stuck out to me in this course more than anything else. This is what I have come up with:
I want to be the best teacher that I can be. In many ways it is easy in this day in time in the classroom to blame a student’s issues on their home life and go on with things allowing that student to fall through the cracks. What I have realized is that a student’s home life does contribute a huge amount to his/her literacy. Because of this, we cannot separate, or attempt to separate a student from his/her background. Through many of the readings we learned how much of a student’s identity is tied up in his/her language, class, race, gender, etc. Instead, as a teacher I must work to develop that home/school connection that will allow a student to feel comfortable to be real in my classroom. As far as language goes, this may mean not correcting but modeling correct language over and over in hopes that my students will grasp what I am sharing with them!
I want to meet the needs of every child every day. This is a huge task! One of the things that I immediately think about in regards to this is that I can meet their needs by helping them to become interested in their education. It spoke volumes to me that Delpit’s daughter picked up Ebonics so quickly. As teachers we teach proper language things over and over and for years yet students still do not speak properly. Delpit’s daughter picked up on slang in no time. This showed me that students learn what they are motivated to learn. I have always tried to provide a curriculum that is relevant and interesting to students, but after taking this class I will make this an even larger priority in my classroom. I now realize the importance of allowing a student’s interests outside of school to impact my lesson plans and focus in curriculum.
I will maintain high expectations for my students. I was struck by the article that discussed giving students permission to fail. While as teachers we hear this phrase and are horrified wondering who would ever do that, I think many times our actions and decisions send this message unintentionally. When we decide that a student is the way he is because of his home life and that we can never change the home life and thus never change the student, we are giving a child permission to fail. In my classroom I will be much more aware of the message that my actions send. I want all of my students to know that I believe in them and expect them to accomplish great things! One way of doing this is by helping students acquire the ability to code switch. Baker describes it well in talking about Trilingualism. There are times when we need to know formal English, or professional English, and there are also times when our “English of choice” is acceptable. Knowing when to use proper English and being able to switch back and forth is perhaps a skill of most importance in this world.
I also enjoyed reading Hicks’ work about Jake’s story. I feel like I have taught Jake so many times. He was truly all boy! There are so many students who are successful in the things that they do at home, but struggle so much at school. I will continue on my trek to minimize worksheets and other types of 2 dimensional work and focus on continuing to grow my writers, readers, and math workshops in an attempt to maximize 3 dimensional hands-on work! There are also many students who I truly believe are misdiagnosed as having ADD for something that could be solved if a student were interested in school. Even after all of the reading, I struggle with the idea of making school so much fun but there still being so many assessments and curriculum that have to be taught. As teachers we must do the best we can to combine these ideas and teach the appropriate curriculum and standards in the most authentic, purposeful manner.
As a whole I have learned so much from the readings for this class. I appreciate how they have all had ideas that have essentially reinforced some of the same ideas several times thus helping it to stick by reading it in several different ways! My whole definition of literacy has changed for sure. I will no longer see literacy as isolated to reading and writing. Literacy in my mind now involves language, storytelling, culture, and many other things all tied together by discourses and experiences at home and school.
Jessica Jackson