RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2010)

After reading the Delpit article, I began to think about one student in particular in my classroom. Lisa’s daughter, Maya, reminded me of her. She was the only student in our grade that was African American. Her grandmother had told me how hard it was for this student to fit in. She weighs about 100 pounds more than the regular student and spoke in a slang manner. In order to overcome her self confidence issues she became boisterous and somewhat of a bully. I found I was always correcting her. This year I looped with my fourth graders, so I have taught the child again in fifth grade. However, our school went through a transition period when a new school opened. Now there are four African American students alone in my homeroom. Her vocabulary has changed. How she perceives herself and others has also changed. I find that I was constantly having to correct her and trying to get her to conform to my standards. This was not because I was picking on her, but because this is what I thought was expected of all students. After reading this article I began to question what I was doing and why. I have let slang be spoken by this child to her same race peers and other students that I would have corrected before. I can see that she feels more confident this year being with people similar to her. I have heard this student code talk often when it comes to dealing with other teachers, who are not so willing to let her be her.

As far as the article, I am not sure that even I, a college educated adult speaks standard English. I was taught that standard English is the language that is written in books, and not spoken. If this is true then what are we to consider normal? Isn’t Ebonics just another dialect spoken in America?

I did like her theory about relating student interests to classroom assignments and topics, but is this possible if you have 6-7 ethnicities in the same class. Also girls are totally different. Do you alternate interest topics or assign different choices?

I found that the news article about Michele Obama was sad to me. When she stated that people accused her of sounding white- I felt a little offended. What does sounding white mean? There are so many dialects that Americans speak- which one is white. I have never heard of one. I do believe that there is an accepted dialect that a society accepts, but I don’t think that race should play a part in that. I think that she sounds like an educated woman. I admire her for the hard work she put forth to get where she is. I respect her for her determination and her belief system that education is critical.

In the Ovuh Dyuh article, Joanne harbored deep resentment for being made to speak “The Queen’s English”. I can see the pressure she was under from both sets of people- her grandmother and mother to become proper, and her peers and self to speak Trinidadian. I believe that through the acting company she was allowed to appease the inner self and parental pressure. My question though was that she stated her brother and sister did not succumb to the pressure to speak “the Queen’s English”- then why did she? According to her they both have permanent jobs and are somewhat successful speaking Trinidadian. I feel that when looking back on her life she wished that she would have done things differently. I feel that her mother was trying to get her to speak properly in order to help her social standards around the globe, not just in Trinidad. Often younger people cannot see the world as a global market that others see. I think the mother just wanted the best in life for her children. Speaking properly was not a punishment in her eyes, unlike her daughter’s.

Amy Reep