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

After reading the two articles I was surprised to think about language in such a new way. In the first article, Ovuh Dyuh, I was surprised by how she was judged by her peers because of the way she spoke. I grew up and live in a community where everyone talked the same. The schools I attended were predominantly white and African Americans were the minority. All of my friends talked the way I did. We all had mothers and fathers that drilled correct English in us from a very early age. I can even remember my mother the English teacher taking the phone away from me and hanging it up when a friend would call and ask for me, if I responded, “this is her”, my mother would take the phone away from me and in her sweetest voice say, “I’m sorry Katie has yet to learn how to speak, could you please call her back and let her try again.” My friends would then call me back and say, “is Katie there” and I would say, “this is she”. I honestly don’t remember how many times my friends had to call me back but I do know that to this day I know how to correctly answer a phone. The same was true for my teachers. If anyone in class asked, “can I go to the bathroom” there response was always, “I don’t know can you” we would then correctly say, “may I go to the bathroom”. This type of correction of our grammar was just part of our education. I can’t imagine feeling like I had to talk a different way among my peers that I did around everyone else. As a classroom teacher I channel my English teacher mother, by correcting my kindergarteners when they don’t use correct grammar. After reading the article I wonder if I am doing them a disservice by making them leave their “mother language” to learn how to speak the way I see fit. This was something that really bothered me and I began to wonder in my school where there is a large diversity in race and socio-economic backgrounds, if my students had to change from “Can I come to your house this afternoon” with their friends back to “may I use the restroom” in my classroom. If they do are they aware of this or are they just naturally “code switching” as Lisa Delpit’s daughter did in the article “No kinda Sense”. I have to say that the second article actually pertained more to me and my life than the first. When I first began reading about Delpit’s daughter switching to the predominantly African American school and picking up the type of language that they used I began to think about how as an adult my language and enunciation varies based on where I am and who I am around. I never thought of myself as code switching but it is something that is much more common than I ever thought about. I consider myself to be a relatively intelligent person and growing up with a middle school English teacher I feel that I have very good grammar skills when it comes to speaking. Yet I recently went on a trip to New York city and while I was there I found myself enunciating my words more clearly and never using phrases such as, “hey y’all” or how are Y’all doin”. These are things that I say in my everyday vocabulary but I knew that as soon as one of those phrases came out of my mouth I would be viewed as someone who was lower class and less intelligent. I think that this is the case everywhere, not only with Ebonics or even in school. Our language and dialect is who we are and tells the story of where we come from, therefore students should be allowed to speak to each other in whatever way they feel comfortable. At the same time it is our jobs as teachers to show them the correct way to speak so that when they are out in the real world they do not run into the same problems as the African American woman did who was from the South. I have thought a lot about my teaching and how it affects my students and makes them feel. I have come to the conclusion that for me I will continue to teach my students proper English when they are addressing me or other adults in school but continue to let them speak to each other in whatever way they choose. This for me is the best compromise I can come up with in order to allow them to keep their mother language and still progress in a way that lets others see them in a positive light.
Watching the video about Michelle Obama I was once again shocked that people judge the Obama’s simply because the way they talk. I took a moment to think about how I judge people in terms of their language and I think I can honestly say that I don’t judge them necessarily on the cadence of their words but more so on the grammar that they use when talking to me, an adult. I wouldn’t expect a fourteen year old adolescent to speak to his/her friends in the same way they spoke to me, but I would expect that when addressing an adult that they did use correct English. I think that people should look at Michelle Obama who is an influential African American woman in a positive light, not because she talks “white or black” but because she is a well educated and powerful black woman. Young girl’s especially African American girls should look to her to see how one should speak when talking to adults and other influential people and then code switch when talking with their friends.