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

The article, “No Kinda Sense”, has brought forth many thoughts and connections. I can’t help but think that this idea of racial and cultural bias in the schools has been around for quite awhile. I remember participating in a workshop when I first began teaching entitled, “African-American Infusion”. The workshop was meant to help us incorporate African-American cultural topics into our standard curriculum. This was a county-wide initiative that produced little, if any results. At the time I was working in an inner-city school in Winston-Salem and the differences between me and my students was readily apparent. I remember how the language my students used was very different then how I spoke and how I was told they should be taught to speak. I also remember an African-American colleague used to, as she called it, take them to the ghetto, when they acted inappropriately. She would chastise them in a language they were all too familiar with and with a presence they could relate to. Needless to say she had great success. If I attempted to engage in this same technique, the students looked at me as if I were crazy. I suppose this was my first real experience with “a second language”. I never considered that attempting to get students (no matter what the dialect) to speak standard English as “an insult to their mothers”, as Delpit describes it. I simply thought I was teaching them to speak and write in such a way as to be successful in the world. Another aspect of the article that made me stop and think was when the author discusses the need to teach African-Americans about the brilliance and accomplishments of ALL their ancestors, and not focus so much on slavery. This year, our school hosted a traveling theater company that presented a play about the civil rights movement. Although the actors were quite entertaining, the African-American students (and most of the other students) seemed bored and uninterested. I teach in a rural setting with a very low minority population so I thought my African-American students would be pleased to see a play based on their heritage. When I asked a few of them what they thought of the play their responses were eye-opening. They informed me that they were tired of hearing about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. “I already know all this stuff”, was one comment. I began to realize that, indeed, as educators we have flogged that horse to death. It is time that we present new and exciting aspects of the African-American culture to our students so that they can understand the rich and brilliant roots from which they come. I completely agree that, as educators, we have to respect where our students come from if we want them to respect where we are trying to lead them.

Sally Elliott