Judith Baker created a system of teaching that allowed the students to feel comfortable and retain their own personalities in the way that they speak by giving them the opportunity to teach one another about their “home languages”. She broke down the English language into three different sections: home, formal, and professional.
Her method of teaching English seems to be effective because the students understand why they should learn formal English and they don’t feel pressured, demeaned, discriminated against. This new outlook on teaching brought a few questions to mind. Why do students automatically feel that formal English is a threat to them? When we, as teachers, allow our student to bring their “home language” into the classroom, where do we draw the line for their freedom, we wouldn’t want them to become disrespectful. Sometimes, in the home, children are allowed to talk about sex, drinking, violence, and drugs. When giving students freedom, we wouldn’t want to put ourselves in a situation where we could get in trouble. Baker said that you can’t “pretend” to have compassion and understanding of a student’s “home language”, we will have to truly embrace their differences. But who are the real discriminators? Is it the teacher, another student, or are the student subconsciously discriminating against themselves? Or is it a combination of the three? Another question that came to my attention was are students discouraged by formal English because they are taking English class and they think that that class should come naturally to them because they speak it, and are they getting discouraged by the difficulties they encounter?
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Chapter seven of The Skin That We Speak focuses on an African-American teacher by the name of Carter Forshay who struggled to get his students to write. Carter’s students hated writing and often asked for worksheets as an alternative to a writing assignment. Carter created a unique writing activity based on song lyrics that engaged his students so much that they were willing to write.
ReplyDeleteRebekah asks the question in her inquiry, “Are they [students] getting discouraged by the difficulties they encounter?” As chapter seven points out, many students are discouraged by the difficulties they face with writing. As a result, many students have no desire to write. Some students associate writing with hard-work and failure and thus hate to write. For example, a student in Carter’s class said, “I don’t want to do this. Writin’ is too hard,” (113).
If our students dislike writing, it is our job as teachers to give our students something to like about writing. We need to be creative and generate writing projects that engage our students. Carter realized that his students loved music, so he used music to get his students to write. We need to take note of what holds our students’ attention, and we need to use this in our advantage when designing lesson plans.