Judith Baker’s chapter is by far the one that I found the more interesting; she not only showed respect for the language diversity of her students, but she also learned about how to better educate herself on diversity from her students. I absolutely loved the assignment of giving students a chance to observe and to learn about their own language; the students become most interested in learning, which makes them want to learn more as we read in our last chapter. When the students have a chance to listen and learn about their own language they begin to realize how many different dialects there are in the world, and that none of them are wrong.
I also liked the role-play games that Baker assigned. It was interesting to read the completely different responses to the scenarios. It was strange how different their responses were, and I liked how one student says, “we don’t hardly take time out to really listen. I mean the way we speak, we think it’s correct. It’s wrong, but we understand each other.” The last sentence really hit home for me. The way we speak all the time may not be perfect English, but who cares as long as we get our point across to other people? How can we as teachers get other people to have this view point on language? How can we get other teachers to respect the language of their students by not constantly correcting them? By respecting a student’s home language, will this make a student want to be more culturally diverse and want to learn more dialects including bettering their Standard English?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Inquiry 4
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Alaina, you ask how we can help others see that language is most simply a tool to communicate, which serves its purpose whether or not it is used "correctly". All I can say is that we will have so much influence in our classrooms with our students, which is where we have to start. We can't tackle the whole beast of judgment and stereotype, but we can encourage our students and colleagues to respect culture and home-language for what it is and not critique what it's not (if that makes sense).
ReplyDeleteYou also asked that by respecting a student's home language, if that will make a student strive to better their Standard English. We see in chapter 7 through the teaching style of Carter Forshay that just respecting a student may not be enough; we have to be willing to stand our ground as professionals and push our students to work and learn. We've talked a lot this semester about the things that discourage or make it difficult for students to learn, and also about how we as educators can be adaptive to those issues, but we have not really touched much on the practicals of encouraging those students who have been allowed to let their circumstances lower their standards. We have to teach our students "standard English" and how to write proficiently, but that goes beyond just being accepting and understanding; we have to be expectant of their success, and we have to be ready to set the bar high.
Really good exchange here. Nicely said, both of you.
ReplyDelete