Judith Baker's "Triangualism" details her efforts in motivating her students to study and learn all languages, whether it "home" English, "formal" English, or "professional" English. By respecting the home dialect, Baker creates an environment in which her students feel confident exploring the many intricacies of language.
The students first exploration is within the home. For example, one student, Dwayne, video tapes his family for an hour, specifically, his father on the phone, in the kitchen, and in front of the television. Despite being from Boston, Dwayne and the class pick up patterns of they label as "Southern."
Most interesting to me was Baker's work with role playing workplace scenarios. The students were very much aware of what was and was not appropriate, "It's fine for her to speak that way with her friends, but not at work." This is a notion we can all understand; it is merely our mission as educators to address it with our students.
"I am pretty sure that young people don't really understand this while they are in school," says Baker about the language barrier being a part of keeping the "uneducated" in poverty. My question is, is there a way to convey this to our students? Is there any amount of job shadowing or motivational speaker that could inspire our students to continue their education? And if so, can it be done respectfully?
I know this information would have been helpful to my adolescent self and possibly have kept me motivated throughout high school.
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In Chapter 7 we see a teacher who refuses to let his students fail despite the kids not wanting to continue. This seems to answer the question posed by Anne: "Is there any amount of job shadowing or motivational speaker that could inspire our students to continue their education?"
ReplyDeleteThis shows that if teachers are willing to put in the extra effort to reach the students, the students will become motivated to learn. Everybody needs some encouragement in their life and our students are no different. The students just need to see that someone cares for them and that they are not alone. Billings' study proved that many teachers allow students to quit by not inspiring them to be the best that they can be. A teacher is a life-changer. We must do more than just attempt to "teach" students, we must also be part motivational speaker.
I feel that with inspiration and motivation, no student would want to drop out. Beside giving motivation, we must encourage studsents to motivate themselves. I think that the majority of school dropouts are causes of discouragement. School should be a place where students look forward to coming to every day. It should not be viewed as a "need" to go place, but a "want" to go place.
Anne, you are the solution to your question. You, me and the rest of our class provide the amount of motivation required to get students interested in learning. The students feed off of our energy in the classroom. If we are motivated, they are motivated.
The findings presented in this chapter shocked me, I would never have imagined teachers allowing students to quit, when they know the priceless value of an education. This chapter motivated me to motivate my students. I believe if we can motivate one class at a time, soon we can end the cycle of failure that is seen in our schools today.
My favorite thing discussed in chapter seven was how this teacher motivated students who didn't want to write. It's a pretty clear task and it's certainly easy to identify with. Writing creatively is something that involves work, immense work. You have to at the very least start off with something you think is worth writing, which can often be the hardest part. When these seemingly insurmountable armies stand in the way of students, coupled with their insufficient understanding of the English language, it's impossible to get students to write. So, what do you do? Eliminate some problems, but which ones? You can't teach your students how to understand writing in the language if they can't write so you're forced to do what this teacher did, give the kids a jump. What better way to do this than to give them something abstract like jazz to work on. There is emotion there but no specifics, the students are stimulated but not necessarily entertained with a story, they have to create one for themselves, maybe not create one but they have to at least put the emotions in the song to words, which is a critical exercise that demands intense thought processing. I think it is most important that jazz music was picked because of it's emotion but also because of it's ambiguity. I think other genres such as classical, modern orchestra, and anything with foreign language lyrics would have sufficed. Would there be any type of music that would have not worked to help the class for whatever reasons?
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