Confidence in your students is key...

I always thought that the best teachers, were the teachers that could make any child understand the concept at hand. When it comes to teaching language, the biggest thing that needs to be addressed is that most children speak differently. I guess that is why I like language so much because we all sound so different when we are talking. Language is kind of like DNA in the fact that we all have it, however everyone's is different. Teachers from the bat need to established that mentality. So how do you teach to have all culturals understand language? Well, I think using multiply teching methods is a start to balance the power of language. Growing up with a bad learning disability and bad speech impedament, I felt that I wasn't really thought much in grade school. I felt as if I have no power and therefore I was terrorfied to read aloud because I never learned how to properly sound out words. I only learned how to skip words that I didn't know how to pronounce. If my teachers used different methods to teach the pronouncing of words to me, then I think to this today I could sound out and pronounce any word. I would be more willing to read aloud. I also feel that self-confidence plays a big role in whether a student learns "proper" language. I grew up in a very diverse school where it was about 40% black, 40% white and 20% other. During those years I felt like I came from a multicultrual family because teachers and facility made me feel stupid, like often many mulitcultural students felt in her piece. I felt like no one cared within my school of whether I ever learned proper English. All of teachers told us if we couldn't it do it the way that they were teaching it to us then there was no hope for us learning later. So of course my confidence and my self-esteem got deminshed due to my teachers telling me that I couldn't do it. I saw my teachers do that a lot to students who came from another ethnicity or white kids, like myself who were had a learning disabiiity and were placed in special ed. So in order to even out the power control, teachers must show ALL kids that they can learn and show that they have confidence in each child learning. Confidence for one goes a long way and it helps to establish a child's future.
Confidence is the biggest thing that I would want to show when trying to teach an important concept. I also think that kids need lessons to be relatable. If you can relate to a child, then that child is going to better understand the concept. I like when math teachers use sports for example fanstay football to teach kids about odds, averages, percents etc. Kids can relate to sports and technology advancements like fanstay football. SO all in all, we need to reelvuate the way we teach. Lets make it fun and confident!

Those that think that "teaching acceptance" is a solution to the problems presented in the article have an unrealistic view of the world. The fight against prejudice can never be won, and that fact is engraved in our biological psychology. If you examine sociological and psychological studies about groups that once were discriminated against but now not so much (for example, the Irish), it becomes clear that discrimination against these groups didn't stop because we recognized their differences and accepted them, but instead because we no longer recognize the differences! Let's take the Irish who immigrated to America as an example. In census' from a long time ago, "Irish" was considered a separate race. Now we just label most Europeans as Caucasian. We see them all as the same type of person as us and so there isn't discrimination.

That being said, the language of power is something that can be easily discriminated from other dialects. Unless we no longer recognize the two modes of speech as different, one needs to know the language of power. And, accepting a dialect is different from ceasing to notice that it is different from your own.

Acknowledging students' different learning styles could improve tutoring

Reading Delpit's article was eye-opening for me as far as learning styles of students. I always knew that students learned in different ways, but I had never thought that those ways might depend on how the students expect to be taught.

I have been tutoring math for a few terms now and at times it has been frustrating when a student doesn't use my leading questions to learn a concept. After reading Delpit, maybe I will try more direct language when I run into this sort of a problem in the future. Perhaps this approach will help my tutor-to-student communication.

Acceptance only? How naive.

Talking about teaching acceptance instead of teaching minority children the language of power seems to me to be completely ignoring the concept of a culture of power. Sure, everyone could accept how everyone else speaks and behaves culturally, but there would still be that culture of power where the standard is set. Just because people accept each other in personal settings doesn’t mean they would accept them when a job is on the line. There are standards for jobs, and if the individual applying was just “accepted” all their life and so never got the opportunity to learn about the language of power, they aren’t going to be able to meet the standards of the career in the culture of power.
Acceptance here seems to mean keeping people at their present level of language, and changing the minds of the people in the culture of power so that language is less of an issue. That’s a nice concept, but very hard to implement. How does one teach people who are already in the culture of power to be accepting of people who aren’t? Only part of that can be done in the schools, the rest of it has to be taught in the home and in society.

Prompts for Delpit

Your assignment is to respond to one of the following questions related to Lisa Delpit’s “The Silenced Dialogue.” Aim for about 100-150 words, and post it to your team blog. Please follow the following guidelines:
1. Identify your entry with a title that suggests the content.
2. Single space.

You may respond to other people’s posts through the comment feature. You may also read the blogs of the other groups by going to: http://writingcommonsone.blogspot.com/ http://writingcommonstwo.blogspot.com/ etc. through http://writingcommonssix.blogspot.com/ You can add a comment to other blogs by using the comment feature. You can only post to your own blog.

Questions (choose one):
1. If you are preparing to teach, what are you taking away from Delpit’s article regarding language and power that might help you as a teacher, and how could you apply these ideas to your proposed level of teaching?
2. One student asked, “Why do we have to discuss teaching minority children the language of power? Why not just teach everyone acceptance?” Respond.
3. For one of Delpit’s specific proposals (refer to the article), discuss the challenges of implementation. How could these challenges be addressed?
4. Your own topic.