Steering off course

Ok, so for the first time I have decided not to follow the blog prompt. This is why: there are two articles that were assigned this week that have me in a quandary. The first is Language Diversity and Learning and the second is Literacy Instruction in Multicultural Settings. Now I know there are many theories about both of these topics. I must say that I do not have my own theory about either of these topics, but I have been forced to constantly think about them since September.

During my September experience I was chastised for speaking to a student in Spanish. I did not instruct in Spanish. I answered a question about my ability to speak Spanish in Spanish to a Spanish-speaking student and was told not to speak Spanish to the children. I was then told that they should be proud to speak English as their first language. I was left wondering how English was the student’s first language all of a sudden when he had just told me he spoke Spanish first and how pride is linked to speaking English. Also, I am a story teller by nature and when I would let students tell me a story about their families or something analogous to what we were studying I was constantly given the hint to speed things up and reminded that we needed to abide by the pacing guide. I have resorted to inviting small groups of students up to have lunch with me on a daily basis. There is not pacing guide at lunch. Then during my dyad experience I was thrust into a large middle school where the talk of the day was popular lingo of all sorts. I felt like I spent a good portion of my first week simply translating what the students were saying to me and they spoke English. By the way, being a “baller” is not a bad thing. I thought it meant that someone cried a lot, but it turns out that it means something quite different.

In the Language Diversity article there was a point made that teacher s spend a lot of time correcting student language. Many examples were given and I have to claim some sort of surprise. I see the point that is being made and I see that we may be robbing a student of something that is really at the core of their culture. But I do so wonder at what we are NOT doing by letting this slide by. I think of my own family in this instance. My own cousins were raised in downtown Everett, WA. There was a high Latino population at their school. They live and talk like the gangs which they were surrounded by. My own brother, who was raised amongst them, was pulled by our mother to attend a different middle school and high school in order for him to have better opportunities. He speaks somewhat as I do and sounds, as the young student in the introduction stated, “white.” I can tell you they also lead very different lives even though they all come from the same socio-economic background. I do so wonder what would have happened if my cousins had been moved to another school or neighborhood. My brother, as I do, clearly remembers being corrected for the way he spoke. It was frequent and irritating so he chose to speak the way the teacher wanted her to in order to get the correcting to discontinue. Oddly enough, even though we both claim the correcting to be irritating, neither of us looks back on this with any real animosity. In fact, we are both grateful for being taught how to speak what we refer to as “proper English.” After reading this article I am wondering so many things. Will letting students speak in their own vernacular eventually hold them back in some way? I am thinking of job interviews and interviewing for graduate school. Will it just go away by then? Can dialect miscues change the meaning of a text? When should we just let it go? Every time?

I am also realizing how long this entry is. I have more questions regarding the second article, but how much do you really want to read? This is my last entry for the quarter and I hope it was a somewhat enjoyable read for you.