This chapter made me angry. This teacher in the beginning who thinks she knows this family just because they are stereotyped in the Appalachian region, made me fume in my seat reading. The idea here in chapter 8 seems to be a little deeper. Yes, we must allow students to explore language on the standard level, but when they're just learning to basics of reading and writing we have to allow them to understand through their own influences. We have to respect culture while not letting it be an excuse. The more we (everyone in every social class) read to, write with, and engage their children in writing before they enter school, the better prepared they will be to learn in school. We have to look at those who don't have that kind of experience as differences in our teaching methods, not as a child who has no hope. I've seen this a lot lately. I don't think I ever grasped exactly what was going on until Victoria Purcell-Gates wrote it out for me.
I keep thinking back to my life as a child and how much I learned before school, during school, and after school. Even before I was school-aged I was learning. I always failed to think that a kid in my class could be suffering at home and not live under my same conditions and was not taught exactly how I was taught. I hope to constantly remind myself to think and take into consideration where these kids come from, culturally and socioeconomically, but never let it be an excuse for failure. I can NOT stand passing kids on. Just recently I learned that the lowest grade a teacher can give on a report card in Baldwin County is a 60 even if a kid has a 30. This is to promote achievement somehow, but giving ia kid a grade they don't deserve is only failing them more because they see how to work the system. Donny was ignored and passed on because he was marginalized by stereotypes and the school thought he was a lost cause. This shows how much schools expect from parents. Schools expect students to come to school with a basic understanding of language, written or reading, and when they don't the kid is just pushed aside. A lot is wrong with this system. As secondary educators, it scares me to think that we are getting these kids too late. We get a kid like Donny in 7th grade and in reality, how much can we do for him? How much time can we put into teaching him to read and write when there is an entire class waiting for us to teach them Shakespeare? I think Deplit shares some good ideas and thoughts on how to help the situation, but I also think this training needs to be taken care of at a much earlier age than we are being taught to deal with, maybe??
You’re absolutely right Brittany. There’s a limit on the time that we can spend with one student. Without being able to work with them outside of class, there’s very little time we can devote to helping Donny learn to read. There has to be emphasis placed on these kinds of activities in elementary school and preschool. I think this was the intention for tracking, but tracking hasn’t helped the problem. When you put a bunch of students like Donny in one class the teacher has absolutely no time to work with Donny individually to cater to his individual needs. Rationally, there’s only so much we can do. I assume that’s why so many students fall through the cracks.
I was upset with Donny's teacher and the school administration as well. However, this school was relatively well-supported economically and had a high rate of middle and upper-class student enrollment. What must it be like at schools that don't have enough funding, are under-staffed, with too many students and a high incidence of lower-class enrollment from undereducated homes? What about those students, those children and parents like Jenny who don't have "people who matter" calling principals to request academic supports or protest marginalization from the school's administration? Kids like Danny are everywhere and too many schools are dismissing them as "worthless" because of their socioeconomic status and their dialects.
Danielle, Brittany--you are both right. There is a limit to what we can do in the classroom but we can make an effort outside the classroom as well with after-school tutoring and summer sessions.
For example: When I was learning Latin my grades weren't very good because my Latin teacher assumed (correctly in most cases) that her students had a strong background and working knowledge of English grammar and how it was constructed.
In contrast my own knowledge was lacking. If you know anything about Latin you know that the sentence structure is practically nonexistent and you not only conjugate verbs but decline nouns (changing suffixes and root-words to change meaning of both nouns and verbs). There are more tenses, genders, and grammar rules in Latin than in English. Much more. I worked with her at her house for three-four hours a day all summer (May- July) to pull my grade up to a B. Granted Latin is not essential to my daily life and I have forgotten most of what I learned but my point is this...
If given the opportunity and the help students will learn. A working knowledge of English reading and writing is essential for their success. We may have to make sacrifices but what is two or four hours out of my day if a student who would have been written off and encouraged to drop out can read his or her college acceptance form or fill out a job application? My example may not be the best but my point is valid.
This chapter made me angry too. I can't believe the teacher had the guts to say that! My mom has a very strong southern accent and has had to fight stereotypes her whole life. She has numerous (frustrating and hilarious stories) of people treating her differently because of her accent and the job she has. She works at the CDC. This chapter explains why little kids like me spent hours figuring out how to cover up their southern accents. Anyway... off my soap box and on to actual relevant material...This chapter reminded me a lot of the podcast we listened to about how many less words children of poverty are likely to hear. I agree that we have to do as much as we can to help these children, and we are limited. I only wish there was more to do to intervene in the environment and early exposure like the Baby College idea. Maybe if we emphasis the importance of reading daily and to children to our students they will read to their kids.
I am glad that Delpit included this chapter. I think that it is extremely important to emphasize and understand that poverty transcends race. I am also glad that she mentioned Pygmalion during the discussion of language as a central player in the class-related denial of opportunity. I think Pygmalion would be an excellent way to reach students who speak nonstandard English. The play could be rewritten or modernized to reflect student experiences with discrimination based on their use of ebonics or as she calls it "hillbilly."
In response to earlier comments, I think that as secondary educators we must approach every student with the perspective that it is never too late. Yes, maybe Donny gets left behind during your American Lit class from 9-11, but there is no reason we can not provide him with extracurricular support. There are tutoring centers. Maybe they aren't free, but maybe something can be worked out where impoverished families are charged less. It would be wonderful if I could work with Donny for 3 to 4 hours a day, one on one, until he is reading and writing on level, but this just isn't a realistic goal. I think that we have to remember that even though teachers are superheroes, we cannot extend the hours in a day. It is important that we search for and recognize other venues for our students to receive the help that they need.
Another important factor in this case was that Donny had a mother who cared, a mom who did constantly pursue administrators and make an effort to meet with teachers face to face. She recognized the problem and persistently attempted to confront it. It might be easy to persuade Jenny to enroll Donny in a tutoring program, but how do we reach students whose parents are simply not interested?
I love how the focus in this chapter is on reading and writing "experience," instead of competence. It is so important to realize and maintain the belief that all students have the ability to learn to read and write. It really does come down to what kind of experience they have before coming into our classroom. We wouldn't expect someone who has never refereed a football game to walk onto the field and officiate it, but they sure as heck can learn. All they lack is experience. We have to keep in mind as English teachers that we've had years of experience reading and writing, so obviously we're going to be better at it than most of our students. But, that doesn't mean they can't get to the level they should be at. It just means they need experience. This chapter reminded me of the Harlem school where they preached to parents on reading to their kids at a young age. Part of our jobs as teachers is to help break that cycle that Donny may have fallen into with his parents not knowing how to read.
I thought it was interesting when they were talking about the discrimination against the mother (extrapolate on a wider scale) and how it did no good for her to let them know that her child was struggling. It goes back to one of those textbooks we read (I don't remember the phrase exactly), but it was as if they assumed that she clearly couldn't know that she didn't know; they wrote her off as ignorant, even in light of her own profession of being ignorant about something (but were perfectly cool with labeling her as such without her input.)
I also was pleased to hear once again the separation of the written language and the spoken language, and that it is presumptuous of us to waste our time trying to correct the latter, when there is little relation between the two; we all speak in sentence fragments and speak "incorrectly" as opposed to a "standard" way.
I too agree with everyone about this chapter that it made me mad and surprised me all at the same time. I was shocked that even poverty transcended race when it came to educational discrimination. When I read the story that Delpit included about Jenny (the mother) and how the school refused to listen to her because of her "social class," I was shocked. It was very interesting for me to see that not only was race a factor for discrimination, but social class as well. Then again, this made me think about just how much people really do discriminate against those who are "less fortunate" than others.
So how could we as teachers, overcome this stereotype? If you were a teacher and had a parent with Jenny's situation, would you have gone above and beyond to help her? Or do you think that the politics of the school system, the "Power" are too much for one teacher to overcome on their own?
Brent, I thought that it was interesting that this chapter spoke about the experience that children have with reading and writing before this classroom as well. I never really put two and two together, but it made sense. I think that Delpit including this chapter was extremely useful. How well a student does really does depend on what experience that a student has with a certain subject. The example of Phil with the driver's ed course really put this into perspective. How can we as teachers really expect students to just automatically be experienced with the content? and I think that this is a problem a lot of teachers have, is that they don't take into consideration sometimes that all students do not come in on the same experience level.
So how could teachers work with all of these different types of experience levels? How could you eventually help all students that have diferent amounts of experience come to the same level of learning at the end of the course?
I agree with Rose. I remember desperately wanting to change my accent when I was in middle and high school because I thought it made me sound stupid. This chapter is probably my favorite because it sheds light on a stereotype that occurs ALL of the time. So many people base a person's level of intelligence, SES, and their overall character on the way they sound and speak. It is so common most people don't even realize that they are being judgmental. Just because someone is poor or doesn't speak eloquently doesn't mean that they are a lost cause. We have to change this way of thinking. "...there is always a generalized belief that they cannot learn as well as those in power-the middle/upper classes. It is believed that they 'just don't have it' as far as intelligence..."
While reading this chapter, especially pages 136-137, it makes me think that as teachers we need to meet students where they are. We need to be mindful of those outside forces that are at play in their lives, but at the same time not believe that they are unable to learn. I love the quote "No one "talks" like written language." This is so true and I love that! Whenever we read writing, I feel like we are reading the persona of that author. The person they want us to see. Which can totally be applied to the writing we do on a standardized test. We may not always believe what we are writing for those, but we are writing what we want that reader to believe in order to get a good grade. If we cut off the language these students need to learn, they will never be able to have the chance to learn about that persona and do well in the school setting.
My comment goes a lot with the last part of Nick's comment. We speak in whatever way comes natural for us. It changes over time and so many common use words are added to our everyday language that would not be seen as proper, but who is proper every minute?
Rose and Amber I too had a similar experience. I was orginaly from Louisiana and moved to a small Southern town in Georgia, Fitzgerald (chickens have free reign there) and my accent was normal. Yet when I moved to the metro area I was mocked and changed my accent to be normal and liked. Then I faced criticism from my extended family because I sounded "uppity"
Erin I too hate the idea of students getting passed along even when they don't deserve it. I also recently found out about report card grades and learned that 69's don't exist you have 68's and 70's. I worry about those students and how much of an impact we can have on them when we get them in high school. At that point will they have given up? Will they think they are unintelligent because teachers have given up on them in the past?
There is something very wrong with stigmatizing a child and just continuing to pass him along because he is seen as a hopeless situation. As I mentioned in an earlier post on another entry, I think that a teacher should do everything in his or her power to help a student succeed and pass, but a teacher should by no means do nothing and pass a student because they do not think that child will succeed. It's called HIGH EXPECTATIONS for everyone.
I like what Nick pointed out -- that we all speak incorrectly, and at times we shouldn't waste our time trying to correct how someone is speaking -- a lot of times, I myself speak in a way that I would never write in a formal situation.
I think Gate's stance on cultural difference instead of deficit is very interesting. She makes a good point that a child is not a huge difference in their lack of "knowing", but it is a deficit. In this the child is not held responsible for not knowing how to do something: read, write, sentence starting, etc. The example she gave about learning how to drive makes this point very clear. The lack of experience is the deficit she talks about. Making all students equal and expecting high expectations is what we should all do.
I completely agree with Amber's experience on trying to change her accent. The southern twang that Whites also goes along with the Ebonics in Blacks. All of what you know comes from experience growing up in life. This goes back to the language too.
This chapter made me angry. This teacher in the beginning who thinks she knows this family just because they are stereotyped in the Appalachian region, made me fume in my seat reading. The idea here in chapter 8 seems to be a little deeper. Yes, we must allow students to explore language on the standard level, but when they're just learning to basics of reading and writing we have to allow them to understand through their own influences. We have to respect culture while not letting it be an excuse. The more we (everyone in every social class) read to, write with, and engage their children in writing before they enter school, the better prepared they will be to learn in school. We have to look at those who don't have that kind of experience as differences in our teaching methods, not as a child who has no hope. I've seen this a lot lately. I don't think I ever grasped exactly what was going on until Victoria Purcell-Gates wrote it out for me.
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking back to my life as a child and how much I learned before school, during school, and after school. Even before I was school-aged I was learning. I always failed to think that a kid in my class could be suffering at home and not live under my same conditions and was not taught exactly how I was taught. I hope to constantly remind myself to think and take into consideration where these kids come from, culturally and socioeconomically, but never let it be an excuse for failure. I can NOT stand passing kids on. Just recently I learned that the lowest grade a teacher can give on a report card in Baldwin County is a 60 even if a kid has a 30. This is to promote achievement somehow, but giving ia kid a grade they don't deserve is only failing them more because they see how to work the system. Donny was ignored and passed on because he was marginalized by stereotypes and the school thought he was a lost cause. This shows how much schools expect from parents. Schools expect students to come to school with a basic understanding of language, written or reading, and when they don't the kid is just pushed aside. A lot is wrong with this system. As secondary educators, it scares me to think that we are getting these kids too late. We get a kid like Donny in 7th grade and in reality, how much can we do for him? How much time can we put into teaching him to read and write when there is an entire class waiting for us to teach them Shakespeare? I think Deplit shares some good ideas and thoughts on how to help the situation, but I also think this training needs to be taken care of at a much earlier age than we are being taught to deal with, maybe??
ReplyDeleteYou’re absolutely right Brittany. There’s a limit on the time that we can spend with one student. Without being able to work with them outside of class, there’s very little time we can devote to helping Donny learn to read. There has to be emphasis placed on these kinds of activities in elementary school and preschool. I think this was the intention for tracking, but tracking hasn’t helped the problem. When you put a bunch of students like Donny in one class the teacher has absolutely no time to work with Donny individually to cater to his individual needs. Rationally, there’s only so much we can do. I assume that’s why so many students fall through the cracks.
ReplyDeleteI was upset with Donny's teacher and the school administration as well. However, this school was relatively well-supported economically and had a high rate of middle and upper-class student enrollment. What must it be like at schools that don't have enough funding, are under-staffed, with too many students and a high incidence of lower-class enrollment from undereducated homes? What about those students, those children and parents like Jenny who don't have "people who matter" calling principals to request academic supports or protest marginalization from the school's administration? Kids like Danny are everywhere and too many schools are dismissing them as "worthless" because of their socioeconomic status and their dialects.
ReplyDeleteDanielle, Brittany--you are both right. There is a limit to what we can do in the classroom but we can make an effort outside the classroom as well with after-school tutoring and summer sessions.
ReplyDeleteFor example: When I was learning Latin my grades weren't very good because my Latin teacher assumed (correctly in most cases) that her students had a strong background and working knowledge of English grammar and how it was constructed.
In contrast my own knowledge was lacking. If you know anything about Latin you know that the sentence structure is practically nonexistent and you not only conjugate verbs but decline nouns (changing suffixes and root-words to change meaning of both nouns and verbs). There are more tenses, genders, and grammar rules in Latin than in English. Much more.
I worked with her at her house for three-four hours a day all summer (May- July) to pull my grade up to a B. Granted Latin is not essential to my daily life and I have forgotten most of what I learned but my point is this...
If given the opportunity and the help students will learn. A working knowledge of English reading and writing is essential for their success. We may have to make sacrifices but what is two or four hours out of my day if a student who would have been written off and encouraged to drop out can read his or her college acceptance form or fill out a job application? My example may not be the best but my point is valid.
This chapter made me angry too. I can't believe the teacher had the guts to say that! My mom has a very strong southern accent and has had to fight stereotypes her whole life. She has numerous (frustrating and hilarious stories) of people treating her differently because of her accent and the job she has. She works at the CDC. This chapter explains why little kids like me spent hours figuring out how to cover up their southern accents.
ReplyDeleteAnyway... off my soap box and on to actual relevant material...This chapter reminded me a lot of the podcast we listened to about how many less words children of poverty are likely to hear.
I agree that we have to do as much as we can to help these children, and we are limited. I only wish there was more to do to intervene in the environment and early exposure like the Baby College idea. Maybe if we emphasis the importance of reading daily and to children to our students they will read to their kids.
I am glad that Delpit included this chapter. I think that it is extremely important to emphasize and understand that poverty transcends race. I am also glad that she mentioned Pygmalion during the discussion of language as a central player in the class-related denial of opportunity. I think Pygmalion would be an excellent way to reach students who speak nonstandard English. The play could be rewritten or modernized to reflect student experiences with discrimination based on their use of ebonics or as she calls it "hillbilly."
ReplyDeleteIn response to earlier comments, I think that as secondary educators we must approach every student with the perspective that it is never too late. Yes, maybe Donny gets left behind during your American Lit class from 9-11, but there is no reason we can not provide him with extracurricular support. There are tutoring centers. Maybe they aren't free, but maybe something can be worked out where impoverished families are charged less. It would be wonderful if I could work with Donny for 3 to 4 hours a day, one on one, until he is reading and writing on level, but this just isn't a realistic goal. I think that we have to remember that even though teachers are superheroes, we cannot extend the hours in a day. It is important that we search for and recognize other venues for our students to receive the help that they need.
ReplyDeleteAnother important factor in this case was that Donny had a mother who cared, a mom who did constantly pursue administrators and make an effort to meet with teachers face to face. She recognized the problem and persistently attempted to confront it. It might be easy to persuade Jenny to enroll Donny in a tutoring program, but how do we reach students whose parents are simply not interested?
I love how the focus in this chapter is on reading and writing "experience," instead of competence. It is so important to realize and maintain the belief that all students have the ability to learn to read and write. It really does come down to what kind of experience they have before coming into our classroom. We wouldn't expect someone who has never refereed a football game to walk onto the field and officiate it, but they sure as heck can learn. All they lack is experience. We have to keep in mind as English teachers that we've had years of experience reading and writing, so obviously we're going to be better at it than most of our students. But, that doesn't mean they can't get to the level they should be at. It just means they need experience. This chapter reminded me of the Harlem school where they preached to parents on reading to their kids at a young age. Part of our jobs as teachers is to help break that cycle that Donny may have fallen into with his parents not knowing how to read.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting when they were talking about the discrimination against the mother (extrapolate on a wider scale) and how it did no good for her to let them know that her child was struggling. It goes back to one of those textbooks we read (I don't remember the phrase exactly), but it was as if they assumed that she clearly couldn't know that she didn't know; they wrote her off as ignorant, even in light of her own profession of being ignorant about something (but were perfectly cool with labeling her as such without her input.)
ReplyDeleteI also was pleased to hear once again the separation of the written language and the spoken language, and that it is presumptuous of us to waste our time trying to correct the latter, when there is little relation between the two; we all speak in sentence fragments and speak "incorrectly" as opposed to a "standard" way.
I too agree with everyone about this chapter that it made me mad and surprised me all at the same time. I was shocked that even poverty transcended race when it came to educational discrimination. When I read the story that Delpit included about Jenny (the mother) and how the school refused to listen to her because of her "social class," I was shocked. It was very interesting for me to see that not only was race a factor for discrimination, but social class as well. Then again, this made me think about just how much people really do discriminate against those who are "less fortunate" than others.
ReplyDeleteSo how could we as teachers, overcome this stereotype? If you were a teacher and had a parent with Jenny's situation, would you have gone above and beyond to help her? Or do you think that the politics of the school system, the "Power" are too much for one teacher to overcome on their own?
Brent, I thought that it was interesting that this chapter spoke about the experience that children have with reading and writing before this classroom as well. I never really put two and two together, but it made sense. I think that Delpit including this chapter was extremely useful. How well a student does really does depend on what experience that a student has with a certain subject. The example of Phil with the driver's ed course really put this into perspective. How can we as teachers really expect students to just automatically be experienced with the content? and I think that this is a problem a lot of teachers have, is that they don't take into consideration sometimes that all students do not come in on the same experience level.
ReplyDeleteSo how could teachers work with all of these different types of experience levels? How could you eventually help all students that have diferent amounts of experience come to the same level of learning at the end of the course?
I agree with Rose. I remember desperately wanting to change my accent when I was in middle and high school because I thought it made me sound stupid. This chapter is probably my favorite because it sheds light on a stereotype that occurs ALL of the time. So many people base a person's level of intelligence, SES, and their overall character on the way they sound and speak. It is so common most people don't even realize that they are being judgmental.
ReplyDeleteJust because someone is poor or doesn't speak eloquently doesn't mean that they are a lost cause. We have to change this way of thinking.
"...there is always a generalized belief that they cannot learn as well as those in power-the middle/upper classes. It is believed that they 'just don't have it' as far as intelligence..."
While reading this chapter, especially pages 136-137, it makes me think that as teachers we need to meet students where they are. We need to be mindful of those outside forces that are at play in their lives, but at the same time not believe that they are unable to learn. I love the quote "No one "talks" like written language." This is so true and I love that! Whenever we read writing, I feel like we are reading the persona of that author. The person they want us to see. Which can totally be applied to the writing we do on a standardized test. We may not always believe what we are writing for those, but we are writing what we want that reader to believe in order to get a good grade. If we cut off the language these students need to learn, they will never be able to have the chance to learn about that persona and do well in the school setting.
ReplyDeleteMy comment goes a lot with the last part of Nick's comment. We speak in whatever way comes natural for us. It changes over time and so many common use words are added to our everyday language that would not be seen as proper, but who is proper every minute?
ReplyDeleteRose and Amber I too had a similar experience. I was orginaly from Louisiana and moved to a small Southern town in Georgia, Fitzgerald (chickens have free reign there) and my accent was normal. Yet when I moved to the metro area I was mocked and changed my accent to be normal and liked. Then I faced criticism from my extended family because I sounded "uppity"
ReplyDeleteErin I too hate the idea of students getting passed along even when they don't deserve it. I also recently found out about report card grades and learned that 69's don't exist you have 68's and 70's. I worry about those students and how much of an impact we can have on them when we get them in high school. At that point will they have given up? Will they think they are unintelligent because teachers have given up on them in the past?
There is something very wrong with stigmatizing a child and just continuing to pass him along because he is seen as a hopeless situation. As I mentioned in an earlier post on another entry, I think that a teacher should do everything in his or her power to help a student succeed and pass, but a teacher should by no means do nothing and pass a student because they do not think that child will succeed. It's called HIGH EXPECTATIONS for everyone.
ReplyDeleteI like what Nick pointed out -- that we all speak incorrectly, and at times we shouldn't waste our time trying to correct how someone is speaking -- a lot of times, I myself speak in a way that I would never write in a formal situation.
ReplyDeleteI think Gate's stance on cultural difference instead of deficit is very interesting. She makes a good point that a child is not a huge difference in their lack of "knowing", but it is a deficit. In this the child is not held responsible for not knowing how to do something: read, write, sentence starting, etc. The example she gave about learning how to drive makes this point very clear. The lack of experience is the deficit she talks about. Making all students equal and expecting high expectations is what we should all do.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Amber's experience on trying to change her accent. The southern twang that Whites also goes along with the Ebonics in Blacks. All of what you know comes from experience growing up in life. This goes back to the language too.
ReplyDelete