Where I'm From

A counter-narrative to West Virginia life.

Link to video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwH74WZUMB8

Culturally Responsive Teaching

I learned many things in class from our readings, discussions, and assignments on culturally responsive teaching. I am very glad we did this project because some of the negative things teachers do, they do without knowing the negative consequences their decisions can have on a student. One thing that I learned that I had never thought about before is that the “proper” way of speaking and writing is determined by how the people that have political power speak and write. In America’s case, our political leaders speak Proper English, and therefore, everyone else is expected to speak Proper English in educational and workplace settings. The culture of language is everywhere, "because reading and writing are woven into the everyday experiences of people, and these everyday activities, attitudes, and beliefs help to define and distinguish among cultural groups" (Purcell Gates, 2002). Those who don’t speak what is known as proper in a culture are sometimes ridiculed.

Teachers want their students to succeed later in life. They know that this usually means using Proper English, but sometimes they take it too far. Instead of teaching students Proper English so that they can use it in situations when needed, they use a corrective approach and try to permanently change the students’ languages and dialects. This can have negative consequences for the children. This reflects that the teacher has a cultural deficit perspective and believes that poor or minority students could never be able to learn some of the things being taught. “When a teacher uses corrective measures to teach Standard American English, there is an automatic implication of wrongness in the student’s own dialect which ‘set[s] those children up to feel inferior and create[s] a dynamic of resistance to the school experience” (Rowland & Marrow, 2010). This is why teachers need to adopt a cultural difference perspective. All students, no matter their background or how they talk, can learn if given the opportunity. We, as teachers, need to give these students opportunities so they can succeed.

Educators need to understand that one culture is never inferior of or superior to another. Students from different backgrounds always come to the classroom with skills and knowledge, even if their skills and knowledge may be different from those of most of the class. Luis Moll believes that much can be learned when studying poor and minority students’ families and communities. He has researched what he calls "Hidden Family Resources" that can be used to help teach students. He and his researchers discovered a Latino community in Tuscon, Arizona had significant knowledge in construction, science, and household management, among many other things. A teacher participating in the study created a construction unit and invited family and community members to demonstrate their knowledge for the students. The students created projects and written assignments around this topic, and afterwards their writing skills had significantly improved. Luis Moll hopes that “his demonstration of the funds of knowledge available will help educators and psychologists gain a more positive view of these able, but misjudged youngsters” (Moll, 1992).

One strategy that keeps non-standard speaking students in mind while also helping them learn Standard English is called Contrastive Analysis. Students learn to write in Standard English by examining structural differences and similarities between their native dialect and Standard English. They are taught how to code-switch between the two.  If the instruction is based on what they already know, their literacy has more hope of improving. Success comes from “letting students use their informal speech in the classroom and acknowledging it as a valid language which does not have to be corrected and is not wrong” (Epstien & Herring-Harris, 2011). Contrastive Analysis relates to Luis Moll’s funds of knowledge since students are examining what has been passed down to them through their families and communities. It is also recommended that teachers plan for their students to interview parents and grandparents to see how their dialect or language has changed over time. 

There Where I'm From project, encompassing all of the readings and research read and being assigned culturally responsive activities and projects as a student, taught me so much about culturally responsive teaching. One thing culturally responsive teaching includes is encouraging students to know and praise their own and and each others' cultural heritages. If using a corrective approach to teach students Proper English they will probably begin to think that everything that comes out of their mouth is stupid. They will then start to blame their parents and culture they came from for teaching them to talk or act a certain way. Teachers need to go the opposite way. We need to give students opportunities to share interesting things about their cultures, families, and backgrounds. Our class was given an opportunity to do this by creating videos to reflect the places we came from (see "Where I'm From" video at beginning of post). We then watched our classmates' videos and learned so much about them. Some of my classmates I had went all through college with, and I had never learned as much about them in those four years as I did in watching their three minute videos. Personally, I feel a closeness with my classmates that I had never felt before learning about their backgrounds. If this is the impact it has on a group of college students, I can just imagine how curious elementary students would enjoy exploring the lives of one another. There are many strategies to use with culturally responsive teaching. When creating the videos, our heritages and backgrounds were seen as important and worthy. Sometimes students feel as if nobody cares about learning anything about them. They need to feel like they are important, and they are! 

I believe that we should never try to permanently change a student’s language. “Language not only communicates what we are thinking, language also communicates who we are” (Rowland & Morrow, 2010). We will hinder a child’s success if they think everything that comes out of their mouth is “wrong.” Rather, we should teach them to code-switch so that they will have it to use in the situations in which it is needed. We need to show students that the variety of English they speak is, in fact, a real language. 

Resources

Epstein, P. &  Herring-Harris, L (2011).Honoring Dialect and increasing Student Performance in Standard English. Retrieved October 12, 2012: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3655

Gonzalez, N.,  Greenberg, J. & Velez, C. Thanks Funds of Knowledge: A Look at Luis Moll's Research Into Hidden Family Resources. CITYSCHOOLS, 1 (1), 19-21, 1994.

National Council of Teachers of English (2008). National Council of Beliefs About Writing. Retrieved October 12, 2012: http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/writingbeliefs

Purcell-Gates, V. (2002). “...As soon as she opened her mouth!” In L. Delpit & J.K. Dowdy (Eds.), The skin that we speak: An anthology of essays on language, culture and power.

Rowland, J. & Marrow, D. (2010).  Dialect Awareness Education: The importance of Watching Our Words. USC Undergraduate Research Journal vol 3.