Week 3

In group discussion last week, my group and I discussed the need for schools to not cast aside a student's culture and home life while only focusing on teaching "Standard English" and other mainstream ideas. It is vital that recognition of both the "home culture" and "school culture" as being equally important occur in a child's (especially one of color) education. We discussed Delpit's example of the teacher in the small town (in Alaska?) with a high population of Natives who wrote two different versions of speaking on the board: the Native and Standard English way. This teacher taught students the value of both languages and that students should not feel ashamed for communicating in their Native language. If students are ashamed, they may struggle to find their cultural identity and be proud of it. Students need to be proud of who they are.

Delpit continues with this idea of valuing both home and school culture when quoting Carter G. Woodson: "teach African-American students not only the language and canon of the European 'mainstream,' but to teach as well the life, history, language, philosophy, and literature of their own people" (Delpit 162-63). Unfortunately, in order for people of color to succeed financially and in obtaining power in America, they have to follow "mainstream" white-male dominant society culture. It is the job of schools to teach their students of color these mainstream techniques, however, they must incorporate cultural aspects of the students to help them maintain and develop their cultural identity.

I fully agree with this notion of including the home life of students in education. The question is how am I, as a white middle-class female, going to do this in an authentic and non-devaluing way? Delpit suggests to:

1. "acknowledge and validate students' home language without using it to limit students' potential"

2. recognize the conflict... between students' home discourses and the discourse of school"

3."by transforming the new discourse so that it contains within it a place for students' selves"

4. "acknowledge the unfair 'discourse-stacking' that our society engages in"

Overall, I think the main things I can do to integrate students' home discourse within school discourse are to get to know my students beyond their results in my classroom and to work hard to familiarize myself with the community I work in and the history of the people in that community. This kind of investment in students and their community will greatly help teachers as they work to benefit their students of cultural backgrounds that differ from their own.

Week 2

Where does the problem of poor teaching that does not provoke change lie? Is it in the standards the government has set for teachers to "teach to" or is it in the training of the teachers? This question was raised in lecture last week and we could not come to a general consensus. It is true that the standards provided by the government make it difficult for teachers to having meaningful learning occur in their classrooms that could provide for a "change" in the future. I personally think that teachers teach largely on how they were taught or how their teaching role models teach. In Other People's Children, Delpit identifies that "the majority of teachers tend to model their teaching on methodological orientations taught in teacher education or on other practicing teachers they have encountered" (Delpit 116). I found this interesting and very true. This emphasizes the need to have improvements made in teacher education since it is one of the main sources for knowledge of teaching.

Delpit discusses how universities do not prepare teachers to teach students of color but rather they prepare teachers to teach the white population of their schools. It needs to be taught that more connections need to be made between teachers and students with less focus on the decontextualization that white people generally have in literature. Delpit says there is too much focus on the words and not enough consistency between words and actions. Some cultures communicate more through actions than white people do, so this would be a way to differentiate instruction to benefit students of color. It was very interesting to read her thoughts on this, for I had never made the connection concerning relationships, contextualization, and how this affects how students learn. I am a firm believer that younger generations today lack in face-to-face social skills mostly due to communication through technology increasing. This could be addressed and improved if teachers work to create better and more meaningful relationships and personal connections with their students. These relationships could help students enjoy school as the teacher may be able to use those relationships as a tool for teaching and helping students make connections between material and real life situations.

week 1

"The purpose of education is to show a person how to define oneself authentically and spontaneously in relation to one's world-- not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of oneself." - Thomas Merton, Reader p. 2

"The function of a school is, then, first of all to help the student discover oneself: to recognize oneself, and to identify who it is that chooses" -Thomas Merton, Reader p. 2

In lecture on Friday 2/5, we first discussed education, defining in different ways. I wrote one definition from I think Mya Scarlatto that I particularly liked: "Not only is education practical in that it provides us with useful life skills, but it makes our lives more meaningful as it helps us to analyze and learn from our existence and better our futures." As a class, we basically said education is to prepare us for life's obstacles, jobs, etc. and to prepare us to be able to better our futures either through personal satisfaction of knowledge or having the skills to improve one's career.

This thinking of education was fine and dandy, but then Max threw us for a loop and said, "What is schooling?" Ah... schooling and education are different. This concept was not unfamiliar to me, but I suppose I had not separated the two before. According to our class, in our society school is the means of earning and education while experiencing socialization with a variety of people. This got me thinking: is school more about education or socialization? I'd say it is a mix of both, allowing students to, as Merton says, "discover oneself." So what about homeschooling? The social aspect is lacking in that form of education. Can homeschooled children fully "discover" themselves? Sure they can find what academic field they like or find interesting, but they are certainly at a disadvantage when discovering what kind of person they are in relation to others. Granted, there is usually a beneficial reason for students to be homeschooled, but I believe the homeschooled children need to spend some time in schools, even if it is for "elective" subjects like music, art, or physical education. They need to have the opportunity to learn about themselves while getting to know and observing others.

I placed the quotes at the top of the page to give focus to education and schooling as separate ideas. Even though Merton says they are both about discovering oneself, I think that the level of discovery or the process of discovery is very different in both due to the socialization element.

Practice Makes Perfect

This is more or less my test blog to see if I did this correctly. Practice makes perfect right?

Also, welcome to my readers. I hope you enjoy my thoughts this spring as we contemplate decisions made in US schools.

Sing, Laugh, Dance, Love.... Always.