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.