The floor; culturally relevant pedagogy

One of the best snippets from the “Where’s the floor?” article really seems to sum up the overall lessons to be learned from studying literacy and language socialization in the child/adolescent classroom: Schools must recognize that they are not the “sole educative force” in a child’s life (p. 118); schools (meaning teachers, really) must take into consideration the types of things children learn at home - and how they learn those things - when designing instruction and dealing with classroom management. It seems that adult education has the potential to acknowledge the other outside influences that students bring with them to the classroom, but even in those settings, there are often numerous problems teachers encounter when working to implement departmental objectives and curriculum, which can preclude implementing other, more critical objectives. This, I think, is the real challenge of the critical educator. Those challenges are affected exponentially when we add the politics of hiring into the mix - do I dare to challenge the status quo when I’m on a semester-to-semester contract? This can become quite a difficult balance to maintain. I think if I can systematically check off individual objectives as I progress throughout a semester (not that I necessarily like that approach, but there is room for creativity in that checking-off), then there are ways to incorporate critical lessons into language education. I suggested one last week - to include lessons on critical reading skills, especially bias detection, within the scope of other elements that go into discussions of strategies for reading expository text. I anticipate that another way to incorporate critical education into my Fall classrooms will be to address expository reading skills with the use of news articles (rather than relying solely on the “culture” textbook)… not a new strategy by any means, but considering that I am sure to have many Persian students in my classes, the material related to the Iranian elections will be good for critical lessons. We also use a novel written by a Korean-American woman, so including news items related to the political situation in/with North Korea will also add to my “culturally relevant pedagogy” (and perhaps you thought it was just the same ole “current events” lessons!)

Minority Teachers for Minority Students?

Both Dan's and Dr. Seloni's handouts on The Invisible Culture yesterday referenced the topic of minority teachers for minority students (or teachers from within the community teaching children of the community). I think there is something gravely wrong with suggesting that "only teachers from within the community should teach children of that community" (not that that was suggested - but just in case it ends up being suggested). That would place absolutely no burden whatsoever on "mainstream" teachers to work to accommodate non-mainstream students into their classrooms. Also, if we accept this and look at it the other way around, that would mean that any teacher from outside of any community would have no place in a community's classroom. According to a website I looked at before starting this program (which may or may not be reliable, so I won't bother with a citation), the population of Indiana, PA is about 90% white/caucasian. Does this mean that teachers who are not white/caucasian have no place in Indiana's classrooms? Absolutely not.

While it may be true that "well meaning, dedicated teachers" might not be able to even out the classroom situation with regard to different ways that students have been socialized to literacy, that does not mean that it - teacher training to enhance multicultural awareness - is an enterprise that must be abandoned in place of hiring from within the community only (whatever that community may be). This would result in self-segregation that I believe would only enhance the difference-as-deficit view rather than embracing differences and making the most of them.

Fairness and Accommodation

As we wrap up discussions of Ways With Words, I will add one thing that struck me as particularly relevant to taking a critical stance in the classroom. Mrs. Gardner on p. 287 says, "Also I am not sure that this taste of success was altogether fair for these children... They proved they could succeed; that should take them a long way, but will it if their future classes are radically different from that first year's experience?"

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that I wrestle with that same kind of questioning when I want to employ a critical, accommodating stance in the classroom. I want to accept my students where they are and "come to them" rather than making them always "come to me", but I admit that sometimes it is difficult in the course of one semester - with limited amounts of time in each class meeting - to impart my attitude about the value that they bring to my classroom compared to the skills they (supposedly) need to exhibit to be successful in their subsequent college-level classes. I wish I could spend half the time teaching them the real stuff (whatever that is), and then the other half of the time teaching them the system so they can then go to battle with it and beat it. I fear that this approach will leave me far, far behind on my department-mandated Student Learning Objectives!

I guess the trick is finding a good compromise, rather than just accepting the system as a "fait accompli" - there is real danger in accepting an approach that might be summed up as "it is what it is, there's nothing I can do about it, so I guess I better just teach to it so that students can manage it in the future". One thing I am hoping to incorporate in my next round of teaching is an ethnographic approach with respect to the term paper that students are expected to produce by the end of the semester. By adding ethnographic approaches as a current, valid way to collect data for a term paper, perhaps I can steer - or at least slightly veer - in a direction that places even more value on the experiences of the students.

Ramblings/musings on chapters 4 and 7

Ethnography and Ways with Words

As we work our way through more of Ways With Words, I am starting to understand more about ways to implement ethnographic methods as well as possible strategies for translating observations and other data collected into an ethnographic narrative. I was drawn, though, to one sentence on p. 143, attributed to Betty in Roadville: “But you look around now, and you see most of us have settled down, except the real black sheep, and most of them moved away.” I can’t help but find myself drawn to this black sheep character and wonder where its (really his/her) place might be in ethnographic research. It seems that ethnography’s purpose is to document ways that are specific to communities, be they a few homes worth (as in Roadville and Trackton) or larger (as in Philips and others). Of course I see value in discovering qualities of the group and its dynamics, but I am also interested in learning more about the people who very clearly do NOT fit the patterns described in the larger ethnography.

This brings me to reflections on Chapter 7, which I characterized in class as sounding like it could have been written as part of the voice-over that describes Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives. I fully understand that the purpose of this chapter is to describe the “mainstream”, but having grown up in this general area of the country, I feel somewhat slighted to find that my family and I would have fit into neither Roadville, Trackton, nor “the town”. This does not mean that a description of the majority of the people in the area is not illustrative; however, I just don’t see this chapter in particular as able to paint a truly representative picture of the diversity present in the Piedmont, even in the ‘70s. A method of research that cannot accommodate these differences seems to be lacking something important, despite the rich detail it can provide in illuminating “mainstream” practices. I am also highly suspect of the descriptions provided of race relations on p. 239 (“There are very few who express resentment of black representation on the city council or the school board; they simply weigh the relative merits of the ideas and manner of presentation of black as well as white members”) and on pp. 241-242 (“Leadership in student government and extracurricular clubs is said to be determined not by race, clique membership, or social status, but by the abilities and personality of individual students, black or white.”) That may be what these people indicated to Shirley, but this paints an extremely skewed picture of race relations in this area, especially at that time. These statements lead readers to believe that race was not ever a factor in any type of discriminatory way, but this area during the '70s was still not as integrated as this chapter seems to let on. This picture is one that does not depict negative qualities of (white) townspeople, but the picture would not be so rosy or so welcoming if, say, there were an interracial couple who decided to move to town. These overly flowery pictures of what life is like are - obviously - extremely problematic for me. I don’t trust this depiction of the town if it is missing some of the honest information that would characterize its people. Although I am less skeptical of the characterizations of literacy, which in themselves are not cause for controversy, I am disappointed in this chapter. But then again, I did not grow up on Wisteria Lane.

What I think is really happening

H&S Chapter 5

H&S make suggestions about the value of transcriptions to be able to see what is really happening (versus what we think is happening) in a particular situation: “[T]ranscription shows how far apart the ideal and the manifest can be for all of us: We claim we do one thing in language while others see and hear us do something else entirely” (p. 91).

This leads me to really value the qualitative methods in addition to participating/observing that lead to ethnographic data, especially participant interviews. If we all think we’re doing one thing and everyone else sees it as something different (exaggerating here but you get it), then there will be numerous interpretations of our actions, and no single one of them can really be said to be “the truth”. I think this ties in very well to the idea of culture as a verb (culturing? That sounds like something to do in a petri dish - perhaps we can compare our observed settings and populations to petri dishes?)… If I observe a setting, I am inherently coloring that observation with me-colored glasses. I think studies that involve researcher-participant-observation followed up with in-depth interviews about particular behaviors would be particularly interesting, especially when it comes to seeing how classrooms work from different perspectives.

I understand the distinction between “what is happening” and “what we think is happening”, but I think these are not discretely bounded entities, and it is not as easy as one may think it is to tell the difference. I am more in line with the idea that “what is happening” is ALWAYS only “what we think is happening”, so perhaps uncovering why we think a certain way also goes back to “doing” culture (or petri dish culturing, etc.).

How does she know this?

Today in class we started talking about a few instances in Ways With Words where it is not entirely clear on what basis/data Heath draws some of her conclusions. The ones mentioned in class generally (though not specifically yet? I don't think?) were related to the major topic of the study, literacy. However, one place where I wrote "how does she know this?" in the margin was in this passage on page 72:

[talking about Darrett] "His friends do not come into Trackton, because either he does not want Trackton to see his big-city buddy's Cadillac, or he knows his buddy's entrance will seem to confirm for Trackton respectables his 'wild big-time' life".

These seem very much like hunches to me... I'm thinking these could be hypothesized as reasons after spending some time in the community (as she did), but they could just as well be guessed after only a little time spent in the community, so why not ask Darrett himself? Overall, since this is not really related to a literacy practice, I don't suppose it's the most important issue of trustworthiness to have to resolve with Heath, but still, How does she know this? If I am to rely on this account (which I think actually leads more to validity than to scientific reliability, but I'm still weak on those nuances), I need to trust all details, not just those related to literacy... and I'm not too sure about this one. But then again, sometimes I'm pretty picky.

Nativity and Race as Social Constructs

Today’s brief discussions about the different ways Roadville and Trackton are presented in Ways With Words harks back (not that far back… just last week!) to our discussions on ways that cultural stereotypes in TESOL are sometimes so prevalent that they are also transparent. Several people today mentioned that they picked up on racial stereotypes in Heath’s book. Delineating differences based on race is in some ways similar to delineating differences based on “nativity” in English. Both race and nativity are social constructs, determined in large part by one’s visible/audible appearance and on some occasions by one’s birthplace. Imagine, though, someone expressing preferences for teachers/people/students/etc. based on race in the same way that some job advertisements, etc. express preferences for nativity.

Native-like English teacher sought. (perfectly acceptable according to some large institutions like TESOL)

White-like English teacher sought. This, of course, would not fly, and thank goodness for that!

Likewise, while racial identity is important to some who proclaim pride in their race (and perceived as oppressive to varying degrees - compare "Black Pride" to "White Pride", and we can start to see how colonialism plays in further to those interpretations), we saw from Matsuda’s short piece that nativity - or non-nativity - in English can also be a source of pride. So while many critical theorists (Samimy, Brutt-Griffler, Amin, to name a few) call for the dismantling of the NS/NNS dichotomy, it is also useful to look at the NS/NNS dichotomy as one that is not harmful in all contexts except when judgment is based solely on that criterion. (I don’t think I really believe that, but I can see how the dichotomy might be descriptive, if not always useful, so long as it doesn’t lead to judgments of value, worth, deficiency, or degrees of personhood).