Critical Reflection--Loewenthal

This past school year, I helped coach the 8th grade mock trial team. I worked with a group of three lawyers to guide 17 students through the competition. Many of the students were in one of my sections of ELA as well. Almost immediately upon meeting the students, the lawyers began to harp on the students about their grammar and language. They told the students that to succeed in life they need to speak “proper” English, to say “ask,” not “aks,” never “you was,” always “you were,” and a cross-examiner could never “be grillin’ me” because that is an improper expression. The students responded well to these critiques and criticisms at first, and because they so desperately wanted to win the competition, they would correct each other according to the lawyers’ standards. But, after the competition ended, so did the students’ complacent attitude about the lawyers’ tactics.

About one week after the final round (which, sadly, we failed to reach by one level), the lawyers returned to school to present the students with awards. After doing so, the lead lawyer began to talk to the students, as she had many times throughout the semester, about their futures, staying in school, and doing well in their studies. She said again, quite forcefully, “SPEAK PROPER ENGLISH AT ALL TIMES.” (I should mention that all of lawyers, as well as I, are white; none of the students are white.) One student said, “Isn’t that kind of umm racist?” It was the first sign of resistance by a student that the lawyers had witnessed on this topic.

I responded before the lawyer could speak. I did so because something about the competition having ended increased my resistance to the lawyers as well. I had endured their eradicationist approach to language instruction, an approach that dictates only one right way of speaking English (Redd, 2005). I tolerated their use of this method as an experiment: as a first year teacher I really was not sure how much of my students’ language I should change, or in what context I should try to change it, if at all, while still trying to make them better readers and writers. But hearing the lawyers speak to the students as they did at that final meeting shifted me even more toward believing in the approach with which I had experimented in my classroom: honoring students’ home, social, and other discourses, while showing them how these are similar and different from an academic discourse (Baker, 2002). I moved to the front of the classroom and explained to the students, and the lawyers, that slang and different grammatical structures are culturally important and have their place, but to remember to speak academic English in professional settings like a courtroom.

As I saw the students’ anger rise at the lawyer’s comment about language, I realized again how important it is to honor and appreciate the different discourses students bring to the classroom. These discourses are sources of identity for my students, and I think they will appreciate me more as a teacher if they see that I respect who they are. I think language is a much more sensitive issue than people, especially some educators with whom I have worked, realize, and if we want to get through to students to empower them with the skills they need for professional success, we have to earn their trust. I would not trust someone if I thought they were trying to mold me into someone I am not; I would, however, trust someone who I believed was imparting useful information that could help me reach my goals.

I think it helps to look at African American English, which after reading Redd (2005) I realized is the basis for much of my students’ dialogue, as a language unto itself. It has rules and structures the same way “standard” English does (Redd, 2005). When we teach Spanish speakers how to speak English, we translate from Spanish to English and show them parallel structures. A first step in teaching academic English is to do the same with African American English. When put into practice, this approach, the Bridge Approach, allows students to do first drafts in their own discourse and then translate them into standard written English (Redd, 2005).

I do think teachers should take some care in suggesting that students who speak African American English speak an entirely different language. After all, these students do see themselves as English speakers, and they are absolutely correct to see themselves as such. I think it is helpful for a teacher to approach lessons as though he/she is comparing two languages, as diagramming the linguistic differences in this manner could be most helpful to students’ learning. But, the issue here is how to be sensitive and effective at the same time, so it may be best to speak to the students about their use of different discourses rather than entirely different languages. Most importantly, I think the teacher needs to be sincere: engage students in conversation about why there is one accepted academic discourse, and the merits and demerits of there being only one such discourse. I would include in the debate whether it may be more worthwhile to fight the notion of there being such a narrow window of acceptance, or, would conforming and learning this discourse in reality give the students more power. I suggest such a debate because I think students should think critically about what they are learning and about why speaking “proper” English brings with it all of the issues it does.

References

Baker, J. (2002). Trilinguilism. In L. Delpit & J. K. Dowdy, eds. The
skin that we speak. NYC: The New Press.

Redd, T. M. & Webb, K. S. (2005). A teacher’s introduction to African American English: What a writing teacher should know. Urbana, IL: NCTE.