The readings this week all centered around the idea of language and rights or ownership of that language. As an elementary school educator, it is crucial for my students to be able to communicate in their home language and for me to be able to respond to them in a language that is familiar to them. Yet, we still have the divide in our elementary schools between General Education students who are taught in English and Bilingual Education students who are taught in their home language until they reach middle school. Another interesting point is that these Bilingual students are supposed to learn in both languages and are required to take assessments in both English and Spanish. The question for me as an educator then becomes am I honoring their home language by forcing them to learn in another language? If this is the expectation in public education, how can we preserve the language rights of students in higher education?
One of the ideas that resonated with me in the Introduction was how it discussed the objective of some colleges during the ratification period of the SRTOL. It stated that, “many colleges offered open admissions programs- a physical manifestation of the rebalancing of modernity through a postmodern project undertaken to foster greater equity in American education”(3). Because of this push towards linguistic equity, colleges and universities were faced with a problem they had not encountered before--a huge, diverse population of learners speaking different languages, learning in different styles, and communicating in ways that were not seen as academically sound. Academia has to address the idea of linguistic pluralism as schools like University of Houston-Downtown have extremely diverse populations of students whose first language is not English. As academics, it is unfair to force a student to only be able to process information in English, yet, there are policies and laws in some states that require “English only” instruction. Students benefit from having their instruction be in their home language, yet, political agendas clash with those ideologies. This is a complicated topic of study and ask potential college level instructors, it is one that we cannot escape from. How do we make learning for our freshmen level English Language Learners equitable in comparison to their native speaking counterparts? What differentiation needs to be done in order to level the academic playing field? Is this something that can be universally accepted in this age of technology and digital learning? This reading raises more questions than it seems to answer, but across the other readings, we see some consensus and some evidence of how to address the issue.
For me, the hardest part of these readings comes when we discuss the idea of “African American languages, texts, and culture scholars”(4). I struggled with reading Kinloch’s work because I do not understand the duality between ‘Black English’ and ‘Academic English’. Yes, I am a woman of color, yet, I am a degreed educator and therefore I use ‘Academic English’ teach and to write. Even though I am a woman of color, I have always spoken a certain way. I have been told that I ‘speak like a white person’ or that ‘I sound white on the phone’. It is hard to articulate my thoughts on the topic of being a traitor to Black English when it is something that I never really embraced in the first place. I grew up in the projects in Trenton, New Jersey, but my schooling was in Princeton, New Jersey amongst middle class Caucasian girls and a small group of other ethnicities. I spoke the way my peers spoke, the way my teachers spoke. When I went home on the bus and interacted with my family, I still used the language I was comfortable with, my academic language. While the CCCC struggled with their role in this language rights debate, so do the people at the heart of the debate who either have to assimilate or be left behind.
I think that if we embrace what the Response to “The Student’s Right to Their Own Language” says, there might be some room for improvement. It stated that, “it is our moral and professional responsibility to learn how to meet the challenge of illiteracy wisely and humanely and imaginatively”(216). It has been cited time and again that students learn best in their home language and those who are not instructed in that language fail. Why can’t we continue to foster an ideal of dual language instruction beyond the public education arena? Students should be able to learn in the language that is comfortable for them and instructors should be willing to adjust their pedagogical ideologies to ensure that all students have equal access to a quality education.
One of the ideas that resonated with me in the Introduction was how it discussed the objective of some colleges during the ratification period of the SRTOL. It stated that, “many colleges offered open admissions programs- a physical manifestation of the rebalancing of modernity through a postmodern project undertaken to foster greater equity in American education”(3). Because of this push towards linguistic equity, colleges and universities were faced with a problem they had not encountered before--a huge, diverse population of learners speaking different languages, learning in different styles, and communicating in ways that were not seen as academically sound. Academia has to address the idea of linguistic pluralism as schools like University of Houston-Downtown have extremely diverse populations of students whose first language is not English. As academics, it is unfair to force a student to only be able to process information in English, yet, there are policies and laws in some states that require “English only” instruction. Students benefit from having their instruction be in their home language, yet, political agendas clash with those ideologies. This is a complicated topic of study and ask potential college level instructors, it is one that we cannot escape from. How do we make learning for our freshmen level English Language Learners equitable in comparison to their native speaking counterparts? What differentiation needs to be done in order to level the academic playing field? Is this something that can be universally accepted in this age of technology and digital learning? This reading raises more questions than it seems to answer, but across the other readings, we see some consensus and some evidence of how to address the issue.
For me, the hardest part of these readings comes when we discuss the idea of “African American languages, texts, and culture scholars”(4). I struggled with reading Kinloch’s work because I do not understand the duality between ‘Black English’ and ‘Academic English’. Yes, I am a woman of color, yet, I am a degreed educator and therefore I use ‘Academic English’ teach and to write. Even though I am a woman of color, I have always spoken a certain way. I have been told that I ‘speak like a white person’ or that ‘I sound white on the phone’. It is hard to articulate my thoughts on the topic of being a traitor to Black English when it is something that I never really embraced in the first place. I grew up in the projects in Trenton, New Jersey, but my schooling was in Princeton, New Jersey amongst middle class Caucasian girls and a small group of other ethnicities. I spoke the way my peers spoke, the way my teachers spoke. When I went home on the bus and interacted with my family, I still used the language I was comfortable with, my academic language. While the CCCC struggled with their role in this language rights debate, so do the people at the heart of the debate who either have to assimilate or be left behind.
I think that if we embrace what the Response to “The Student’s Right to Their Own Language” says, there might be some room for improvement. It stated that, “it is our moral and professional responsibility to learn how to meet the challenge of illiteracy wisely and humanely and imaginatively”(216). It has been cited time and again that students learn best in their home language and those who are not instructed in that language fail. Why can’t we continue to foster an ideal of dual language instruction beyond the public education arena? Students should be able to learn in the language that is comfortable for them and instructors should be willing to adjust their pedagogical ideologies to ensure that all students have equal access to a quality education.
One of the observations I made was a correlation between your post and the classroom conversation about using student language for comprehension. In your post, you talk about how you take the time to understand what your students are saying by learning their language. I believe Julia also pointed out that she uses this same method to help with students relationships in her classrooms. I find this to be an interesting method because both you and Julia are using the method at times in different ways. One is at times of relatability and the other mostly for educational purposes. Both means are effective and work towards writing comprehension. I am fascinated with this strategy, mostly because I have never seen anything like this take place in a classroom. Do you think that the use of a students language should be used to help with comprehension and relatability in a classroom, should this method be something teachers are trained in across all elementary schools, and if so what do you think that would that look like?
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