Week 5: Paper 1 Prep

I chose to explore how linguistic diversity is dealt with in the classroom because I will begin my student teaching next semester and feel that this is an important topic to research. As a white female, I am entering into a school system whose population is made up of students whose backgrounds are much different from mine. With that in mind, I must be willing and able to adapt my teaching methods to fit the students I am teaching. To prepare myself for the diversity within schools, I am curious how other teachers have handled linguistic diversity in their classrooms. I don’t want to be a teacher that tries to eliminate the diversity within a body of students because diversity makes our society interesting.

Acquiring the ability to function in a dominant discourse need not mean that one must reject one’s home identity and values, for discourses are not static, but are shaped, however reluctantly, by those who participate within them and by the form of their participation. Many who have played significant roles in fighting for liberation of people of color have done so through the language of dominant discourses, from Fredrick Douglas to Ida B. Wells, to Mary McCloud Bethune, to Martin Luther King, to Malcolm X.

Delpit 552

This passage is important to my question about linguistic diversity within the classroom because it addresses the fact that students should maintain their cultural identity while acquiring a new discourse. The fact that Delpit highlights the successes of individuals who acquired a secondary discourse in schools shows the importance of students learning to SAE, the language of power, while still maintaining their own cultural identity. By giving students the knowledge of the language of power, teachers enable their students to become advocates for themselves, which is an important, lifelong skill.

The important concept/keywords are that “discourses are not static.” This is important because languages that are in contact with each other begin to change the other. As students sit in the classroom, they are being exposed to SAE and this incidental language contact can affect the students’ primary discourse, so whether or not the students want to participate in the secondary discourse, SAE, they are familiarized with it in the classroom. Some students will be resistant to learning a secondary discourse, but it is a necessary evil because students need to know how to speak SAE to succeed in the business world. Because of this, I feel that this is an important passage to consider when writing my paper because it highlights the need to show students the importance of learning the language of power, but also stresses that it needs to be done in a non-confrontational manner so that students will be willing to try to learn it. The question also extends to how is this achieved?