Dominant Discourse and a Multicultural Society

The first chapter I read, titled "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse," talked about the way teachers should approach the language arts education of students who learned to speak in a discourse other than the dominant one. An example of non-dominant discourse might be ebonics, or the way that many African-Americans may speak. Most of the time, the dominant discourse is that of academia, and it is a very proper way of speaking. The author mainly focused on the fact that students will need to know how to speak in the dominant discourse, but that they shouldn't be discouraged from developing their home way of writing and speaking. One interesting point was that teachers should not encourage students in their home discourse to a point that they don't learn the dominant discourse. This can actually be harmful to the students, because they then are never taught the language arts in a way that they can use it to be successful in the larger (dominant discourse-oriented) society.

The second chapter, titled "Education in a Multicultural Society," was mostly a summary of a lot of good points made throughout the book. I was reminded that teachers must learn to use the students' upbringings and home culture as a way to connect with them. I also was glad that the author again touched on the issues in teacher education programs, such as the 'Eurocentric curriculum' and lack of appreciation for diverse literary discourses. She clarified something for me as well: teachers do not necessarily need to be of the same cultural backgrounds as their students, but rather would do well to understand the diverse backgrounds represented among their students. Formerly, I wrote that I believed the author was in favor of having students always be taught by someone of the same cultural background (to reduce miscommunications).

In the second chapter, it gave me more hope for my future teaching career. After doing some observation in a multicultural school, I felt that I would be unqualified to teach students like this because I am caucasian. When I was there, I was comfortable conversing with and relating to the students, but it seems we are usually taught that students learn best from those who are most like them. Also, one of my student teaching placements for next semester is in a school that has a predominantly African-American student body. I will now be confident that, if I consider their culture and upbringing, I can still relate to my students and help them learn in a way that is best for them.

This book has taught me both general and specific practices to consider while teaching in a multicultural environment. For example, I now know that I need to be more direct in the way I ask students from an African-American background to complete tasks. Some cultures, I learned, are not in favor of sharing opinion publicly or speaking for another person, so I will consider this while planning activities for my students. I also know that I should encourage students to develop both their home discourse and the dominant discourse (rather than emphasizing one as "better"). One last idea, which I found most important, is to be very knowledgeable (yet open to learning) about the cultures and backgrounds of those you teach--at any level and in any type of environment.

I still wonder how I would approach the subject of cultural bias if I saw it in another (more experienced) educator. I would additionally like to put into practice the ideas encountered in the text. I would like to further explore the Native American, Alaskan, and Asian cultures, because I don't feel like I have a good grasp on how to teach students from these backgrounds.

For further professional development, I am choosing to read "You Wouldn't Understand: White Teachers in Multiethnic Classrooms" by Sarah Pearce. It appears to touch on a lot of the same issues as the other books, but I believe that it adds to the discussion by talking about some cultures other than the ones Lisa Delpit touched on.

Diversity in Teacher Education Programs

In the chapters titled "Teachers' Voices" and "Cross-Cultural Confusions", Lisa Delpit talks about the gap between amounts of non-white students and non-white teachers. She argues that students who are taught by a teacher of a different ethnicity have trouble succeeding in the classroom. She gives several examples of discrimination towards Native American, black, and Alaskan students in teacher preparation programs, and argues that the challenges they faced turned them away from a career in teaching. She believes that most white teachers and professors have a certain "white way" of teaching that is not agreeable with the way diverse students are used to being taught. If there were more cultural understanding in teacher preparation programs, she believes that there would be more cultural diversity in today's American teaching force.

In my experience, this does happen, though not in the way that she says it does. It is possible that there is a lot of racial discrimination in the way classes are taught at some colleges, but I believe that the discrimination doesn't stop there. Colleges can discriminate in several aspects of the way they teach education. For example, here at Trinity, there is a lot of emphasis on a Christian Reformed worldview. While I agree that this may be a valid way to look at the world, it has not been any sort of foundation for me in my life before coming here. I grew up in a Christian home, but it is a struggle for me to think from a Reformed perspective, because that is not my home denomination. The process of structuring classes and assignments around creation, fall, redemption, and new creation is a totally new and strange concept to me. For me, this "Reformed" way of teaching has been a struggle while completing assignments, just like the "white way" of teaching is a struggle for students from other cultures. I know that the struggles I encounter may not be as over-arching as cultural struggles, but I feel that I will have some idea of how my students from different cultures feel when encountering my teaching style. I plan to take the cultural differences between me and my students and use them as a reason to know the students on an even deeper level.

Language Differences

These few chapters talked about a lot of language differences that appear in the classroom. The first chapter I read, titled "Language Diversity and Learning," focused mostly on the dialect used in most American classrooms, and how this almost always affects the students' learning if the students speak a different English dialect at home. The second chapter that I read for today, titled "The Vilis Tokples Schools of Papua New Guinea," told of the multilingual nation that encountered some issues in setting up an maintaining the village schools on the islands of this nation. The third chapter, "Hello Grandfather: Lessons from Alaska," was centered on how students from different cultures see literary context at different levels of importance.

I recently experienced the trouble that can come from differences in language in a classroom. One of my classes here required us to write a paper about an excerpt we read. I read the excerpt, wrote the paper about my view of and critique of the article (which was the assignment), and got a terrible grade when it was returned. I went to talk to the professor, completely confused as to why I got such a horrible grade. The professor basically told me that I had completely misunderstood the author's main point, and that my critique suffered because of this. However, I had just seen the main point in a different light than what my professor had seen. I don't understand why I was given this grade on a paper-simply because I had seen something differently-but I do think it was due to a language difference. The class is a general education requirement, so I have been trained to think and read in a different way than is normal for this particular discipline. If I had been initially taught how to read in this type of class, I might succeed more. However, I am just expected to know the differences between education classes and this discipline without ever being explicitly taught these differences, which makes it difficult for me to want to try my best in that class.

If I am to promote peace and justice in this world, I need to consider my students' cultural background and language. I can best serve their learning if I am sensitive to the ways that they view the world and process information, and also if I enhance--rather than inhibit--their cultural upbringing. Because we are all sinners, we often think about ourself before we think of others. I would sometimes rather make a lesson that will impress my teacher, when really I should be planning one that will really get to the heart of the students' best learning and tap into their cultural knowledge. I need to first plan my teaching around the students' needs, and then worry about standards and teaching them things that the system requires. This might mean that I work on getting to know my students' social skills in my classroom before I tackle academic subjects, but students will learn best if I understand the home culture of each student in the classroom. By doing this, I will be showing God's love by caring about them as individuals who may be different from me.

Black Education and Cultural Powers

In the introduction and the first two chapters of the book, Lisa Delpit tells a few different stories about her encounters with cultural differences between blacks or poor people and whites. She is a black woman who tells and refers back to the encounters she has had when trying to define how to best teach writing to black students in a classroom. Blacks, she says, would rather have more emphasis on skills than on fluency, because fluency is already a strength for most black people. Even if white people do not see the fluency, it is present, and can be seen in the students' speaking and musical/rap interests and talents. Throughout her whole life, she has struggled with figuring out whether she believes in emphasis on skills or emphasis on fluency. While no definite conclusions were made about this, she decided that it is important to teach students in the way that they will succeed in the larger world.

Delpit defines the larger world as somewhere in which a "culture of power" is the dominant culture. To her, this "culture of power" defines the way in which the world runs, so students need to learn this way in order to succeed throughout life. When she talked with black parents, she discovered that the parents were begging to have their children learn 'skills' rather than 'fluency', because it will help them succeed in life (and it is also where these students struggle most). Students from white middle-class culture tend to learn 'skills' at home, so they struggle with fluency, but this doesn't matter, because the world does not worry much about this deficit. On the other hand, because black and poor students are not taught as many writing 'skills' at home, they need instruction. The author also went into detail about the reason that teachers and students of a different ethnicity do not understand each other. She offered the idea that those from a black culture are more likely to directly state their opinions, needs, desires, and instructions. Those from a middle-class white culture are more likely to state things indirectly. When a student, who is used to being directly commanded to do something, is given an indirect question-type command from a teacher or authority figure, it is often misunderstood as a suggestion (rather than a command). While these are sometimes untrue in certain cultural situations, they can give a basic way to begin understanding cultural differences.

I witnessed the writing differences argument while at my previous practicum placement. This was at an elementary school in which almost all of the students are black, with a few white and Hispanic students attending as well. In this special education classroom, the students were learning to write a short essay. The teacher (who is white) had tried to get the students to understand, but it wasn't working very well, so I volunteered to help teach it one day. I had observed that the students were having trouble with structure, so I developed an outline for them to follow. The outline detailed the types of sentences that should be within each paragraph. This appeared to help the students, and I believe that it may have been that it was a type of direct instruction. The strategies that the teacher had been using were not extremely clear to the students, because she had tried to deal with each individual issue as it came up. I think that the students responded very positively when given some clear guidelines to follow while writing. I don't think that it was the perfect method for teaching writing, but I do think that I learned something that day about teaching students of a different culture.

Summary and Explanation

I chose this book because it looked interesting. I also felt that it would be a good resource to study, as it doesn't appear to be a book that focuses on the problem, but rather explores, in great depth, the things we should know and focus on to find a solution. The chapter titles tell me that each one will focus on a different type of multicultural conflict. Some chapter titles were: "The Vilis Tokples Schools of Papua New Guinea," "Cross-cultural Confusions in Teacher Assessment," and "Language Diversity and Learning." The book had also been listed in Teacher Magazine as a "Great Book" and had won several other awards.