3351 Double Entry Journal #2

"As soon as she opened her mouth"




Quote




""I believe that if we claim to allow equal access to educational opportunity to all children in our school then we must. But I also know that whether we interpret differences among children--or adults--as deficit or difference depends primarily on our preconceptions, attitudes toward, and stereotypes we hold toward the individual children's communities and cultures. If the child's family is poor, his parents under-educated, his dialect nonstandard, then we are much more likely to interpret experiential difference as a deficit in the child, in the parents, in the home, in the sociocultural community within which this child has grown up. And when we do this, we play God, conferring or denying educational opportunity to individual, socioculturally different, children. And we do not have the right to do this (Gates 2002).


Response




   I feel this quote strikes home to all of us. How many times have you witnessed a teacher treat a child like they were slow in a classroom just because they had on old clothes or even because they might have a speech problem? How many times have you yourself thought some one was dumb because of their accent or because of where they came from. I have witnessed this here at this college when a professor said that High School students in southern West Virginia were not as educated as those from the northern part of the state. As a educator I feel you should strive to never do this, you must put your biases aside or simply get out of the educational field. The thing that bothers me the most is that I know children are being judged by teachers every day and being seen as having a learning deficit when they don't. The ones with the true learning deficits are those teachers who do this.


Here is a video from YouTube that talks about strategies on teaching literacy.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/r5qW2ULuyt8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Questions and Answers




What is literacy knowledge? Literacy knowledge is the concepts children learn as when they are younger from from watching and learning people around them reading and writing. A example of non print literacy knowledge would be when a young child wants their parent to read by talking because they do not yet get the concept of silent reading. A example of print literacy knowledge would be when a child scribbles on a peace of paper and asks you what did I write. They are starting to grasp the concept of written language.

How do stereotypes interfere with literacy instruction? By labeling a student because of a stereotype we are not truly seeing if a child has a literacy deficit or if they just don't have the experience.

How do schools and teachers contribute to poor literacy instruction in school? Schools and teachers do not focus on the experience differences but instead they are just labeling them as being deficit and moving them on. By doing this the child falls farther behind until they finally give up all together.

What is the relationship between language, social class, and the denial of educational opportunity? I see the relationship between these three things as this, if someone who sounds different when they speak and comes from a poor class tries to make sure their child is being given a proper education and not just passed from grade to grade they will be ignored when they voice this to the schools. By ignoring a uneducated poor families concerns for their child's education then that child is being denied their educational opportunity.

What are some misconceptions about the relationship between language and literacy? The biggest misconception about language and literacy is that if someone has a different dialect when they speak to often they are thought of as being illiterate.

What can schools and teachers do to improve literacy instruction? They must believe that all children from every class are learners. Secondly they need to not give up on any child.

How do you feel about the term "Proper English"? I feel that there is no such thing as "Proper English" only that which is suitable for the moment.




Sources


Gates, P. (2002). As soon as she opened her mouth. In L. Delpit & J. Dowdy (Eds.), In The skin that we speak: An anthology of essays on language and power (pp. 135-140).


ReadingRecoveryCNA. (2010, July 16). Effective literacy practices - Teaching for Transfer - Strategic Activity. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Retrieved January 23, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5qW2ULuyt8




"Tall tales of Appalachia"


Quote


"The reality show that CBS is considering not only exploits my part of the world, it also separates struggling Appalachians from the rest of the American poor. If a television network proposed a ''real life'' show treating poor African-Americans, Latinos, American Indians, Asians or Jews as curiosities, they, and all Americans of good will, would be justifiably outraged (O'Brien 2003)."


Response


   I decided on this quote because it is very true. How is labeling people from Appalachia hillbillies any different then labeling others? He is right that if you did this to another group of people that everybody would be outraged about it but when you do it about hillbillies people just laugh. I wonder how they would feel if there were shows making fun of their heritage. The sad thing is that the people laughing and making the jokes never have even been to Appalachia, more then likely they couldn't even point it out on a map. So to me who is really the ignorant ones?


   This video I fount on YouTube is some of the reasons why people think that people from Appalachia are just dumb hillbillies. This is just one family in Kentucky what if we went to New York and did a documentary on a family living in a ghetto and on drugs should we then say everyone from New York is poor druggies?
  <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/z9wyOJ4di0g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Sources


O'Brien, J. (2003, May 10). Tall tales of Appalachia. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/opinion/tall-tales-of-appalachia.html


Kennedy, R (2007, June 28) American Hollow (1/10) - YouTube. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Retrieved January 22, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9wyOJ4di0g