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1. Watch the video below and discuss the following questions with your elbow partner:                      What are your thoughts on Ms. Tovar being punished for speaking her Spanish?                                        Is one way of speaking better or worse than another? 

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1. Watch the video below and discuss the following questions with your elbow partner:                      What are your thoughts on Ms. Tovar being punished for speaking her Spanish?                                        Is one way of speaking better or worse than another? 

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Giving students a quick video to discuss with partners is a great way to get conversation going on a topic students may have many feelings about, but have never had time to sit with those feelings. Ms. Tovar's experiences being punished for speaking Spanish as an elementary student are extreme, but will allow students to sit with the concept that in education, one form of speech (formal White English) is often held as superior to other forms. The intent is for students to realize that there are multiple forms of speech within a school in terms of language, dialect, and level of formality, and to get a quick glimpse into some of the history surrounding non-white speakers.

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The Valley In The Struggle: Punished For Speaking Spanish

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2. Watch the documentary clip below and answer the following questions:                                                       Have you ever been embarrassed of the way you speak?                                                                                          Why do you think it took Tim Gunn (the last speaker) so long to say "Thank you, I'm proud of sounding gay?"

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2. Watch the documentary clip below and answer the following questions:                                                       Have you ever been embarrassed of the way you speak?                                                                                          Why do you think it took Tim Gunn (the last speaker) so long to say "Thank you, I'm proud of sounding gay?"

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I want students to key-in to the concept that a person is in effect taking a risk by delivering a speech act. By realizing (in their own experiences or others) that speaking is an act often fraught with embarrassment or worry to sound "correct," they will hopefully become more empathetic to the diverse speech that surrounds them in the classroom, and ideally more forgiving of themselves if they have felt like they have spoken "wrong" in their own lives.

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Do I Sound Gay? - Clip "Tim Gunn" I HD I IFC Films

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3. View the TED talk below, and answer the following questions:                                                                In which setting (with friends, at home, at school) was the speaker most articulate? Why?                                     In which setting ((with friends, at home, at school) do you feel most articulate? Why?

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3. View the TED talk below, and answer the following questions:                                                                In which setting (with friends, at home, at school) was the speaker most articulate? Why?                                     In which setting ((with friends, at home, at school) do you feel most articulate? Why?

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After viewing the first video, students have likely come to the conclusion that it is unfair to be punished for speaking a language other than English. With this baseline in mind, the goal is for them to broaden their idea of what constitutes "correct" or "articulate" English. Lyiscott's brilliant articulation in three distinct dialects of English will work on a few levels. First, students will start to warm to the idea that there is not ONE way to speak within a given language. Second, whether they can verbalize it or not, they will begin to understand the importance of context for a speech act. Thirdly, they may begin to apply the concept of different, but equal speech patterns to their own lived experiences.

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Jamila Lyiscott: 3 ways to speak English | TED

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4. Reflect on the illustration below:                                     What's the setting of the left side of the image?          What's the setting or situation of the right side?         Which speech feels more like you?

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4. Reflect on the illustration below:                                     What's the setting of the left side of the image?          What's the setting or situation of the right side?         Which speech feels more like you?

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This brilliant illustration so succinctly depicts the fracturing many people feel when they are asked (or forced) to speak in ways they are not comfortable. Though the speaker in the image is Black, I want students to be able to wrestle with the idea that speech acts are not consigned to a specific ethnicity. It is entirely common for me to hear a Black or Brown student of color speak the words, "Hello, how are you?" and "Ay, yo, what's good?" is normal speech for many White students. Depending on the specific class, alternative questions regarding the speaker's hairstyles could also be explored. The image is perfect in that it offers a low floor for all students to reflect, but also exhibits a high ceiling to get into some real depth on the pairing of natural hair on the left and straightened hair on the right.

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5. Read the excerpt from Malcom X's autobiography with your elbow partner and discuss the following questions:                                         Why was it important for Malcom X to be "functional" in "simple English?"                                       What allowed Malcolm X to feel "free" even though he was in prison?                                       

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5. Read the excerpt from Malcom X's autobiography with your elbow partner and discuss the following questions:                                         Why was it important for Malcom X to be "functional" in "simple English?"                                       What allowed Malcolm X to feel "free" even though he was in prison?                                       

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Students need to understand that although "simple" or "standard" or "formal" English is by no means the only way to speak, a certain amount of power is associated with the speech depending on the context. By connecting the "simple English" Malcolm X speaks about with the "freedom" he felt even while locked up at Charlestown Prison, students will begin to see the reason they are asked to speak and produce writing in formal, academic English. Depending on the class, this excerpt could be paired with additional writings or speech excerpts in which Malcolm X forgoes "simple English" for different dialects more suited for his audience or purpose.

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Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was one of the most articulate and powerful leaders of black America during the 1960s. A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he spent seven years in prison, where he educated himself and became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. In the days of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X emerged as the leading spokesman for black separatism, a philosophy that urged black Americans to cut political, social, and economic ties with the white community. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, the capital of the Muslim world, in 1964, he became an orthodox Muslim, adopted the Muslim name El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and distanced himself from the teachings of the black Muslims. He was assassinated in 1965. In the following excerpt from his autobiography (1965), coauthored with Alex Haley and published the year of his death, Malcolm X describes his self-education.

It was because of my letters that I happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some kind of a homemade education.

I became increasingly frustrated. at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad. In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there – I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional. How would I sound writing in slang, the way I would say it, something such as, “Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat, Elijah Muhammad-”

Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies.

It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I had tried to emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one
to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese. When I just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said. So I had come to the Norfolk Prison Colony still going through only book-reading motions. Pretty soon, I would have quit even these motions, unless I had received the motivation that I did.

I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary – to study, to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn’t even write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school.

I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying. In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks. I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words – immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the
words whose meanings I didn’t remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right now, that “aardvark” springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants.

I was so fascinated that I went on – I copied the dictionary’s next page. And the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally the dictionary’s A section
had filled a whole tablet-and I went on into the B’s. That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.

I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my visitors,… and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

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Learning to Read (excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X) – English 2150: Language as Power

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Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was one of the most articulate and powerful leaders of black America during the 1960s. A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he spent seven years in prison, where he educated himself and became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nati…

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6. After listening to your teacher read the article below, answer the following questions in writing:   Why didn't Deggans feel like he fit in his neighborhood?                                                                        How did Deggans work to become "fully himself" when he spoke?

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6. After listening to your teacher read the article below, answer the following questions in writing:   Why didn't Deggans feel like he fit in his neighborhood?                                                                        How did Deggans work to become "fully himself" when he spoke?

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I think it's very important for students to hear from speakers and learners who haven't always been as successful as they intended. We as teachers do a fine job presenting students with mentor texts and exemplar presentations, but non-examples and flubs like the ones exhibited in the Deggans article will help to humanize the speech failures our students work so hard to forget. By seeing the fact that Deggans, who struggled to find his speaking identity as a young kid is now a published author, students will have a real-life example of the growth mindset we so fervently push in edu-speak.

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"You guys doing anything today?"

That might sound like an ordinary, even dull question. But in my old neighborhood - mostly poor, entirely black '70s-era Gary, Ind. - that kind of question was grounds for serious ridicule. Or worse.

The problem: I had dared use a word none of my partners ever let pass through their lips, unless they were making fun of a white person: "guys."

It was a word that had seeped into my speech patterns almost without thinking since I reached the fifth grade, when my mother sent me to a white-dominated private school outside our neighborhood.

That word - "guys" - might earn smiles and nods of understanding in that world, but it brought the ultimate insult in my neighborhood. "You sound like them white boys you go to school with, you know that?" my friends would say, with a tone parked somewhere between amused disdain and outright disgust. "Why you always talkin' like them white boys?"

At age 10, I hadn't yet mastered an important tool to solve my struggles: code-switching.

For linguists, code-switching describes the simple act of switching between two languages in a conversation. But in today's increasingly multicultural, multiethnic society, the term's deeper meaning involves shifting between different cultures as you move through life's conversations - choosing your communication style based on the people you're dealing with.

It's the reason why some black people speak with more grammatical attention when in all-white settings - especially at work - but let their slang hang out when among friends or mostly black people.

And it's not just a black thing. Children of Boston who lay on the Southie accent when they visit the old neighborhood and Oklahoma kids who sound a bit more down home among fellow Southerners do it, too.

To understand how confusing this is for folks who don't code-switch, just consider the reaction of Fox News Channel personalities Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Both men seemed mystified when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama showed off his tendency to adopt a more preacherly cadence when speaking to a mostly black audience in a 2007 speech.

"This accent is absurd," Carlson concluded in a segment on Hannity's program last October, presenting Obama's altered speech as evidence of pandering. "This is a put-on."

Except, for those of us who practice code-switching every day, it is anything but.

Equal parts fitting in and making sure you're understood, code-switching comes as naturally to me as breathing 38 years later - a transition I'm sure our first black president has also mastered.

Still, it was a long road getting here, with stumbling blocks in surprising places.

For example, not long after I learned to rein in my use of the g-word, I got a lesson in politeness from a white friend, who agreed to do something even though he really probably didn't want to.

In my world, people were almost never that polite. But among white people, I missed the subtle signals that might reveal that my friend didn't want to offend, and I took his reactions at face value - which only led to resentment from him later.

Worse, I had an even tougher time judging the reactions of my white friends' parents, some of whom weren't all that sure they wanted a black kid from a tough neighborhood hanging out in their home but weren't quite sure how to say no, either.

The result was lots of canceled appointments and last-minute emergencies. With one boy in particular, my mother had to sit me down and explain: Son, perhaps there's another reason why his parents keep making excuses for why we can't get together.

Painful as some of these experiences were, I was grateful to have them in middle school and high school, so that when the time came to head for college, I already had some fluency navigating between different cultures (to make life even more interesting, I had a small crew of Latino friends from my hometown who I also spent time with in college, enjoying getting to know another group who were so much like young, African-Americans in some ways and so different in others).

I watched as too many others from my hometown and other predominantly black cities struggled in a university setting where suddenly they really were a minority.

For these kids, being members of a minority group was an abstraction, because everywhere they turned in their own lives - from school to the corner store and their own street corners - they were surrounded by others who looked and acted like them. (I used to tell my private-school classmates that, before I joined their world, the only time I saw white people outside of a department store or gas station was when they got lost driving through my neighborhood.)

But once these students left those mostly black neighborhoods for top colleges such as Indiana University, Purdue University or Notre Dame, they were suddenly surrounded by a culture they hadn't experienced firsthand. On top of the normal pressures of leaving home and family to take on a ramped-up academic challenge, they had to learn how to navigate white social structures while retaining their own sense of what it meant to be black.

I learned early on, thanks to that g-word nonsense, that expertly navigating another culture wasn't a rejection of where I'd come from or a signal that I was any less authentically black. And returning to my roots wasn't being phony or perpetrating a put-on.

It was being fully who I am.

This is a lesson too many other young people from too many other cultures have to learn the hard way - making their way in an American culture that too often still demands assimilation or marginalization.

As more cultures join America's melting pot, that's why code-switching remains so valuable.

It's a reminder to be fully who you are at all times, while making sure you're understood well enough to be valued, respected and considered.
Eric Deggans is the TV and media critic for the Tampa Bay Times, a freelance contributor to NPR and author of the new book, Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation, published by Palgrave Macmillan.

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Learning How To Code-Switch: Humbling, But Necessary

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For Eric Deggans, the TV and media critic for the Tampa Bay Times, code-switching wasn't always easy - and he learned it the hard way.

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7. After listening to your teacher read the article below, paraphrase (in your own words) the five main reasons people "code-switch."

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7. After listening to your teacher read the article below, paraphrase (in your own words) the five main reasons people "code-switch."

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As students are now familiar with the term "code-switching" from the previous article, I wanted a quick and succinct way for students to explore the main reasons speakers feel they need to change their speech to suit their purposes. This article doesn't focus on the student's personal speech or ask them to reflect in any way, but rather brings to light or academizes some of the speech acts they may already be exhibiting in their daily lives.

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Monday, April 8, marked the launch of Code Switch, our new blog covering race, ethnicity and culture. To commemorate the blog's launch, all week we solicited stories about code-switching - the practice of shifting the languages you use or the way you express yourself in your conversations.

People sent us hundreds of stories illustrating the many ways we code-switch and the many reasons for doing it. Five of those motivations came up again and again in the stories we read:

Eventually, I started code-switch-screaming English profanities.

1) Our lizard brains take over: The most common examples of code-switching were completely inadvertent; folks would slip into a different language or accent without even realizing it or intending to do it. One such story came from Lisa Okamoto, who told us she was born and raised in Los Angeles by two parents from Japan, a place she's visited all her life. This trip was particularly memorable (warning, profanity euphemisms ahead):

If you ever watched the original Ring movie, I think you will understand this: the Japanese take horror stories pretty seriously, but in a very creepy quiet way. I find Japanese horror movies and haunted houses to be ten times scarier than the American counter-part.

I went back to Japan with a friend during the summer of 2009, the height of haunted house season in Japan. (The Japanese have this concept that the summertime is the best time to tell scary stories, because the chill you feel from fright will cool you down during the humid months.) My friend loves scary stories, and she wanted to go into a haunted maze when we were visiting Yokohama. I protested and protested but eventually she convinced me to go through the haunted maze, instead of making her go through it alone.

The premise of the haunted maze was the following: The setting was a haunted middle school, where a little girl named Mi-chan died a tragic death. She died so suddenly that she didn't properly enter the after world, and her spirit was still lingering at the school. You were supposed to go through this maze with an amulet, find Mi-chan, and place it on her so that she can properly enter the afterlife.

We were handed a flashlight and an amulet prop, and entered into the maze. I already knew I was getting myself into trouble, but I didn't expect how scary it was going to be. It was terrifying. Periodically, you would hear quiet scratches and taps on the walls of the maze, with a voice saying, " Watashi wa Mi-Chan" - translation: I am Mi-Chan.

I was talking in Japanese when entering the maze, but I started losing control because I was just so scared. Eventually, I started code-switch-screaming English profanities - "OH MY F-ING GOD, GET ME THE F OUT OF HERE!" - etc., etc. You can fill in the blanks with your imagination. I consider myself fully bilingual, but I realized at this moment that, when I'm in a fight or flight/survivor instinct situation, my mind switches to English. (This is probably because I've lived in the US all my life, and never lived in Japan.)

I was yelling and screaming in English throughout the whole maze, and still hearing the " watashi wa Mi-Chan" voice here and there. But suddenly the voice said, " Watashi wa Mi-Chan... watashi wa... I am... My name is Mi-Chan," in the most awkward, Japanese-accented English possible. The staff had taken such pity on my rude profanity-stricken fear that they also code-switched for me. When I heard that awkward English, I literally fell to the floor and cried and laughed at the same time. I was so scared, but the English took me by such surprise, and I felt the oddest combination of release.

2) We want to fit in: Very often, people code-switch - both consciously and unconsciously - to act or talk more like those around them. While this can be effective, it can also be perilous, as John Davis told us:

I am a Spanish teacher in a high-needs school in Nashville. I grew up in a homogenous town in rural Pennsylvania. Foreign languages came easily for me, so I majored in Spanish and minored in French at the University of Pittsburgh. When I moved to my school in Nashville, I had to learn another language: Southern, African American English. I entered my learning experience with fervor. My students taught me almost as much as I taught them in my first years. Now that I am well versed in the language, I have trouble code switching back to Standard American English.

One day my principal walked into my room and asked me, "Mr. Davis, I didn't receive your editions to the School Improvement Plan." I replied, "Nah, you flaugin' bruh, I put that on your desk yesterday." My boss froze, with his jaw dropped and one eyebrow raised. After a moment he shook his head and said, "you're spending too much time with the kids." "My bad."

In our pitch to users for stories about code-switching, we asked jokingly whether anyone learned Farsi to eavesdrop on their in-laws. And sure enough, in came this story from Amy Proulx:

Yes, I actually did secretly learn Farsi to snoop on the in-laws. I married an Iranian-Canadian, and after torturing myself trying to learn through the standard language tapes and computer programs, I sort of gave up, and instead, started watching Iranian soap operas. Oh the drama, the intrigue, the suspicion and suspense! What a way to learn Farsi, through the vice of sappy television.

My bad habit lead to good Farsi skills, but my handle on slang and colloquial language was the real kicker. When at a memorial ceremony for my late-father-in-law, I proceed to intone a rather dramatic, but reasonably common Shi'ite prayer (courtesy of my TV watching). My brother-in-law, in the middle of this most dramatic and somber moment, nearly fell over laughing. He declared that I proclaimed this Shi'ite prayer with perfect diction and pronunciation, and that I was a model of a perfect daughter and sister-in-law. I was in the in-crowd with the in-laws, thanks to soap operas.

3) We want to get something: A lot of folks code-switch not just to fit in, but to actively ingratiate themselves to others. We can not tell you how many dozens of stories we got from people who work in service industries who said that a Southern accent is a surefire way to get better tips and more sympathetic customers. Apparently everyone who works in a restaurant picks up "y'all" immediately upon arriving at their job. If you can pull off the right accent in the right context, you can get all kinds of favors, as this story from Patti Hollingshead illustrates:

We lived in Ireland some years ago and noticed there were often two prices for goods and services - reasonable prices for the locals and much more expensive costs for others (Americans). It was not easy, but I practiced my Irish accent until we qualified for 'local pricing'. Still, they would often ask me where I was from, as my accent was anything but flawless. But I'd come up with the name of some obscure town hundreds of miles away, which explained my 'odd' Irish accent and usually satisfied them. Once, to my, "Ack, I'm from dahn twards Clara Bog," the guy responded in Gaelic.

I had no idea what he was saying. I continued to smile, laugh, and nod at what I hoped were appropriate times as he excitedly talked on and on. Finally, another English speaking customer entered the shop and he flipped back to English then whispered to me, "We need to be careful here (in Northern Ireland) about speaking Irish." "Oh, aye," I replied.

I pulled my wallet out to pay for my my flowers and he held up his hands, "No, me lass, keep yer money. 'twas a pleasure speakin' to ya."

4) We want to say something in secret: We collected many sweet stories of people code-switching in order to hide in plain sight, a habit most common among people in love. Because this tactic often relies on assumptions, it can get one in trouble, as Veronica Rodriguez can attest:

I am from Venezuela and speak Spanish and English fluently and without an accent in either language. However, I look what most would describe as "Middle Eastern," this means that not only do people assume that I am from Turkey or Lebanon and try to speak to me in Farsi or Arabic and become very disappointed when I don't, but many times Hispanic people assume that I don't speak Spanish. This ultimately leads to someone speaking very candidly around me thinking that I cannot understand what they are saying.

I also speak French fluently enough to get myself into trouble. Living in Chicago during college I encountered lots of interesting people on the L. We often chose to comment on some of these people in French rather than English or Spanish since it was far less likely that someone would understand us. One rainy afternoon a very nice-looking man ran into the train, and my friend and I made some comments to each other in French about how handsome he was. To our surprise, he answered back, " Merçi!" - in perfect French.

Suffice to say,we were both extremely embarrassed and decided that maybe we would keep our comments to ourselves from then on.

5) It helps us convey a thought: Certain concepts need that perfectbon mot to come across effectively. Many people switch languages or employ colloquialisms to express particular ideas, as in this story from Jennifer Monahan:

I ... work in a bilingual school, and my coworkers and I code-switch constantly. Here ... code-switching centers around lexical gaps: Nonprofit fundraising is a very American idea, so the French speakers tend to switch to English when that's the topic. Same with technology; if I learned about a piece of equipment or software in English I have a hard time discussing it in French. It's not just a language proficiency issue, my coworkers who are native French speakers follow the same pattern. So we tend to talk about "le smartboard" or "un programme de planned giving." And some concepts just don't translate. French kids eat lunch in the school cafeteria; the notion of bringing lunch from home is, well, foreign. So is the notion of having a designated container to bring your lunch from home. So we all refer to "le lunchbox."

The reasons people code-switch and the ways in which they do it are far more numerous than the few examples we've listed here. While many people told us they code-switched to fit in, for example, several also told us they did it to stand out. What the stories reiterated most of all, though, is what our colleague Gene Demby pointed out in his inaugural post: No matter your race, ethnicity, class or cultural background, you probably do it.

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Pretty much everyone shifts between different languages or ways of speaking in different context. From hundreds of stories you sent us, here are some of the common motivations behind it.

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8. After filling out your TPCASTT sheet for the poem below, answer the following question:                Why was it important for the speaker of the poem to be able to communicate in multiple ways?               

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8. After filling out your TPCASTT sheet for the poem below, answer the following question:                Why was it important for the speaker of the poem to be able to communicate in multiple ways?               

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After reading this Blanco poem, I literally woke my wife up to share it with her; she was not amused. But the poem is the perfect conduit for students to begin to understand that multiple modes of speech serve different purposes, and as such, are equally important. Poetry analysis can be a tough sell for high-schoolers, but the blend of English and Spanish Blanco utilizes is a linguistic technique many of my own students have mastered, and it's important for them to do academic work with speech that my closely mirror their own.

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First half of his life lived in Spanish: the long syntax
of las montañas that lined his village, the rhyme
of sol with his soul-a Cuban alma-that swayed
with las palmas, the sharp rhythm of his machete
cutting through caña, the syllables of his canarios
that sung into la brisa of the island home he left
to spell out the second half of his life in English-
the vernacular of New York City sleet, neon, glass-
and the brick factory where he learned to polish
steel twelve hours a day. Enough to save enough
to buy a used Spanish-English dictionary he kept
bedside like a bible-studied fifteen new words
after his prayers each night, then practiced them
on us the next day: Buenos días, indeed, my family.
Indeed más coffee. Have a good day today, indeed-
and again in the evening: Gracias to my bella wife,
indeed, for dinner. Hicistes tu homework, indeed?
La vida is indeed difícil. Indeed did indeed become
his favorite word, which, like the rest of his new life,
he never quite grasped: overused and misused often
to my embarrassment. Yet the word I most learned
to love and know him through: indeed, the exile who
tried to master the language he chose to master him,
indeed, the husband who refused to say I love you
in English to my mother, the man who died without
true translation. Indeed, meaning: in fact/ en efecto,
meaning: in reality/ de hecho, meaning to say now
what I always meant to tell him in both languages:
thank you/ gracias for surrendering the past tense
of your life so that I might conjugate myself here
in the present of this country, in truth/ así es, indeed.

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First half of his life lived in Spanish: the long syntaxof las montañas that lined his village, the rhymeof sol with his soul-a Cuban alma-that swayedwith las palmas, the sharp rhythm of his machete cutting through caña, the syllables of his canarios that sung into la brisa of the island home he leftto spell out the second half of his life in English-the vernacular of New York City sleet, neon, glass-and the brick factory where he learned to polishsteel twelve hours a day.

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9. After watching the skit below, be prepared to share your thoughts in a class discussion.

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9. After watching the skit below, be prepared to share your thoughts in a class discussion.

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For the final activity in the unit, I wanted to give students an open-ended chance to respond to a brilliant skit by Key & Peele. I made the conscious decision to forgo pointed questions in an effort to give more students a chance to respond to the skit in whatever way they saw fit. Humor allows for a certain amount of distance between the viewer and potentially controversial issues, and the skit toes the line beautifully. I also wanted to end the unit on a humorous note to express to students that although the concept of multiple modalities of speech is an important one, playing around with speech the way we play around with outfit choices can and should be achieved.

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*For instructor use only.*                                          10. After reading the article below, reflect on your own  teaching of "proper English." 

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*For instructor use only.*                                          10. After reading the article below, reflect on your own  teaching of "proper English." 

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Randolph's brilliant article eschews the performative politics I as a liberal White teacher often gravitate towards and replaces them with tangible ways to respect and honor the speech of my students. I wanted to include a teacher perspective as a reflective activity for a potential teacher to actually use where they to use these texts in their own classroom. Also, Randolph is a master at flipping between multiple modes of English writing depending on the purpose of his sentence or paragraph. It's important for teachers themselves to read the words of a real-life practitioner that embodies what it means to live and speak as a Black man in America in the year 2022.

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My mother was my first teacher. One of her first lessons was how to "play the game" of speaking "proper English." She taught me, as her father taught her, that knowledge is power and if one presents themselves as knowledgeable, they will be perceived as capable. Since Black people are often seen as incapable, we weren't allowed to plant that doubt or change anyone's mind about our abilities. When I was younger, this double consciousness of linguistic patterns was hard to maintain in school.

While in class, I would want to say to my teachers something like, "I'm finna axe you a question," but I would self-correct and say, "I'm about to ask you a question." In this instance, I needed to recode my natural dialect to one more mainstream-all to avoid ridicule and to avoid being a detriment to my race.

This type of language adjustment is known as "code-switching," which has long been a part of Black people's blueprint for surviving and for navigating interracial interactions. School communities should address the deep-rooted, anti-Black racism toward Black English (BE). But many in our education system are still reluctant to acknowledge the reality and validity of BE as its own language and its importance to the Black community.

According to the National Council of Teachers of English's (NCTE) 1974 statement Students' Right to Their Own Language , students have the right to "their own patterns and varieties of language-the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style."

When students use language, they do so as individuals with social histories. BE has been used to connect Black people to one another and to identify who we were since enslaved Africans created it on the remnants of West African mother tongues. Language is the most vivid and crucial key to identity-merely speaking is to put one's business out in the street, revealing one's parents, culture, and livelihood.

By that logic, an attack on one's language is an attack on their identity. When a teacher would correct my language use, I would develop an abrasive attitude toward them because I felt the need to defend my identity. At times, I viewed the requirement to adapt to Mainstream American English (MAE) and to assimilate into the mainstream culture as a rejection of my identity.

As a result, as a 9th and 10th grade English teacher, I focus on not perpetuating this racist status quo. I allow my students free use of any variation of English dialect on all formative assignments and assessments.

Here's why:

Educators should be cognizant of the merits of using both a student's home language and MAE in the classroom as well as striving to expand students' ability to become multiliterate. If educators can consider multiliteracy as a pedagogical practice, then we can engage with more students by including them in a range of linguistic abilities. This practice would provide multiple options for students in different multimodal assignments, including written works, projects, videos, and performances.

For example, if a student needs to write in MAE for a summative analysis essay, perhaps we could allow them to write their outline in their natural language. We could encourage students to do so with other creative or narrative written works as well. Multimodal assignments adapt to certain needs of students and allow students to practice and engage in multiple literacies, especially in traditional writing. I asked my entire class to write their answers to discussion questions based on Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue" in a shared Google Slides. If their responses answered the question, there was no need to police their language. And while my students come from extremely diverse backgrounds and no answer looks the same, they may all be correct.

In the slideshow, I asked the question, "Why does Amy Tan not like it when she refers to her mother's English as 'broken' or 'fractured?' "&nbsp; One student wrote, in MAE, "It suggests that there is something wrong with the way her mother speaks, and there isn't." Another replied in a language variation similar to Amy Tan's mother, "Amy Tan not like it when she say her mom English is broken because if she understand her mom, then there is nothing wrong with how she talk." One more student wrote in BE, "She (Amy Tan) felt bad because wasn't nothing wrong with how her mom talks. She and other Chinese people could understand her mom. Even I could, and I ain't even Chinese." All students answered in their own language style, and all students' answers were correct.

We need to nurture our students' language skills and not police them. This is especially true of our Black students. Language is how students communicate mastery of concepts. We should not focus on how they communicate that mastery, but on whether or not they've mastered the concept or content.&nbsp; I understand the desire to teach MAE. Not utilizing two codes of language would handicap my diverse student body's chances of success in a professional or academic environment where writing or speaking in MAE is the expectation. But I also realize that upholding MAE as the norm systematically denounces BE as a legitimate language variety. So, what can educators and school districts do?

Here are some recommendations:

Educators need to arm themselves with knowledge and teach their students the historical, social, and cultural context around BE and MAE. Even code-switching in the classroom could demonstrate students' acceptance of other linguistic styles.

Educators should also develop a Black English Consciousness (a phrase coined by Michigan State professor April Baker-Bell), where we lose the "deficit" mindset and educate others on how to unlearn White supremacist language standards and unravel anti-Black linguistic racism.

Those in power need to know that BE is not broken English and need to give our students room to speak and write freely. While this is a tall task, school districts must be intentional with this work; it's difficult when educators often fold to the pressures and ease of White supremacist thinking.

School communities should also address this deep-rooted, anti-black racism toward BE.

How do we compel educators to adopt a new view of BE in academics? Do we simply teach students to "play the game?" Or do we openly challenge the multiple, institutional structures of anti-Black racism that shape language politics? To all district-level administrators, principals, department chairs, and all the way down to my fellow teachers: Don't get it twisted. Black lives ain't never gon' matter in the classroom until Black English does. For real, for real.

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Black Lives Ain't Never Gon' Matter in the Classroom Until Black English Does

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My mother was my first teacher. One of her first lessons was how to "play the game" of speaking "proper English." She taught me, as her father taught her, that knowledge is power and if one presents t