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Lyiscott's "Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color"

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Lyiscott's "Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color"

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Dr. Jamila Lyiscott’s TedxTalk, “Why English Class Is Silencing Students of Color” reaffirmed my beliefs about cultural capital and the linguistic richness that my students bring into my classroom.  As a native Spanish speaker, I understand how intimidating English can be to many of my students-it certainly was to me. Early in the semester, I ask them to write about a positive or negative educational experience, and, more often than not, they choose to write about a negative experience in which they were belittled in some way because of the way in which they expressed themselves in a class. This exercise opens the door to thoughtful conversations about how their linguistic ability has been policed within academic spaces.  Then, when we read Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue,” my students are overwhelmingly surprised at how much they identify with her sentiments and the idea that a language could be considered ‘broken.’ This leads to other conversations and activities about context and formality. While I agree that in many ways it is our job to prepare our students for what lies ahead of them in the workforce, I also firmly believe that the experiences, knowledge, and cultural capital that they bring into class enables them to not only navigate but excel in academia.  It just needs to be presented to them that way. As a side note, in gamer language ‘broken’ means ‘too powerful.’

-Nelly Brashear

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As I listened to Lyiscott's more recent TED Talk, I found myself reflecting on what I do in the classroom, how students respond, and what my limitations are in any work to disrupt an old classroom paradigm or build a new one. In my English 110, I use Lyiscott's "3 Ways to Speak English" as part of our exploration of code switching, a unit which guides students to reflect on an awareness of their social identities and those identities' ties to language. In addition to awareness, I seek to invite students toward limited actualization. Explaining the work of actualization, Lyiscott says, we must  "disrupt] the traditional notions of what it means to read and write in our world, right, what it means to inscribe yourself into the narrative of history." This is also something I invite students to do by reflecting on their own positionality as researchers and writers. Some students find this work refreshing.  "I never paid attention to this before," some exclaim. Some are baffled. "I don't know how to write about myself," or "I can't connect" to an essay that asks for linguistic exploration and self-reflection, they say. Students' experiences before reaching my classroom may be an obstacle to engaging in new paradigms, just as my own experiences seems to limit what I do and imagine.

I teach what I learned and what helped me navigate through 12 years of college. Yes, I teach far differently than the ways I was taught.  Incrementally, I make changes to how I teach the skills I am called upon to teach, reaching toward equity, but I have neither the understanding nor energy to create new paradigms of learning, to challenge the institution. My role is to teach certain skills that students need in their other classes and in the working world. How does one make a new paradigm in the classroom without disrupting that task? I am aware that Lyiscott speaks of doing this work in the classroom, but I don't have a sense of what this really looks like. Yes, she gives examples. Sitting in circles? Been there; done that. But that doesn't sound adequate to match the liberation she describes. Are we talking about revolution in the classroom? Or little steps to change how we do things? What I am articulating here is the frustration I feel when I read, watch, and listen to educators' ideas on equity and pedagogical revolution. The ideas are there. What is the practice?

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Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color | Jamila Lyiscott 

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Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color | Jamila Lyiscott 

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I enjoyed listening and watching Lyiscott's discussion of language, literacy, and the impact of this intersection on students of color. I found that much of what her discussion was focused on also resonated very heavily with Emdin's "Ratchetdemic", specifically the need for us to understand our positionality and our identities first in order to successfully navigate the classroom space as well as her use of hip-hop literacy in the classroom. The especially liked the paradigm principles that were presented as I think these may be powerful tools for constructing assignments and lectures in the future. As many have noted, although I have provided specific assignments in the past that allow more linguistic freedom, after viewing Lyiscott's talk, I fear that in doing so I am only reiterating the notion that different versions of English are only appropriate in specific situations. I'm curious to know if anyone else has had more success in ensuring that multiple Englishes are used and valued in the classroom throughout the entire semester and if so, how that has been implemented. I plan to do a Unit on language and literacy next semester, but would like to ensure it remains more of a constant.
-Jessica Raymond

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As I listened to Ms. Lysicott's lecture, I thought of the ways that we might attempt to help students bring in all of the facets of their linguistic identities by integrating instruction on linguistic difference into our curriculum. I'm still unsure, though, of how this can be accomplished.

First, I want to note that Ms. Lysicott's lecture was such a pleasure to listen to because she so succinctly synthesizes an explanation of Black Language - including Black English - with composition studies. I think that part of the reason why this video resonated with me so much is because seeing another Black woman speaking on this topic - and bringing in linguistics to show that it is directly tied to composition studies - was so affirming.

I think that it is important for us to have support in understanding how to teach linguistic diversity in composition, and I think that this guidance for professors should coincide with an effort towards systemic change at the institutional level. In my classroom, I am able to bring in discussions of linguistic variation and asymmetrical power structures that impact the choice to use one language over others (Mainstream American English, which is often coded as "white") because I had instructors who taught me about this and encouraged my research into these areas. My hope is that other professors who would like to learn more about linguistic diversity can access effective training and support in curriculum development for it.

On the other hand, I think that we need institutional shifts that can empower students. Discussions around grammar are difficult to have because, in composition classrooms, we are unable to really focus on teaching the layers of nuance in grammar studies while also helping students learn strategies for developing their ideas and presenting them in a way that is impactful. I think that grammar is essential for communities of color to have access to, though. When I teach the grammar course (English 314), I can see how students - mostly of color - want to learn why Mainstream American English uses the structures that it uses and how those structures differ from varieties such as Black English (which is perhaps the most widely accessible - and popularized, and appropriated - variety of English that is not coded as "white"). In understanding the "why", they seem to feel empowered in their writing. As a Black woman, too, who was a student who took grammar and felt empowered, I know the experience they are having as writers and readers because I had it, too.

I do not have a solution for this, really. I think that we do not have time in our composition classes to focus on grammar beyond the local-level items of the writing process, like sentence structure (and that, only a little), and that asking composition instructors to "do more" is not the solution. I do think, though, that we can begin to reframe how we discuss grammar so that our students are empowered by knowing the "why". Institutional change would have to happen to address this, and I do not have an answer as to how that may occur. I just know that being asked to code switch without understanding why our languages do what they do is very difficult, and I hope that we can turn to a more liberation-oriented model for thinking of grammar and its connection to rhetoric and composition in the future.

-Kimberly

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I enjoyed Jamila Lyiscott’s TED Talk “Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color”.  I especially appreciate the part about the linguistic repertoire. This is a concept that enjoy exploring with my students and troubling notions of “proper” language as we deconstruct the idea of language of power. Additionally, I like the way she explores the discussion of paradigm shift. Nonetheless, I would love to see some more discussion of actual actionable practices and pedagogical shifts. While I have previously explored these concepts through the lens of linguistic anthropology, I usually struggle to find a way to make those pedagogical shifts practical and meaningful in the classroom.

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I enjoyed Jamila Lyiscott’s TED Talk “Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color”.  I especially appreciate the part about the linguistic repertoire. This is a concept that enjoy exploring with my students and troubling notions of “proper” language as we deconstruct the idea of language of power. Additionally, I like the way she explores the discussion of paradigm shift. Nonetheless, I would love to see some more discussion of actual actionable practices and pedagogical shifts. While I have previously explored these concepts through the lens of linguistic anthropology, I usually struggle to find a way to make those pedagogical shifts practical and meaningful in the classroom.

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Leeanne:
In watching “Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color,” Jamila Lyiscott TEDx video, what I found particularly interesting is her discussions regarding “consonant variation” and “copular absence.”

Her examples are the McDonald’s advertisement slogan, “I’m lovin’ it,” which capitalizes on a cultural form of expression (Lyiscott 5:18).  Lyiscott also discusses the phenomenon of copular absence, the absence of the verb “to be” in African American English, in her example “She Crazy” from the television series Modern Family (5:50).

If these phenomena are cultural, as FYC instructors, how do we grade all students equitably?

As writing instructors, do we accept that consonant variation, copular absence and other grammatical phenomena are correct in a classroom in an academic paper?

Is there not a difference between advertising and academia? Is there not a difference between advertising language and academic language?

FYI: I researched Lyiscott’s “Racial Identity and Liberation Literacies in the Classroom” (2017), and found she uses constant variation in her academic writing.

For further research, I found the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America.  The Yale project presents research on ten English dialects:

African American (Vernacular) English; Appalachian English; Canadian English (including Newfoundland English); Chicano English; Midwestern American English; Northeastern/New England English; Ozark English; Smoky Mountain English; Southern American English; Widespread American English.

I am familiar with Lyiscott’s TEDx video, “3 Ways to Speak English” (2014). Her YouTube video is assigned in Week 3 of my FYC classes and has been for the past 7 semesters. The first essay assignment for my course is a “Language Autobiography.” (Thank you to Jutta, who shared her assignment prompt with me in Fall 2019). The assignment asks students to explore the way they use language in various contexts and to document the linguistic and rhetorical choices they make in their everyday lives. The goal is for students to develop meta-cognition about their linguistic and rhetorical choices.

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I recognize the “perpetual invitation to engage in cultural erasure” that Lyiscott discusses. Our students are constantly told that to be successful they must conform to a specific English and to do less than that is unacceptable. I was told that during a time when institutions did not engage in or even consider equity. As a result, I conformed. However, I must be willing to embrace their “composite linguistic identity” and not require that they eliminate it to be successful. I strive constantly to avoid subjecting my students to the indoctrination of erasure that I received. To that end, I am encourage students to write and speak using their home languages. Unfortunately, by the time they reach me, a lot of the prior mentioned indoctrination has occurred during their K-12 education.

Her comment about black students engaging in “blackness literacy practices” but only in safe spaces resonates with me. And, so, I work to make my class a safe space for students to engage in their home or street language in both spoken and written format. I create that safe space with the caveat that in our space it is safe to engage in their home languages, but in other arenas it might not be. We discuss genres and the conventions that go along with those genres. We interrogate the where's and why's for the use of specific Englishes. I will continue to engage with this struggle.

M Andersen

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Jamila Lyiscott’s enjoinder to reconstruct and reimagine institutional spaces to truly integrate and accept diversity in her TED Talk “Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color” is well met by Paulo Freire’s key criticism of institutions that education is not a neutral act on the part of educators as it imparts the dominant discourse of the prevailing political power structure. Lyiscott’s five paradigm principles of awareness, agency and access, actualization and liberation, achievement (research/hip hop), and alteration and action offer an educational goal-guide to reimagine and reconstruct institutional power structure. Freire’s recognition “that all educators perpetuate political values, police … and meanings about the world,” knowingly or not, lends itself to the concept of education “that condition[s] students to ascribe to the dominant ideological norms and epistemological assumptions of the prevailing social order” (Darder 8). These points have value in understanding how classrooms are currently structured to meet institutional goals and should be considered in the construction of an anti-racist FY course and classroom.

Ultimately, it is the not only the institution, but the individual educator who bears responsibility for the content of their classroom—but perhaps, class construction should also be further opened to the students. At times, I chafe at Darder’s ideological vagueness when she alludes to Freire’s avowal of equality for students in “participation in the construction of knowledge,” but does not give examples or concepts. Freire’s recommendations for liberation, consciousness, and love can be seen as more general ideological support for Lysicott’s more action-oriented guidelines to reimagine and reconstruct the classroom. Lysicott’s validation of AAVE, hip hop, and even the position from which the educator instructs offers tangible evidence on how to make a classroom anti-racist. Following ideas of offering popular and diverse antiracist educational material, I have structured my class around writings by Gloria Anzaldua, MJK, Malcom X, Obama and other leaders of diverse backgrounds, encouraging student engagement with ideas to which they may better relate. Yesterday, I taught race and feminist genre concepts to give lens to our readings, which sparked a strong connection in student reading responses that evening. But still, I realize, it is me, standing in the front, providing these materials. This week, reading about Lysicott’s idea of the circle and the decentering of the teacher paradigm opened me up to a recognition of how often I stand before my class skillfully manipulating screens, talking loudly through my mask, and pushing standardized ideas of the academic essay. Sit down, I told myself this week after watching and listening to Lysicott: less policing, let the circle reveal its own story.

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Jamila Lyiscott's talk resonated, especially the ideas of language as a "perpetual invitation to engage in cultural erasure," and the connected notion of how students are asked to "perform school" in the midst of this cultural erasure. It reaffirms, to me, the need to keep space in assignments for students to deploy language, knowledge, and sense-making skills that they already have. (I also think it's important--both for me and the students--for students to be able to question and interrogate authority, and writing assignments with such space in them seem like an important element of this.) In the past, I've given a lot of thought to just how one does this in a comp classroom, given that the students will face erasure and stricture in many other academic venues. It has been my fear that opening the classroom in this way, and walking away from colonialist notions of "correct" writing, or grammar, etc., will just give them a false idea of what writing is in other contexts. I have always tried to allow students to bring the power of their own discourses, and texts, and histories into class; but I also warned them that maybe their history teacher wouldn't think of it this way. I was afraid that the angry red-pen scrawl that a teacher might give them in another class might make them think back on what we did in comp as somehow disingenuous. In other words, they wouldn't be prepared for the rest of college and "the real world," whatever and wherever that is.

And thinking over this now I realize how flawed it is for me to teach with these assumptions hovering over me, and that it probably underestimates the skills that students have in deciphering what a given teacher is creating in terms of space and context, and how to enter and write in that space. I mean, I remember when 350 had the timed co-op writing exam, telling students that there was the writing we were doing for class, and there was the co-op, and they were not the same thing.

Another thing I liked about Lyiscott's talk: She holds class in a circle of chairs. I've done this in creative writing workshops, but never in comp, and I'm interested in trying it. Rows of people staring at me as I talk has always seemed counter to what the class is trying to achieve.

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Dr. Lyiscott, at one point, explains her “composite linguistic identity” and the need for educators to recognize and celebrate that identity, not ignore or admonish it. This belief reminds me of the terms “proper English” and “improper English,” which I often hear students use when we discuss the conventions of academic writing. When I ask them what that means to them though, they often will say that improper English uses expletives while proper English does not and has a broader use of vocabulary. This view reflects the institutional racism so deeply ingrained in education that even within a liberal state with many teachers, who likely see themselves as progressive, a line is still drawn about how we should and should not speak and that this is then passed on and adopted by students. --Chance

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Dr. Lyiscott, at one point, explains her “composite linguistic identity” and the need for educators to recognize and celebrate that identity, not ignore or admonish it. This belief reminds me of the terms “proper English” and “improper English,” which I often hear students use when we discuss the conventions of academic writing. When I ask them what that means to them though, they often will say that improper English uses expletives while proper English does not and has a broader use of vocabulary. This view reflects the institutional racism so deeply ingrained in education that even within a liberal state with many teachers, who likely see themselves as progressive, a line is still drawn about how we should and should not speak and that this is then passed on and adopted by students. --Chance

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(I recently updated my legal last name to match my info at CSUDH, so I figured I'd list my old name here too so that it's clear who wrote this :))

I found Lyscott's Ted Talk interesting, and in alignment with the criticisms I've read of "critical pedagogy"--ie Delpitt's concept of the "language of power" that Lyscott refers to. I read Delpitt's work pretty early in graduate scool in a "Critical Pedagogies" class. I think the idea of teaching the "language of power" while "validating" students' knowledge and linguistic expertise is largely empty and performative virtue-signalling in practice--and I say this as someone who once subscribed to this idea. I now teach several lessons on how education has been alternately denied to Black americans and used as a tool of oppression and exploitation for indigenous people--ie the residential school system in the US and Canada, and the prohibition of reading for enslaved people. We talk about how language becomes one aspect of policing and disciplining in schools that is reflected in curriculum and suspension policies.

I think for me, another important aspect that Lyscott doesn't address is how language can often be co-opted to serve the interests of capital. She does get at it somewhat when talking about the McDonalds' slogan, but I think that it's pretty immediately pertinent to our students' lives outside of corporate slogans. Let me explain.

If we take the McDonalds' example, you have a multi-billion dollar corporation that was recently sued for racial discrimination and systemic racist harassment in 2020, the same year that they tweeted that "Black Lives Matter." Corporations are more than happy to brand themselves as diverse so long as their relentless search for profit and expoitation of their employees goes unchecked.

I've had some really productive conversations with my students about the cooptation of social justice language and vernaculars of English to sell products and conceal oppression and exploitation. Most recently, my students and I discussed the racist cover of "The Bulletin" that went out to students. I showed them the cover in class and explained what happened in the Zoom meeting Chicana/o Studies hosted to address it. We looked at the university's initial response, and we talked about the gap between what the university SAYS it's doing to make people feel like they belong, and the obvious racist attitudes that can't be scapegoated to one person. In class Wednesday, one of my students asked if I'd seen the second letter that was sent out this week, and we looked at it together. I asked what they thought about it, and this student said that it felt "fake" and "two faced," which lead into a pretty productive conversation about language and how it can be used to deflect responsibility and make an institution look good.

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Starting rhetorical analyses of counter narratives.  This week we focused on Barbara Mellix’s essay “From Outside, IN.” This is just one option students may choose to complete an analysis on, but I could tell right away that it reached may of students on a personal level.  The idea of the “articulate” black speaker (or really any non-Standard English speaker) is something that many of my students have heard as compliments throughout their academic career.  After some really interesting conversations some common threads began to emerge. Some students felt that their language, the language of their ancestors, has been stripped from them in classroom settings. That the type of language they used with their friends and family had no place in an academic setting.  And it made some of them angry.  There were other students, however, who mentioned being taught by their family at a young age to only speak standard English- that it was the “correct” form- and these students didn’t hear vernacular languages until they went on to high school. Those features of AA language become valued by these students later in life.  What I loved about these conversations os that all of my students agreed that there was power in this language- even if they disagreed on whether or not there were certain situations and contexts when this language was more applicable or appropriate.   I loved the section where Lyiscott discusses the notion that the voices of the people cannot be constrained and limited to conventions we have set in writing.  While she referenced things like a five paragraph essay, my takeaway is that I need to work harder to disrupt my tradition of only allowing students to use their language in specific assignments and situations that I have deemed appropriate (lie in literacy autobiographies). This was a well-intentioned move— I always felt that it was still my duty to prepare students for the types of writing they have to complete in both college and workplace— but I have begun too see how damaging that can be.

My biggest take home quote was: Continually marginalizing the identity of students in the service of a single standard of violence.  So I now need to focus my attentions on how I can reimagine my classroom to understand, integrate and accept the diversity that already exists in that classroom, and respect the language of my students of color in more complete ways.

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Hi all!,

There are some great points that Lyiscott makes, and I really like how she mentions this ongoing struggle of violence and liberation literacies. There is also a lot to be said about what Lyiscott is when it comes to revising the "paradigm principles" as maps in an effort to reimagine our spaces in the classrooms. As I'm still learning bout my practices, I'll try to implement such concepts to dismantle/decenter such oppressive forms of teaching practices in this semester and my career in the future. Thank you.

Best,

Jackson

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I enjoyed Jamila Lyiscott's  exploration of Liberation Literacies and her five paradigm principles as an intervention in traditional learning styles. I agree with the need to reconfigure institutional spaces and  implement transformative values that challenge the discipline; however, I wonder if providing access to structure  - in an essay, for instance- and metacognition about structure necessarily implies imposing top-down learning strategies. It seems to me that academic essays follow certain genre characteristics, and I feel it is my job to expose my students to those conventions. For example, I don't want my students to just regurgitate those conventions but ponder, discuss, problematize, and critique, and reinvent them. In other words, there is a difference between providing access to and imposing strategies.

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I enjoyed Jamila Lyiscott's  exploration of Liberation Literacies and her five paradigm principles as an intervention in traditional learning styles. I agree with the need to reconfigure institutional spaces and  implement transformative values that challenge the discipline; however, I wonder if providing access to structure  - in an essay, for instance- and metacognition about structure necessarily implies imposing top-down learning strategies. It seems to me that academic essays follow certain genre characteristics, and I feel it is my job to expose my students to those conventions. For example, I don't want my students to just regurgitate those conventions but ponder, discuss, problematize, and critique, and reinvent them. In other words, there is a difference between providing access to and imposing strategies.

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While I have been pretty successful in English 350 at creating a classroom in which students are aware of their positionality and follow their passion when developing a research project, this approach has been more arduous in English 108 because students often struggle with basic skills. I think in English 108/109 we need to do both: laying a foundation while creating awareness of "diverse ways of knowing." This tightrope walk, though, might sometimes require more time than just two semesters.

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Chris Byars:

I like what Lyiscott has to say about creating voice through critical awareness, as well as the notion of disrupting traditions. I try to incorporate both concepts into my first-year composition courses—both 108/109 and 110. I think it works most effectively in 108/109, simply because we have more time to discuss arguments—in written and in other unconventional forms. Students are also provided with more of an opportunity to create and sustain their own stylistic voice through the combination of their personalities and rhetorical concepts (which is one of the reasons I am liking 108/109 more and more every day).

I spend the first semester of the stretch course providing my students with the opportunity to discuss—aloud and on paper—issues and ideas that are important to them, utilizing both first- and third-person as creative and rhetorical tools to aid in their elaboration. I encourage my students to play around with both strategies, to try their best to comprehend the positive and negative aspects of their respective implementation. While doing this, I introduce them to sometimes very unconventional writers—Denis Johnson, Joan Didion, bell hooks, Daniel Baldwin, and Truman Capote—with the hope that they might gain inspiration. It is my intention that my students practice their own unconventional rhetorical strategies in order to both create their own voice while at the same time breaking tradition and expectation.