Another section that I found interesting was towards the end of the reading when they discussed what are the best ways for bilingual students to learn English. They said that it is best for these students to not abandon their first language. I completely agree with this statement. These students have a rich cultural background that they brought into the classroom with them and if we as teachers had them completely abandon this at the door, we would deprive them of their history and their true self. In order to help these students learn English we need to understand their culture and relate it as much as possible to the new language they are learning and making sure that they know that it is still okay for them to use their first language to at least understand more about the new language, but also so that they don’t forget their history.

However, focusing on the culture of “white, middle-class children” in which it appears genderlects was first introduced, what in that culture makes these things different between male and female?  Are there biological reasons to the differences?  

It made me think of the play, “Defending the Caveman”, where it tries to explain the differences of the genders going back to caveman times.  During those times the men were the hunters and spent much time alone or silent, waiting for the kill.  The women would take care of the children,gather berries and would engage with each other during these activities “to scare off the animals”.  In the play he suggests the past necessary skills were how we honed our skills for talking differently.  

Is this why they observed the females speaking with more affiliative speech?  Is this why men don’t speak as much in their observation?

Current social expectations play a factor as well.  I recently read an article, (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/06/28/experiences_over_stuff_is_a_tired_and_sexist_idea.html) that states, “Society continues to associate women with the home and the material, men with the outside and experiences.”  And states these ideas are outdated and need to be reevaluated.  

Is that why we see the emergence of such words as, metrosexual?  Is this the definition of the evolved caveman, merging both the home and the outside?  

ws seem to be the answer to me.  

There are so many things that can influence how this takes place in a school.  Is it in the budget to hire more bilingual teachers?  How many would a school need with over 6000 different dialects in the world? What would co-teaching method that can work in this environment?  How would this look for a student that cannot hear and is making the transition from France to America because now we are talking about interpreting and signing at the same time? 

I also wonder if thought has been given what is going on outside of school?  How can you really track outside school activities?  Will families/parents participate in the learning process?  What students are doing outside the classroom has just as much influence as what is going on inside the classroom.  Discrimination influences what a student will allow in as learning as well.  I wish this was not what students focus on but socially a student may choose the path of least resistance from friends, family and culture.

 

In looking back at my own primary and secondary education, I see many of these arguments as truth. Coming from a small, rural school district, we were exceptionally limited on ESL resources for our (growing) Hispanic student population. Many of these students were thrown into the special education program, and I think it often gave the rest of us (and probably them as well) the perception that they were intellectually or developmentally disabled. It also probably helped parallel and cement the stereotypes that have become so ubiquitous in our culture. I think doing so also wasted a wonderful opportunity for both these ESL students and us English speakers to learn from each other and our respective cultures and individual histories. 

 

Having very limited Spanish (or bilingual) speaking abilities, I do worry sometimes about my abilities to teach students whose first language is not English.  However, I hope that by taking advantage of such methods as “funds of knowledge” and others mentioned throughout the book, I can develop a classroom culture and personal relationship that is both respectful of each students’ respective culture and creates a two-way dialogue from which all my students can learn. 

Though this section actually didn’t speak to me on what kind of teacher I would like to be. It did show me what kind of parent I intend to be to my future children. The allure of the TV babysitter is all too easy to succumb to. But the importance of continued and constant practice in reading and speaking cannot be overstated.

While I want to respect and celebrate different dialects my students may have, I’m also wondering how to practically cope with this linguistic diversity without shortchanging my students into getting a second class education in the academic language of social studies. Since I’m not a native speaker of most of the dialects students may speak, how do I know if they are using the dialect correctly or just making mistakes? If I’m going to celebrate dialectical diversity, does that mean I first need to understand the dialects so I can hold students accountable to the dialect’s rules? 

Re: Tang
I agree that it's important for teachers to understand common cultural traits, like how students from Asian cultures tend to be quieter in class, but is there a danger of relying too much on cultural traits to understand students? For instance, although many students from Asian cultures may be quiet in class out of respect for their teachers, what if there are students who are quiet for reasons other than respect for the teacher's authority? Getting to know individual students is probably the best way to overcome the shortcomings using common cultural traits to guide teaching.

I used theatre to practice English with a group of English learners in Rwanda.  Improv games were successful in this class because they forced the learners to react in the moment, in English, and respond to their playing partners.  So often, students reflected that they ‘knew more words’ or ‘understood more English’ than they thought they had.  Their confidence in speaking English improved over the six weeks when I gave them opportunities to think in their feet & trust their stored English knowledge to support them. I can see activities like this being valuable in an ELL classroom. 

I think a theatre classroom also provides valuable space for honoring, exploring, highlighting the cultural diversity and “funds of knowledge” students bring to the classroom.   I agree with you, Ryan, that schools must work to honor and celebrate the linguistic diversity of its students, and identify ways that teachers can incorporate native language maintenance in ELL programming. 

When teachers adapt their classrooms into a 360 degree support for a multicultural learner, greater achievement is possible. How do teachers, staff and administration address the dichotomy of an ideal multicultural educational environment and what society at large is saying? For example, if you follow the rules, you’ll be rewarded, yet it’s still okay in a “post-racial society” for cops to kill a black child with no consequence. How can teachers help students become critical of their race/ethnicity double consciousness? Is it their job to? 

Module 18 makes the case on differences and stereotype threat is an interesting concept I can relate to in my higher education. How does institutionalized racism impact the education system beyond prejudice and discrimination? Like Danielle, I appreciated the point about moving beyond melting pot to multiculturalism and finding relevant practices to adopt in the school system. Self identity is critical for multicultural students to find value and a voice in the class and school environment. 

Not waiting to celebrate until nationally recognized months or holidays will also show intentionality about acceptance of difference. How might teachers adapt to conflicting cultural values and learning preferences to reach the same common goal? What does a model multicultural school look for in their teacher candidates?  

No matter what grade or subject we are in, as teachers the most important thing is for us to know our students and to advocate for them.  For instance, one of my students only speaks Spanish at home because that is what his parents speak and although he speaks English at school, we noticed there were some delays.  He has been enrolled in speech services and has bee excelling, but there were still delays.  We had to advocate for this child to receive ESL services because people just assumed that it was his disability that was causing a delay.

If I had not know my student as well as I did, I could have overlooked the fact that additional services were required.  There are many resources in our schools and we need to make sure that our students are benefiting from them. 

 

The study of the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language since the late 1970s spearheaded by linguist Annie Senghas has enhanced our knowledge of sign language use even more. At that time, the first Deaf school was set up in Nicaragua allowing all Deaf students to come together. These young students, who had come to school only having a few gestures to communicate with hearing family members, became the ones to develop a full-fledged sign language in Nicaragua. Researchers have been able to gain significant knowledge about who is involved in actively enriching languages. They have discovered that the individuals exposed to sign language prior to age 7 are the ones who expand languages to the current richness we use today whereas individuals who are older seem to only use the parts of languages that have already been developed previously (Senghas & Coppola, 2001). 

 

Another population that has allowed us to expand our knowledge on the development of new sign languages is the population of a Bedouin village in Israel (Meir et al., 2010). As a large proportion of the residents are Deaf, both Deaf and Hearing individuals acquire Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language in order to communicate with one another.  When the students attend high school, they are sent to a high school in Jerusalem where they learn Israeli Sign Language for school. 

 

 

Response to Hleeda Her:

I fully agree with you that we need more teachers who come from similar backgrounds as the students. This background includes but is not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, SES, sexual orientation, ability, and native language. In order to achieve this goal, education programs need to reach out to potential students in order to recruit and retain diverse students and decrease potential barriers to education. The barriers may be of financial, attitudinal, racial, and linguistic among others. Having a teacher who is different from the students definitely affects the quality of education students receive. Without having role models who are similar to themselves, the students may not be able to relate to the content and culture in today’s schools. Students may believe that they cannot succeed in the academic environment as students, much less become teachers themselves. Although some colleges try to teach cultural competency to their students, I strongly believe that there can never be enough of it. We need diverse teachers and faculty in all schools ranging from preschool to universities to teach by example. 

 

 

References

 

Meir, Irit, Wendy Sandler, Carol Padden, and Mark Aronoff (2010). Emerging sign languages. In M. Marschark, and P. Spencer (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education, Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 267-280.

 

Senghas, A. & Coppola, M. (2001). Children creating language: How Nicaraguan Sign Language acquired a spatial grammar. Psychological Science, 12, 323-328.

 

 

For a long time I bought into the popular belief, yet as an anthropologist I knew that it wasn’t logical. Humans are group animals, it is a characteristic of most primates. From a survival aspect, we trusted and worked with the members of our band/family/troop. We also suspected those from outside our troop. The need to make snap judgements was also important for survival – safe/not safe for instance. But our world has changed. For most of the Earth, we are no longer small isolated groups fighting to survive. Dichotomous thinking and group belonging have caused many problems in the world of today. Thus we find ourselves attempting to re-define belonging. 

Prejudice against others is not new. It was never fair, and perhaps not right, but it kept the small groups safer. Now we must learn to redefine the group membership. But how? How do we quickly change thinking based on millennia of experience? 

Re Danielle:

Absolutely addressing some cultures will touch on religion, and that may be okay. You would need to check with your admin and probably offer an opt-out assignment for that day if you are presenting specifics, but acknowledging that different cultures include different religions is generally acceptable. Another way to do that is to allow students to present the cultures so that religion is not being taught.

I found it really helpful to have “expressive” and “receptive” vocabulary explained (p. 188). When I think more about it, it seems obvious that people could understand more than they are able to communicate in a particular way/language, but that definitely wasn’t my default understanding. It was also interesting to learn how adults different cultures/subcultures ask different kinds of questions, e.g. ones that are “obvious” (probably checking comprehension) and those that are more about thinking critically or storytelling. A particular lesson with a student is sticking out in my mind: I was explaining powers, base numbers, exponents and the student didn’t seem to get it so I explained it multiple times, trying to do it in slightly different ways, but it still didn’t appear to click. At the time I was frustrated because he’s smart and I couldn’t think of another way to explain the concept, but I wonder now if it was some combination of him having the receptive vocabulary (in a math sense maybe: written numbers), but not the expressive vocab to verbalize what he understood.

Re: Hleeda

I think having, at least the awareness of if not the classroom time with, diverse teaching staff can only affect the quality of students’ education positively. As society is moving (in some spaces) towards being more diverse and inclusive, teacher training programs are catching up with diversity training. I agree there’s still a lack of diversity within the teacher candidates, but at least we’re/they’re getting some tools to teaching diverse learners.

Re: Zack’s Post

Some suggestions for your questions: As a non-English speaking student myself, I think that it would be helpful for teachers to understand the basic dialects. Teachers do not have to know the rules by heart, but look for the common dialect differences. Moreover, most of the time students are not aware of their dialect difference so it would be harsh to hold them accountable strictly to their own dialect. As with all students, they are still learning Standard English and mistakes should be welcomed. Maybe, to celebrate this diversity is to allow the students to switch their dialect back and forth. By that I mean, have them write in Standard English, but allow them to speak their dialect openly without pinpointing every Standard English mistake that they are saying.