Acknowledgement and Implementation
The most important thing to be recognized, from a teacher's perspective, is the existence of the language of power. Relating this to students, particularly at a high school level (the education level I desire to teach) is the challenge. How is a teacher supposed to distribute their resources to students? Teaching literacy is important, of course, but it is impossible to bring every student to the same level. Minority students, ESL students, even honor students, may all need varying amounts of instruction. I believe the best strategy, as Delpit suggested, was implementing peer writing groups, and encouraging as much interaction as possible. Not only does this increase interaction among different kinds of students, but also will help improve overall language utilization. Another challenge is assisting students who refuse to participate in the first place. It's impossible to help everyone. But through increased interaction (group projects, writing groups, presentations, etc), varying kinds of language will be made the norm, and perhaps acceptance will become more prevalent in the future due to this exposure.
posted by Cuzzo @ 10:41 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
It sounds like you have some interesting ideas for implementing Delpit's ideas into the classroom. I am interested in becoming a middle school language arts teacher, and I am concerned about a lot of these same problems. I think that it's important to admit that there is a language of power and to realize how important it is to give everyone access to it.
I think your ideas work well. However, did you ever consider the negatives of having group activities and/or peer review? What if no one in the group fully comprehends the rules and then attempts corrections but makes the wrong correction? I think it might be best to establish some guidelines before letting students go crazy on their peers hard work. Also, isn't it the teachers resposibility to ensure that the students have learned the material and enforce practicing the material? Not saying that I would like my classroom to be boring. Certainly there are ways of avoiding this, I am just not sure if peer-review is the best way to go about it.
I am neither studying education, nor planning on being a teacher, but your ideas about integrating different peer groups mirrors Delpit's point about changing the culture of power. Delpit advocates integration of different cultures and ideas in the culture of power, and mixing peer groups might accomplish the same thing on a smaller scale.
I have personally had many negative experiences in peer groups and group work, so I don't necessarily agree that it is best to encourage "as much interaction as possible." This is a good ideal, but I have only seen it work out some of the time in practice.
After reading the Delpit article, I thought that she was actually encouraging the reemergence of a style which emphasizes the authority of the teacher, even though she maintained the importance of group work. I could be off on my interpretation, but it didn't seem like she was particularly encouraging group work over a different learning process, even as group work is potentially a very powerful learning tool.
I agree that peer review can be helpful. But I personally have had some issues with it in the past. I think it's an important part of the learning/writing process, but it's also important not to focus solely on this aspect. A student in one of Delpit's examples had the same thoughts (491). He felt like the teacher wasn't teaching anything. I've had the same problem in many of my classes.
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