Double Entry #4

The home dialect with which a person speaks does not indicate their level of capacity for literacy in Standard English.   When this home dialect is honored instead of disregarded and then discussed and studied, the student is able to readily make connections between it and Standard English and does not feel shunned by the school setting.  Involving the child’s home dialect in literacy instruction proves to be an incredibly successful means of teaching the child how to communicate and write in Standard English. 

 

                Celebrating a child’s home dialect by incorporating it into the classroom assignments, through things such as interviews with family members and charting the dialects on a map (as discussed in the reading), are practices of a culturally responsive teacher.  Instead of telling the students that their home dialect is improper, these strategies embrace it as a legitimate form of communication and show the child that the teacher values what they bring to the class.  

                I had the good fortune of an early exposure to reading and writing through my parents.  I started school already able to do both, but remember clearly the difficulties many children had in my first grade classroom.  Students were forced to read out loud at a certain pace and when we could not keep up the teacher would slap our fingers with a yardstick.  This was close to 24 years ago however, and such abuse would not be tolerated in the school system now.  Obviously, this is an example of a culturally unresponsive teacher and it’s unfortunate that these are easier to remember than the alternative.  Most likely, this is because the unresponsive teacher was much more prevalent.  

                This video gives an example of a culturally responsive literacy instruction.  The teacher and students in the class get to know each other through the creation of a class autobiography.  

Culturally Responsive Literacy Instruction