Posted on 06/04/2006 8:37:55 AM PDT by wagglebee
NEWPORT NEWS - A student says, "Janae need a marker."
How does a teacher respond?
Usually this way: "We don't say, 'Janae need a marker.' We say, 'Janae needs a marker.'"
What the teacher needs is a new approach, according to two local educators promoting an alternative way of teaching grammar.
"I would say, 'We're in school right now. We're speaking formal English. How would you say that formally?'" said Rachel Swords, a third -grade teacher at Newsome Park Elementary School in Newport News.
Swords and Rebecca Wheeler, an associate professor of English at Christopher Newport University, have co-written a new book, "Code-Switching." They advocate a shift in teaching standard English to speakers of what is known as African American vernacular English - or what they prefer to call "informal English."
The old approach "demoralizes the child, and it's not effective," said Wheeler, who is on leave from CNU to work as a research scientist for Old Dominion University's Darden College of Education.
Instead, they said, teachers should recognize that those students speak a valid language at home and must learn how to translate "informal English" into "formal English."
"We don't correct," Wheeler said.
"There's no reason to correct," Swords said.
"We move from correcting to contrasting," Wheeler said.
The book includes several charts, many created by Swords, that illustrate the difference between informal and formal English in areas such as subject-verb agreement and past tense. One chart hanging in the back of Swords' classroom last week covered "possessive patterns," such as "The dog name is Jack" versus "The dog's name is Jack."
"I'm still teaching standard English," Swords said, "but I'm going about it in a way that respects the language of every child in the classroom."
The traditional techniques damage self-esteem, she said, and "put the child in a horrible situation where he has to choose between 'the teacher is right' or 'the parent is right.'"
Even more important, the educators said, the "code-switching" approach works better. Since she adopted it, Swords said, the racial gap in her students' test scores has disappeared.
However, the educators acknowledge that their technique is slow to catch on, both locally and nationally. "People are very resistant to going against the traditional way" of teaching English, Swords said.
Karen Aita , an eighth-grade teacher at Northampton Middle School on the Eastern Shore, has used the new technique for nearly two years. Early indications show that 97 percent of her students passed the state Standards of Learning writing exam this year, the highest ever at her school, she said.
"The thing I like about it is, it gets us away from the textbook," Aita said. "Instead of just hearing rules they don't retain, they can visually learn to recognize patterns in their writing. ... They're much more engaged in learning."
Althea Joyner , the senior coordinator of English for Norfolk Public Schools, has met with Wheeler and observed Swords' class. She said she came away impressed and wants to introduce their philosophy in the city's classrooms.
"This is starting in the earlier grades," Joyner said, "and is giving students confidence and an understanding of why they speak certain ways at certain times."
Two Virginia Beach school officials said Friday that they could not comment on Wheeler's and Swords' strategies until they read the book.
Rhonda "Nikki" Barnes , a former English teacher in Chesapeake who now serves as a senior liaison to minority communities for the National Education Association, expressed a mixture of praise and hesitancy.
"It shows that they are culturally sensitive to the students," Barnes said. "... But I think an English teacher should be able to say, 'This is wrong in terms of grammar.' " Colloquial terms such as "cat" and "big man" are not incorrect, Barnes said, but phrases such as "We be" or "I is" are ungrammatical.
Wheeler's response: "Yes, it's not standard English. It's something else."
She and Swords emphasized that they are not teaching students African American vernacular English and that they ask them to translate only from informal to formal English - not the other way around.
The approach, Wheeler said, also benefits students already fluent in standard English. They sharpen their critical thinking skills, she said, and erase misconceptions that their black classmates are uneducated.
Their book was recently published by the National Council of Teachers of English. The subtitle is "Teaching Standard English in Urban Classrooms," but Wheeler said the strategy could just as well apply to "Appalachian-speak or Brooklyn-speak or Pennsylvania Dutch."
And it doesn't take longer to teach. "I would say it takes much less time," Swords said, "because now my kids get it."
She be bein your momma's momma! I be bein, you be bein, we, she-it, be bein! We all be bein! Axe me hows I know!
LOL! That really is one of the best ebonics lines I've ever seen.
Thank ya with muh beeotch
you be welcome.
Shhhh. Comments like that only interfere with the knee-jerking festival. ;)
The SOL is not an exceptionally high hurdle to clear; that notwithstanding, a 97% pass rate is nothing to sneeze at, and it's not the kind of thing you can accomplish by failing (or refusing) to teach standard English. Clearly the children are learning standard English, and better than they were before. Obviously, we can't have that.
word... ;)
I don't recall hearing the school fight song in Black English, or an SAT test which starts out "You be bein tested.......................... I think it was popular in the Wayne County lockup though!
this is not touchy feely self esteem stuff, this teacher is dealing
with reality head on.
in 1987 i taught sp ed in portsmouth...right in the tidewater
area. the reality is simple, the students i taught spoke that way
at home and i was not in a position to change that. i, however,
did have the means to change the way they spoke at school and
that's what i did. whenever a student used non-standard english
my response was consistant ... "you may speak like that at home
but at school we use standard english". my students picked up
on it very quickly! they learned what was appropriate to the
situation they were in and it made a huge difference.
This technique works.
I don't see the problem- she is trying to teach standard English to a group of kids who would likely be teased or beaten up for sounding "white" if they used standard English exclusively. Her method allows them to learn how to survive their current and future surroundings.
p.s. -- this does not apply to the Democrats, who use Ebonics as a way of keeping blacks perpetually poor and dependent upon handouts from Congressional Marxists.
There is a reason for that. Check out my tagline.
Effective communication can only take place when everyone understands what you are talking about. That can only happen when you follow the traditional rules of communication.
If you are unable to communicate then you will only be qualified for an unskilled job.
And if the supply of unskilled labor is dried up by border control then the unskilled jobs will be automated and you will not have any job at all.
'We're in school right now. We're speaking formal proper English. How would you say that formally properly?'" said Rachel Swords, a third -grade teacher at Newsome Park Elementary School in Newport News.
Formal English is quite different from proper English.
I'll be impressed when she can teach the President of the United States to pronounce "nuclear" correctly.
If these kids were homeschooled, they would definately not learn English. That is the downside of homeschooling- it doesn't really work when the parents themselves are borderline illiterate.
I agree and disagree. While it is important to tell some kids the reasons they need to speak standard English, it is obvious to others. It is equally important to be a model for correct speech as well, so correcting incorrect grammar seems logical and not degrading.
As a speech teacher many years ago, there were some boys (from articulate English speaking families) who were late talkers. They got what they wanted without speaking much but their language was considered to be developmentally lagging on conventional tests. My job was to teach them to speak.
The method I had to keep reinforcing in them was to "use your words" if you want something. You don't just go over to Joe and take what you want. "Use your words." I made big bucks as a speech therapist, but you know these bright kids would have learned it on their own anyway.
Getto-speak is different. If not modeled and reinforced, they won't learn correct English on their own. And if they can't figure out why they need standard English, then I think they need more than a speech class. IMHO
Your written English is appaling!
"Shhhh. Comments like that only interfere with the knee-jerking festival. ;)"
I agree completely with you on this. It seems to me that the mockery going on here is callous, and serves nothing except to denigrate.
I like the approach. What it does is tell the kids there is a difference, without mocking it (like what's going on here), so they can understand the difference without being torn by the way their parents speak at home. If I put myself in the place of a little black child, I would feel better about this explanation than feeling harangued and degraded about the way I was taught to speak(through no fault of my own).
The bottom line is that they are learning, and can understand an analyze the differences. . . . which is what we all want, right?
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