The (Mis)Education of Black Boys

for the past semester the African American Studies Centre and the School of Education are co-sponsoring a two credit cost course and the mis-education of black boys as most of you in the room know that there are certain demographic groups who just by the nature of the group into which they are born right significant risk for academic failure the more african-american males in prison than there are in college and the litany goes on and on and so in general there is this incredibly negative public image of what it means to teach in lower income schools to work with lower income families and pacifically that those issues get stereotyped in the life of black boys so it's rarer in the educational establishment to find somebody who has such a clear vision of what is strong and powerful in the life of black boys and girls and other kids of color and is willing to dedicate their life in this incredible combination of direct instruction and teaching be in the classroom running a school influencing policy throughout the state of California and also being willing to come out and share his perspective rest of the world so I've had dr. Harley come in and work with trainings with me and in Wisconsin and the one thing I would like to say as many of you know that as open as I am for discussion and dialogue I'm hard to convince pertly when I have a strong opinion and he was able to lead me into understanding of the linguistic issues for african-american families in a way that I found not only powerful and its intellectual quality but convincing in terms of structuring of my own approaches to pedagogy so without much further ado I want to introduce dr. Holly to you and turn the mic over and hope you enjoy it and be ready and be willing to ask a lot of stimulating questions at the end Thanks good evening good evening come on I'm from LA good evening I want to thank Dean Coleman for the invitation it's good to know people in high places as they say and I appreciate him bringing me out to Boston University it's my really my first time in Boston I was here when I was a kid don't remember too much so I was very open to the invitation even though I was hoping for a little warmer weather of course but oh well and as he as he said you know we were sort of at the crossroads of doing this work and I kind of have three different vantage points I think benefit overall and I'm just going to cover them a little bit and I'm just going to jump right into what we do the first vantage point is from the university perspective I'm professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills which is essentially a tea a teacher training University we Cal State Dominguez Hills credentials the most teachers of color in California and we I worked there and mainly in secondary education around reading language literacy issues a lot of our students work in the LA sort of stereotypical urban schools you know Los Angeles Unified Compton Long Beach many of our students going to that work the past couple years with Teach for America cohorts so I have supposed to specifically teach for America's students which is a whole nother story trying to convince them to stay longer than two years which I think we're doing an okay job that's one vantage point so I have that sort of perspective of the University trying to deal with this then my second vantage point is as a co-director and founder of an independent charter school in Los Angeles called the culture and language Academy success and that's a kindergarten through eighth grade school we have 350 students and we're known because we have all african-american students were 100% African American and the only all African American school in the state and certainly in the LA area and we have great literacy results 60% of our students score 80 60 percent and above and a YP the annual yearly progress which is the federal the federal monitor so we have we have people coming from all over the country to see what we're doing around the linguistic affirmation that we do and then my third hat is what I'm doing with you today well let me go back certainly being at the school site keeps me grounded keeps it real if you're if you know I mean so because we're dealing with students we're dealing with parents doing all the issues that are at a school site and our goal was to create a school-wide model using the approach so I'm going to introduce to you today so that's very important work for me because I don't get too distant from what the real issues are in terms of working with african-american children particularly african-american males where we have a reputation for having a lot of success a lot of a lot of schools send us the students who they're having trouble with per se all right but when they come to our school they don't have I'll say as much trouble we had a student his name is a Casillas name his name is Craig Jones and he went to the UCLA sort of laboratory school is called seeds Elementary and he was in office every single day his parents are well-to-do his mom's a lawyer his dad is a professional and he was an office every day and his mom brought him to us as she said I know my kids not bad he's a good kid but for whatever reason he stays in the office I think in the three years that Craig was with us he was only in office twice well with me at least right and now he goes to Loyola high school and in LA which is a pretty high-level parochial school there for us in the community there so we've had a we've had some success using the approach that when introduced with those students the last hat is what I'm doing with you today and that's traveling around the country teaching teachers about the approach and in the context as Dean Coleman mentioned of the failure that's I'm not there for my good looks you know what I'm saying I'm there because as you can see I'm not a humble guy right I'm there because the school is in some type of program improvements that they are under some type of mandate some type of eating around their lack of success with namely african-american students but we can broaden that and they've been told if you don't demonstrate or if you don't show that you're that you're doing something to specifically address this then you know we're gonna come with some type of sanction or something like that so many of the districts and many of the teachers that I work with they're under that pressure and it sort of been a good thing in a way that it sort of opened the door for this conversation because prior I've been doing this about 11 years now prior to No Child Left Behind you really didn't have a lot of these school districts open to this type of conversation so it's it's been it's had an unintended effect I think and so we work primarily in Northern California but we have situations and st. Louis and New York in different places and what I mean by that is that means that we're working with the students and the teachers in the classroom which is our overall goal so that's sort of where I'm coming from so what you see here is sort of a mixture of all of that kind of put together so just to kind of go along with the theme of the time I change my title to your cultural responsive stimulus package and I'm looking at it you know we are we're what in terms of what how we can take some of the lessons that we're trying to learn from the economic situation and how can we apply it to the education situation and the economic situation it has been described as a crisis and certainly those of us who've been in education we could we can make a similar description as a crisis but we see every crisis as an opportunity as has been said and so this is an opportunity for us to really bring a layer that we think can benefit any type of attempt to try to bring improvement and change and that is culturally and linguistically responsive teaching I'm just going to define it for you real fast culture and linguistic responsive teaching is the validation and affirmation of the home language and culture for the purposes of transitioning or bridging for academic success and success in mainstream culture and so what you're going to do is you're going to go to where the students are so that you can bring them whether need to be or well as we call it be situationally appropriate and situationally appropriate is really learning what culture cultural and linguistic norm is appropriate for the situation that I can coat switch to but without losing Who I am in that process so I don't have to change what's internal to me culturally linguistically in order to speak Standard English or academic language depending on my audience I could still maintain that and that's what we do that's what we do at our school in terms of our entire teaching and what we're simply saying is that the school system is really based on making that coat switch but at the expense of who you are and secondly not going to where the students are the analogy that we use is simply trying to think about how you learn well if you think about how you learned how to swim now how you learned how to swim probably one of two ways the first way is you were thrown into the pool and the teacher was on the side saying that's it kick come on do it do it do it as you were flailing and like not it wasn't happening and we know that in education to be the what type of approach is called the sink or what swim approach right then there's a second type where the teacher is actually in the pool with you guiding you holding you instructing you and then somehow slowly kind of lets go and then you're doing it on your own that's the approach that we're treating for the one where we meet the students in the pool and bring them along the way so it has two components to it the first component is culturally understanding where we are and then the second component is linguistically understanding where we are and it's based in instructional strategies and that's why 90% of whom I talk to her classroom practicing classroom teachers because we're trying to get them to do their instruction in a different way with by first starting with their mindset and then starting with them and then ending with the practice so what we're saying is we're not going to use you know guest speakers we're not going to use posters we're not going to use some type of ethnic cultural month we're not going to use ethnic food day we're not gonna use ethnic dress day that's not how we're gonna get at this issue of diversity that's not how we're going to get at this issue of culture we're gonna get at it by understanding more so we're the students are culturally and linguistically and how we can accommodate or be responsive to them do the instructional practice how we teach and it's do that experience for the students that will bring about the change that we want to see with them academically behaviorally and so on so I want to begin just to change the energy in the room is to by doing an activity with you and then coming back to talk a little bit about racing and culture then going to another activity and then coming back to talk about the language piece so that's how we're going to sort of tag-team this hopefully each of you has a the packet that you have is sort of pieces of my full-day packet which is uh you know a six-hour presentation and I you know I just didn't know I didn't know was hard to determine your audience so I kind of put in a little bit of everything and some of it will get to some of we won't and I'll explain you know what each is as we go along then you have which is really a promotional piece through prentice-hall as I'm one of the contributing artists for prentice hall we'll fix this in a minute and what we're going to be doing is you know we we work with prentice hall in how they can a few some of these strategies into their text then also have a DVD clip that I want to show towards the end because a lot of people want to see like what does it actually look like in the classroom so I'm going to show you a clip from our charter school that shows you what it looks like in the classroom and one of the advantages that we have in something that's a highly theoretical area cult responsive teaching is we have the practice part so it's not just it's not just there in fact in our full sessions it's very little theory it's only the first part of the day and then the rest of day we focus on strategies so you have these strips and we're going to do an activity that's called a tea party a tea party you know this is a cultural and linguistic responsive strategy that comes out of second language learning and what the big issue is you understanding what makes it culturally responsive and what's make what makes it Cokely responsive is that first of all is movement there's movement involved and movement in this case means you're gonna be getting out of your seats all right you're gonna be standing up okay the second piece that makes a culture responsive is that it's socio centric and what that means is that it involves talking as part of the instruction because many many times the students who are being unsuccessful they are being who they are but in the context of school is seen as negative as seen as disruptive defiant deviant whatever is on the referral slip basically right and a lot of these kids end up in the office for reasons that are we feel culturally based and in the classroom there's just a cultural misunderstanding so what we try to get teachers to do is build in who they are into the instruction so you have to build in talking that doesn't mean that the students get to talk when they want however they want but we're gonna allow them that sort of momentary exchange prior to jumping into the content okay the other aspect of this is the greeting how you greet somebody is cultural as well we're gonna build that in as well so these are all what we call cultural orient orientations so the rules for this Tea Party is number one you have to stand up and walk around that's number one okay number two prior to introducing your content you have to culturally greet the person right and that means physically and verbally and it may be it has to be through a culture orientation which maybe I don't have anybody in the front row so I can't do this is some type of like a soul shake if that's your cultural orientation and I would be demonstrating this or a cheek cheek kiss both sides if that's a cultural orientation high-five elbow pound bear hug whatever whatever right and you know we understand that now the hug has become the new handshake you guys know that right right there people are hugging more now than handshaking so whatever cultural orientation works for you all right and then as part of the verbal part I just want you to tell the person I'm I'm my best today because okay because we have to give the students some frame otherwise they will talk about whatever they you know the kind of goofy stuff that middle school or secondary students talk about right so you have to give them you know give a frame so I want you to say hi my name is Sean so and I'm my best today because and then you sort of fill in that blank then you're gonna jump into your content and in this case the content is to read the strips to one another verbatim verbatim alright don't cheat I want you to read it just like it is on the on the table or not I'm just on the slip and then you kind of go like wow that's interesting or I'm not sure what you just said but whatever whatever you want to do there okay and then you you go to a different people different person I want you to do this with three different people in the room three different people in the room and then after that third person you return to your seats now the last rule is you you can't talk to anybody in your row so these four ladies right here they can't talk to one another okay these two gentlemen here they can't talk to one another so you can't talk to anyone in your immediate row and that's to encourage us kind of walking around mixing up with one another all right so yes that's good because you're both going to exchange based on your own orientation so if yours is a high five and then hers is a bear-hug then that's how you do it like that right now we don't want to put somebody uncomfortable because you could say well mine is the fridge kiss and they go like you know I don't think so right okay so we we have limits we have boundaries all right okay are we ready no we're not no no no no no the the the cultural orientation has nothing to do with the strip you do your cultural orientation the strip is just separate from that okay all right go again this is notice how the energy in the room changes when we do something like this and the cultural pieces are built in now from a sort of pedagogical standpoint this is simply an in into reading activity so we're about to read some text and I want to get the students familiar with the language number one and then also some of the character the characterization is just so I can get a general sense of the story so it's an int to read it's into activity when I was in a classroom I used to put shakes lines from Shakespeare on those strips prior to reading Romeo and Juliet or you could put math problems on the strips or you can put sign whatever and then how the students in exchange like this and then come back in and read and agree to participate in the reading so also in terms of second language issues or learning its it's meant to generate language in the room and that's so important for the social centric aspect because a lot of issues for students learning standard English is needing to sort of be able to speak it and hear it because usually at school for many of these students it's one of the few places they're going to get access in this type of way so we want to have those opportunities for them to engage one another in different types of ways and so that simple activity like that enables me to accomplish all of that and at the same time I'm building in that culture and language piece and so that's just a sample of what we do in terms of a whole sort of body of work with teachers to get them to to focus on what they need to focus on the first thing that we have to do though is talk about what is culture and why why do we have this focus and so I want to just give you a little bit of that so you understand the basis of this what we have to do is unreal or just really to the point we'd have to spend a lot of time we don't we don't really need a lot of statistics okay I have a standard sort of bet across the country with anybody who could find me positive statistics that are not related to the treatment gap we don't even call it achievement gap anymore because it doesn't accurately define the weight or the crisis of the problem see a gap seems small this is a you know I don't even know what you want to call it this is a this is Ocean this is a is huge when you really look at it so we know we already we already know I used to show a whole bunch of data slides but it's not it's no point I mean everyone knows the sort of depth of the issue so we have to we have to just cut to the chase and say well who are we talking about and we sort of broaden it to say underserved students first so that we understand that the schools and we talk in terms of talking about their failure have not been successful with many populations many populations so we talked about underserved being any student who's in the school system that is not being responded to in a way that he or she can be successful that's how we define underserve and for a moment it takes it off race culture and language so that I could be in a district in Kansas that's 90% white yet still talking about this topic right because we're addressing it under this broader notion of who's underserved in the school district but then we ask the question if we were to bring the underserved students to the auditorium what would they look like right using that broad definition any student who's not being responded to in a way that he or she can be successful think about who those students are now let's bring them to the auditorium who do they look like and match with the research they look like these students here now enters race culture and language because those are the students that are being identified as underserved and the point that we have to make is that that's not where we started though we started with a broader what a broader what a broader definition but the research says that these are the ones who are most likely to be underserved and in terms of a cultural way of looking at it there's a there's particular four groups and the broader area is voluntary immigrants versus involuntary immigrants and we're pulling from the work of John Agnew early late seventies sort of work where he basically said that you know there are two types of students in American education system voluntary immigrants involuntary immigrants and he said that they have different paths one as a path to success the other one is not successful and under the involuntary immigrants we looked at these four populations in particular because we noticed that they had a socio political and social linguistic commonality the socio-political commonality was they were colonized conquered or enslaved as their introduction into America meaning that the process of assimilation came through this process here being colonized conquered or enslaved and they were Hawaiian Americans Native Americans of Mexican Americans and African Americans and you know in a full day we would talk about a little bit about that history and what we realize is that they were essentially locked out of the system that makes them quote-unquote Americans if you will and therefore never really had that access or opportunity and it's different for each one so in the context of Africans in America we're looking at a three hundred year history of being locked out then we have a sociolinguistic commonality meaning that in these in these first two generations generations they spoke the transition from their indigenous languages to what the linguist called non standard languages what we call hybrid languages and so today there is known as a white pidgin English Native American dialects Chicano English for mexican-americans and black English or African American vernacular in English and that these are intact linguistic entities that are based on that history of being locked out a formal second language instruction if you came about through one of these ways so again using the Africans as an example when the Africans came to any of the Americas these were the rules if you speak your African tongue it'll be cut out if you congregate with two or three or more you'll be beaten it's against the law for you to learn the language of the land you can't go to school no rosetta stone right okay and so the linguist began to ask well then how could they acquire the language and so some linguists have a theory that is based on a real EXIF I language which means you have the the vocabulary of the dominating culture but you still have the grammatical base of the indigenous indigenous language in place okay and so culturally and linguistically that's what we have going on with these two with these with these are four populations in particular as we define them as being underserved we are another way that we look at it is we call them standard English learners and a standard English learners is defined that they speak a home language that differs and this is important in all the dimensions of language so it differs in terms of the phonology the Morpho syntax the syntax which is the grammar the the semantics vocabulary and even the rhetorical aspect which is the discourse how you tell the story and these students then come into a situation school where if you go through each category they they do it differently and so what we have to do then is recognize them as standard English learners and then begin to use instruction that would be responsive to them being in the situation and that's going to feel like it's going to get them to the success we want them to have for standard English and academic language the problem is though that many folks do not see the legitimacy in terms of these four groups culture and language and so that's where the validation and affirmation comes in so validate for us is to make legitimate what mainstream has made illegitimate and the institution has made illegitimate culturally and linguistically and affirm is to make positive what the institution and mainstream media has made negative for culture and language for these groups so when we think of Hawaiian Americans Native Americans Mexican Americans African Americans we don't think of legitimacy in terms of culture and language so when you say well what is what is African American language or what is Chicano English people would give it a deficit sort of definition ghetto gibberish broken English so on and so forth no legitimacy if you say well what what is black culture what do you mean by black culture are you talking about hip-hop no legitimacy are you talking about you know food dress dance music no legitimacy so what we have to do is take a little time to talk about if we're going to be culturally responsive then we have to legitimize what has been made illegitimate by the institution in very explicit terms so we do this to an activity then we're just going to do a little bit of that's that we delve into what is culture what is he Banach and then how is it playing to the failure of the system and we do this by focus a diversity activity that's called our why are we confused but I've changed it to is Obama our first black president all right and what I mean by that is this right here I'm gonna give you a statement if you understand this statement then you are not confused if you don't understand a statement then I'm sorry to tell you you're confused okay you can be African American but and not blank you can be African American and not black all right now if you understand what I'm saying you're not confused but if some of you looking like what the heck is he talking about right now then you are confused and I want to I want to talk about that confusion a little bit because this is what confounds the issue in terms of cultural sponsor teaching in particular but I also think in terms of how we're dealing with the achievement gap because we have miss identified our labels if you will right and the Barack Obama reference is initially he had issues around legitimizing himself to the black community as being a candidate of of black culture if you will versus just being an african-american okay and it took him a while to sort of gain that type of support I mean there are different variables but it took them a while to gain that that type of support and and I think part of it is because when you look at someone racially you it's different when you're looking at them ethnically but when it comes to the four groups I just described there is there's not that earth Nakai denta fication all right so we can't go to all these identities today but I want to give you the layer all layered in these ways and we recognize those we're all sort of created by all these different identities and we have to peel the onion to understand them each in their place in a sort of analytical way then it makes when we put them back together it makes it stronger which I call a true definition of diversity is looking at us in all these different ways what I want to do is race I'm going to start off with a race one and then see if we can jump we can jump down to culture since that's the dust of main focus so what I want you to do you're going to do it just in an area where you are right now I want you to give me your DNA lineage what is your DNA lineage what is your race all right I'm talking about your blood lineage how would you identify yourself racially okay and it's really just a one-word answer and then I want you to try to give two identifiers that make you that race if you will two things that you can say I think this is what I'm associated with racially okay now being from Boston is not a race okay I just want to save a little time all right so we don't have that when I have that issue okay being Irish is not a race okay so I want to save some time on that end as well we're really looking at DNA like if they found your bones 80 years from now somewhere what would they would they come up with and you're gonna do this by whipping around what we call a whip around that means you share in groups of three or four and you just go around and say this is my race this is what identifies me and then you bring it back it should take no longer than two minutes per group because you're talking for 30 seconds or less so I'm gonna call us back in about two minutes okay so with your group right now identify your race what we do is first we try to debunk some myths basically if you will or different ways of looking at it number one is typically you know and I've you know we do this with all sizes all different groups somebody in a group will say I'm of the human race all right we got any humans out there all right show some love for the humans and we try to point out that you know being human only separates us from the other animals in the kingdom basically it just lets us know that you know you're not a billy goat your presence here right now unless you want to demonstrate something for us at six o'clock or whenever we're in this right and that there are races within the human race so we're just talking about the animal kingdom the second thing that we have to sort of debunk or address is this notion of mixed racial heritage right because we're in this age where everybody's a little bit of this a little bit of that a little bit of this and you know it's kind of like what am i well if we understand our social history our social history tells us very clearly if you had any drop of non-european blood then that's what race you were and if that blood was African it trumped everything that's what our social history says it's only till recently very recently that we began to acknowledge this notion of biracial or multiracial in terms of designation okay because today you can actually by your DNA breakdown and a cheap rate relatively cheap rate but I think a lot of people won't do it because they don't want to find out the truth they don't want to find out where that kitchen came from now only people know what the kitchen is gonna get that joke if you don't know what a kitchen is you're not gonna get that joke okay right so people will help will be able to get to sleep tonight and not wonder what the kitchen is the kitchen is the back side of your hair that naps up and it's called the kitchen and typically people of African descent have kitchens right so if you want to know if you have some African blood and you want way to check to see if you got a kitchen right and and it's a it's a joke but that's that's that's speaking to how the DNA ties in now I know some of you when you leave you gonna walk down how are you gonna go right okay the third thing and I want to acknowledge the scientists the people who you know go with the racism is socially constructed argument I mean you know and that is that we're 99.9 percent of like genetically okay which is a scientific fact but we're think it's irrelevant to what's been happening in terms of the racial strife turmoil that's happened in our history it's really it's really just a scientific fact it has had no relevance in terms of who we of what we've had to deal with based on that my new difference so we go back and we just study how does this racial classification come from and it comes from partly due to the work of jf blumenbach who did the first scientifically received racial classification and blumenbach went all over the world he was looking further for the most beautiful race of men and he said that the people who lived in in Russia near Mount kakaako's were the most beautiful race of men on earth and he named them Caucasians Caucasians and that's where the term Caucasian comes from based on the arbitrary decision of Jacob Dallenbach okay so we have to understand that and so then blumenbach kind of get into the gentleman's question then classify races based on geography based on geography and he had an initial five groups Caucasian Mongolian Ethiopian what he called natives or Americans and then Malaysians so if we were to follow the blumenbach classification all of us would fall under one of these five okay blumenbach really though had a major contribution in terms of what we would identify as racially acceptable in terms of image that still stands with us today let alone the term Caucasian still stands with us today based on blumenbach but it's what he put forth what was representative of beauty that has stood and permeated in how we navigate especially in the context of the school but also in the microcosm now a lot of people they don't believe what I'm saying for whatever reason so we go to the original source of jf blumenbach this is what he said on the Caucasian variety I've taken the name of this variety from my local caucus both because it's neighborhood and especially the southern slope produces the most beautiful race of men I mean the Georgian and because all the physiological reasons converge to this besides it is white in color which we may fairly assume to be the primitive color of mankind since it is very easy to degenerate into brown but very much more difficult for dark to become white and so he set forth with those words a mindset that would be representative of beauty that everything would be compared to based on an image and remember image is connected to mindset we have to retouch about commercials and symbols and all that image contributes to my set and the mindset is that this image here would be representative of beauty now you just think about it in the microcosm think about our heroes think about our heroes and how they match the image think about our images of Jesus Christ and how they match the image think about Barbie dolls you know the 50th anniversary of Barbie doll were celebrating and the image has remained the same over that time and those dolls when they want to quote-unquote change the race they're not racially changed they're just dipped in a different color but racially it remains the same based on here right here by the way Dora is now outselling Barbie just a side note you want to know that right worldwide Dora the explora aisle sales Barbie now right okay so maybe there's coming there's a change coming they're a little bit right okay so think of the school system and the images think of the textbooks the literature books the things that students have to look through you know Carl Grant who studies textbook says that african-american students have a 7% chance of seeing an image that's truly reflective of who they are in the American textbook just a 7% chance and then it gets less as you go through the different groups so all this ties in to cultural responsive teaching in that in order to be culturally responsive we have to work around where we're starting from in terms of that validation and information so when you come to our school the students are inundated with images that are representative of who they are of who they are the the images are when they look in the books they see themselves now I'm not saying solely but I'm saying as a starting place because remember we're going to transition them to what's going to be representative in the mainstream and in academia so we're not trying to stay there we're just trying to start there rather than starting at where the society says where the society says what you're not so in order for a student to feel empowered affirmed validated Phil coffee you have to start where there are and we know that a lot of the issues around african-americans particularly african-american males is that they're not being approached or addressed based on who they are they're being approached they're being addressed them based on what we want them to be and we have to start where they are to move them in that in that in that direction I want to give it to you from a student's perspective so let me show you this clip from this actually was sent to me by one of the teachers that we trained in Oakland he's the video teacher at her high school this was a video that was done by the high school students and it was done around the issues of race and it lets you know that when we allow the students to really grapple with this they have the wherewithal to kind of come up and approach it from where we're coming from it was a spoken word contest that the particular gentleman won and then they took the spoken word contest and then showed it and turned it into this video because at this point your knowledge my meanwhile she keeps spinning on it like crying I tell you about my ethnic makeup our foundation I'm not that powdery stuff I put the foundation laid by my business people my roots are my face my soul and I take this from my ancestors to the human being so what's my ethnic makeup I don't have because ethnicity isn't something you can just make up and on the faces that's not makeup and I'm sure that such actions are foreign to her because their expression shows that she knows that my mind is in the trance as a footsteps faint my ego was left in crutches so sweet all right so that's from a student perspective there and you see they have a good grasp of where we're going with this which is really saying that our racial identity only serves one purpose and that is to identify our DNA lineage it has nothing to do with who we are in terms of these other identities I mean I'm African right that is my racial DNA pigmentation of skin texture of hair prone to certain diseases that's what it says you know I love the I don't love it but the Sally Field kumar's I love it for this work the Sally Field commercial you guys ever see the Sally I forgot what it's for I think it's for um awesomer roses but at the bottom you see what it says there's it my note see that you what those commercials gotta read this little what does it say they might know said again the disclaimer what does it say does he know what it says something about white white whites and Asian's in terms of being prone to this that speaking to racial identity there so what we're saying is now that we know this you cannot identify me by my race other than to say that I am of African descent that's all it tells you it does not tell you how smart I am as I tell you what music I like it does not tell you what language I use it does not tell you anything about my background and anything that you come with that you're making an assumption you're making a prejudice you're making a bias so if we have that understanding then we could take a race and put it off the table and and know that this approach is not racially responsive education its cultural responsive education and part of the confusion is we have too much focus on race not a folk not enough focus on culture I don't think it's about racism I think it's about culturalism and the students were not being successful in our schools it has less to do with the fact that they are of African descent and more to do with the fact that they are being black and that's why we have to understand that there's a difference between the two I can meet somebody who's african-american and but immediately know if they are black or not and and not make a judgement about them and so our students who are being themselves in terms of their blackness if we were really to disaggregate the data like that then we would see this culturalism we'd see this culturalism versus this racism now we talk about nationality what's the punchline on that that is that we were all something before we became Americans basically unless you are of wasp culture wasp is white anglo-saxon Protestant which is the culture that all the other cultures in essence assimilated into this comes from a body of work known as how the Irish became white how the Jewish became white how the Germans became white if you read those texts it talks about that cultural assimilation from being Irish German Jewish into being wasp and that wasp becomes synonymous with American so to be American some would say is really to be wasp white anglo-saxon Protestant we can add in the religious factor as well okay but what I really want to get to is culture and what I want you to do now is I want you to identify what ethnic identity do you subscribe to what ethnic identity resonates which are so culturally what moves you what makes you think of home community and heritage from an ethnic standpoint and once again see if you can name two things that you can link to that identification two things that make you X in terms of interests likes in terms of heritage in terms of experience now remember we've already released you we freed you we've liberated you if you are African America you could say I subscribe to wasp culture it's okay if you are Caucasian American you could say I subscribe to Korean culture because that's the beauty of culture you're not locked in see I'm locked in racially now we got some of us we try to change our race right we know we got some of those in the celebrity world right okay but is this been unsuccessful attempts you know what I'm saying but I'm not I'm not locked in culturally I'm not locked in culturally you know I can't I can move about culturally where I can't racially what happens though some people feel bad about having to say well I'm of this race but I subscribed to this culture because whatever society puts on is because society says you look this way so that means that you should act this way okay so in your group once again I'm just gonna give you two minutes I'll give you three because it's a tougher topic define your ethnic identity and you cannot say American alright you can say wasp but you cannot say American go now just to let you know you know we're we're truncating this is this ends up being about a 90 minute conversation and the full day because a lot comes out of that in terms of people talking about their identification I do want to well I can't go back but oh yes again what what notice the last identity is age because there is a culture that comes with your age that we talk about and what that means is that you do certain things culturally just simply based on how old you are you know and sometimes though we confuse that with the other identities remember it's confusion so we're saying we're trying to get you to carve out very specifically what what what is my ethnic makeup if you will that I can take out of a generational identity or take out of a geographic identity meaning that if you subscribe to black culture there is a commonality among people who subscribe to black culture across the country regardless of you from LA New York Boston or Alabama right there's a commonality different from an aged identity that comes with people who may be in their 30s right and they grew up in the age of high-top fades whatever right whatever it is you know is there some link there but that link might not be related to the ethnic identity more so than it is to the aged irony and sometimes they cross they cross and it's just knowing how these things apply that strengthens us but I think also not knowing leads to leads to confusion so your cultural identity is very complicated because we have to really understand what culture is we always start off with metaphors and analogies for for me PhD means how many metaphors can you come up with write it make it work okay because I try them out and then my family goes that is not a good metaphor it right there it does not work so like okay how about this one right but wait Noble said it very well he said culture is to humans as water is to fish and it is it is the lens that we see the world is through that cultural lens and and similar to our fish need their own water to survive right we all have our aquariums stories of you know kind of a killing off some fish part of the reason why is because we took them out of their water I know I know I did I'll admit it okay the first time I took the fish out of the water to clean the tank right put them back in the next day they were what dead and then I called and I said you saw me some really bad fish what happened and he started laughing once I explained right say you're supposed to leave the fish in the water clean the tank or keep them in their water and that's the same thing here the full analogy a full metaphor that he uses is this we're trying to put saltwater fish in plain water tanks in terms of our school system and these students a lot of students of color are be putting those plain water tanks and then I have a success so what must we do add some salt to the tank all right that's the analogy of waiting nobles users we use this working definition about Villegas and Lucas that is comprises for me the sort of totality of culture identifiable community or group that uses a certain language a certain way of interaction one another how you take turns to talk how you relate to time and space and how you approach learning all involved around patterns for us define what we mean in terms of this culture okay and in terms of this ethnic identity if you will when we say culture when it comes to african-americans and these groups that we talked about though remember I said there's not a validation and a legitimacy so these are all the precepts if you will or our categories of culture put forth by Wayde Nobles in the context of black culture and the question that we ask is when you think of black culture honestly do you think of all of this right here do you think of all do you think of its complexity or do you think of hip-hop and pelvic gyrations do you think of certain types of foods do you think of movies you know it bothers me when we talk about black culture and we just name black actresses and that's all right that's the that's the length of our culture or we talk about music or we talk about certain foods when the complexity of any culture is here all cultures have this and it's all relative to the culture how does this play out in terms of stereotypes and generalizations well if you understand black culture you understand that it is a culture of hard work working hard having a strong work ethic it's in our history it's in our families it's in who we are to work hard if you listen to the mainstream and to the institution in terms of our boys what do we hear about them as being what lazy that's a stereotype that's a stereotype because culturally speaking we are a hard-working culture period and this notion of laziness does not apply and how do I know well take me to where they are motivated take me to where they have an interest take me to where they are being responsive and you're not gonna see laziness you're gonna see hard work but if I come to the classroom if I come to the system believing that these kids are lazy culturally then we have what's known as that self-fulfilling prophecy or we begin to act out that belief you're not gonna be nothing you can't write you can't read you're not going to do this and then all of a sudden it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy right versus you can write you can do this I'm not gonna take you know I was in this classroom last week and this is a very simple example but it speaks to high expectations there was homeroom it was guidance the students are coming in they're wearing uniforms this teacher african-american teacher she made every one of them young boys tuck their shirts in every single one of them she didn't she didn't let down and she told them you are a scholar you are a student you have to look like a scholar you have to look like a student tuck your shirt in and every single one of those boys tuck their shirts in that's that's that that's the high expectations that we need in terms of belief system she's telling them you are important you are a student you are a scholar look that look now some people say well that's a little thing but that that could go a long way in the long run what about respect you know if we listen to mainstream media if we listen to what we get from the institution then you would think in black culture we don't respect black women that's what you would think because we're going on hip-hop which the mainstream media has replaced for black culture right and there was there was black culture in fact there was music before hip-hop right some people are disappointed to know that but it was okay because of the nature of hip-hop some of it is a disrespect misogynistic lyrics and such on we have extrapolated to be represented but if you know anything about black culture what do you know about respect in the black female let's put it like this if I even form my lips even just begin to articulate the sound of disrespecting a black female I would not be with you here today period because a shoe or a brick or something would come upside my head immediately you don't disrespect you open the door you go help with the groceries you help with the luggage that's in the culture so when these dudes are walking around calling females out of the name you have to look them dead and I have to say that's not who you are that's not who you are you're not 50 cent you're not whomever you're not whomever you are somebody's grandson you are somebody's son and I don't think if your mom or your sister came up here you want them to be called like that and I've never had a student say I don't care you come I'm on whatever you want to call me never heard that you can call my sister no never heard that but it's how we're going at them see how y'all talk that's how y'all do it in our community huh that's how y'all talk to one but we don't talk like that here that's the belief system how you how you gonna say we don't talk like that here that's how we it's not true anyway that's not how we talk in our community so this is what we mean by the complexity and if we're going to change in terms of achievement gap we got to change how we're believing of the students and if that changes that come about we got to see things more on the cultural lines versus the racial lines then there is what I call the depth of it in terms of what we call cultural determinations and these are things that are culturally connected through the stud through anthropological study it's not just related to black culture it's a study of all cultures how they greet one another is culturally based right so that soul shake is not something that I got off of good times right it was something that was done in my family by my uncles my granddad so on and so forth that was taught to me but at the same time I was taught the mainstream handshake and my uncle would say when you talk it to the man this is how you shake his hand and he demonstrated the mainstream handshake right but when you're at home when you're in the community it's the soul shake or the black man's hug I don't go to Grandma's house and give her the mainstream handshake because she's gonna say boy what are you doing right you reach any no it's not gonna work I contact is culturally based it's culturally based right the anthropological study is this every culture is our relative has a certain length of time that it's appropriate to look at someone's eyes okay and it varies in some cultures for example a lot of European cultures it's appropriate to gaze and look long deep into somebody's eyes and it sends a message of respect or disrespect respect interests intrigue that's the message in other cultures sometimes you look at someone and you look away is that respect or disrespect respect and this in the culture and it's sort of take it into school you have some Asia to tour some Latino students they look at the teacher didn't look away and it's a sign of respect but in a culture of school it's a sign of what disrespect and the teacher will say look at me when I'm talking to you but the student is saying in my culture we don't look at you we look away right that's a cultural that's what we call cultural misunderstanding it's a cultural misunderstanding in black culture you look long you look wrong because it sends a message of what disrespect disrespect right sends a message of confrontation and so what I'm what I'm trying to get you understand is this is not from hip-hop this is not from TV this is culturally based passed down from generation to generation I can get off any plane anywhere in the country and I know if there's a young brother on the jetway or whatever I can't stare him down why because culturally I'm sending a message of disrespect and if he subscribes to black culture he's gonna say what's up what you're looking at why are you looking at me that way right that's cultural we put it in the context of school though we teach the look as a means of classroom management right that's mommas look means you cut you tell you bet stop what you're doing right now but what teachers need to understand that if you look too long then you look wrong and the student is gonna respond culturally the students gonna say to the teacher what what you looking at why are you looking at me she always got her eyes on me the teacher is gonna say get out why disrespectful defiant deviant because the teacher saying in the context of school the cultural appropriate thing is I can look at you but the student said but in my culture you stare me down we got a cultural misunderstanding and this is what leads to disappoint the disappointment of the the detentions referrals suspensions this is why because of these cultural misunderstandings a lot of these students end up in the office and when you ask them why are you here they say I don't know I was just I just said what you're looking at she sent me out they don't have an understanding so what we have to develop is this cultural sensitivity around the teacher understanding that I got a time my look I have to use proximity button to guess what I can't get too close because space is a cultural norm as well in some cultures you can get up in somebody's face in other cultures it's inappropriate it's rude so the students are gonna say what get out of my face why are you in my face and what is it teacher gonna say get out because in school this is my space and I can get in my get in your face did you hear me mr. right and it's dude you like get out of my face get out okay so we have to we have to come to an understanding and recognize these behaviors for what they are and we think that that will lead to not sending them out of the room but teaching situation appropriate is what does that mean that means that the student recognizes oh I'm in school that means that she's gonna be looking at me and I got a coach which I have two coats which right and once they learn that lesson they're gonna be on the road to success because all of us to make it through the education system had to learn how to code switch on one level or another right and the studio not having success are not code switching and this is what Lisa Delpit talks about when she says explicit instruction that's the explicit instruction she's talking about some of those students they don't they don't get that transaction there they don't get that that that that court that how we relate to one another I always use the example of interacting with policemen right and in my experience I have never looked at the policemen when they're talking to me as a form of disrespect in a way right but some police they will say sir I need you to look at me and at that particular moment I gotta make us decision I gotta make a decision I gotta make a decision if I'm gonna code switch or am I gonna continue to be in essence in terms of the mainstream culture quote-unquote defiant right so I go right or something like that okay all right that's how this works and but it has to be automatic and it has to be done in a way where you don't have to give up who you are another thing that's cultural a lot of people don't know is how we hold conversation and that period of oat with the linguists call overlap overlap is the space or time when I stop talking and it's appropriate for the other person to start talking right and it's varied by culture in some cultures there's a big space that means I stop talking 1,001 1,002 1,003 now you can start talking I'll make my point 1001 right then it go right it fluctuates okay so in black culture look it's no isn't it's no space it's called oh it's called jumping in that you have to have the ability to jump in if you don't have the ability to jump in then you won't get into the conversation okay right now students come to school with this intact culturally right and what happens is they're penalized in school because they began jumping in and in school jumping is is considered what rude interrupting now what I wanted to do is I want to give an example of how we take that cultural norm go to where the students are but put it into an instructional strategy in your packets there we're just going to read just because of time I'm just going to read two pages we're not gonna read all thing and we have some extras here you can help you out there but I want to read from page 13 Their Eyes Were Watching God this is where the strips came from and if you don't have a package just kind of look on with someone Their Eyes Were Watching God this is or no Hurston's you know premier piece and she writes in african-american language if you will right and also whether this is why the strips came from but I want to do a reading activity with you that's called jump in reading write that bit what we just talked about culturally and jump in reading here are the rules rule number one I'm the master jumper in her that means I can jump in at any time all right rule number two you're not gonna be prompted to read you can just jump in but you must jump in at a period stop you have to jump in at a period stop you can't jump in at other punctuation line break and it has to be a period if you jump in I need you to read at least three sentences all right now two or more two or more people might jump in at the same time and in that case will will defer to the one who jumped in first and I'll make the call if necessary all right we're just going to read from the first two pages we're not going to do the whole thing I'll start reading and at some point I'll stop or I want somebody to jump in okay and then reel out so everyone can hear you ships out a distance have every man's wish on board little otter little louder TK gave in oh boy for some time he around 30 years own stuff she act like we didn't done something to her pearl stone complain she the one been doing wrong you mean you met because she didn't stop and tell us all our business anyhow what'd you ever know her to do so bad as y'all make out the worst thing I ever knowed her to do was taking a few years off her age and that ain't never harmed nobody y'all makes me tired the way y'all talking you think the folks in this town didn't do nothing in the best I praise the Lord you have to excuse me cuz I'm bound to go take her some supper Phoebe stood up sharply don't mind us a little smile just go right ahead us combined your house for you till you get back my suppers done you better go see how she feel you can let the rest of us know lord pearl agreed I didn't squashed up that little meat and bread too long to talk about I can stay away from my home long as I please my husband ain't fussy are we gonna stop there and the reading activity was jumping reading and what we're saying is you have students in the class who can jump in now we have a strategy that validates who they are and they can say something that I do at home is now a plus at school versus being a minus and it's incorporated into instruction but we're not going to stay there there are other reading strategies that we're going to introduce to transition them to more of what can be expected expected in academics in academia okay and that's important we're not going to stay there we're just going to start there all so now you got to read you got to see what it feels like to read a non-standard language and that feeling that you got reading that is the same feeling of someone trying to read standard English or academic language and that is you have a certain oral proficiency you are proficient in terms of your reading but put a language in front of you that you are unfamiliar with and then your reading level is rendered lower or slower and that's the phenomenon that you experience are reading the african-american language is the same phenomenon that students who are trying to learn standard English and academic language experience linguistically all right and that's going to transition us to talk about language here and I'm gonna start off with this video I think that gets you at why we think negatively about Ebonics or while we think negatively about african-american language I think so basically it's like black speech Ebonics to me was the dumbest idea maybe we should give people an example of Ebonics as far as the pronunciation goes let's look at some examples and becomes Pam good becomes GU and with becomes with the example I remember is I wanted to say do you have any maples here human beatbox I would say hey do you have maple syrup beatbox you see could I drop some of the particles you silly young man what's up why y'all we might was a way of saying the cease-and-desist isn't there any controversy or white Ebonics firm let's say I've onyx ivory onyx dude man I think I've got two squirts doesn't mean hey man I'm gonna use my squirt gun and spray it means hey man I just ate some Taco Bell all right so we see how the mainstream media fools us into thinking deficit or ignorant through the misinformation right if we just go on net then that's where we get our notions of Ebonics or the non-standard languages so the first thing we have to go to is the linguistic research which is what we do and the linguists are very clear that any characterization I'm skipping to the bottom here any characterization of Ebonics a slang mute and lazy defective ungrammatical or broken English is incorrect and demeaning that it is seen as a as a linguistic system that is fundamentally regular beyond vocabulary that's key it has to do with phonics morphosyntax grammar rhetoric or even pragmatics you have to understand that language has six dimensions one of the dimensions is known as the pragmatic dimensions or what is commonly known as the nonverbal cues right there are nonverbal cues that are tight linguistically meaning how you may roll your eyes move your neck stand a Kimbo whatever comes with your language and this is important to understand the depth and complexity is not just vocabulary it's not just vocabulary there are three linguistic absolutes and they're very simple easy to remember all language is good there's no such thing as a bad language linguistically speaking there's no such thing as bad French there's no such thing as street Spanish there's no such thing as proper English it's all good linguistically when we society comes and places a judgment on it that's where we get the value but in its purest form it's good although all linguistic forms are rule governed and patterned they're not made up they're not hodgepodge they're not random they were not created by hip-hop there was african-american language prior to hip-hop alright and we acquired the language that's spoken in home by the primary care giver and whatever language that is that's the language child's gonna come to school speaking at preschool four years old at three years old or five or a kindergarten at five that's the language they're gonna come speaking based on the primary caregivers language all right here's the technical definition of Ebonics it wasn't coined in 1997 by Oakland it was coined in 1973 in st. Louis but this by some black linguists who got together because they were tired of the deficit names that the white linguist had given to the language of Africans in America so it is no it's a three paragraph definition it's just the first sentence Ebonics is the linguistic and para linguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West African Caribbean and United States they descendants of African origin problem with linguists is they write in ways that puts everybody to sleep right so we have to break it down Ebonics and I want to give it to you this way I want to inform you so that you can inform others and they're really just three quick points that you can make with others point number one Ebonics is a language family it is not a singular language it is a language family it is an umbrella term that refers to all the languages that are spoken in the African Diaspora that's what it is so it's really ignorant or misinformed to say do you speak Ebonics because you wouldn't say do you speak romance or do you speak indo-european why because those are families of languages what are the what are those languages well that's the second point you can make those languages are connected to wherever the enslaved Africans were taken throughout the enslavement because when they got to that particular place in the world they were given those constraints I told you about earlier no African tongue no working in groups can't let speak the language here so the linguist said they simply took the words that they were hearing laid them on top of the grammar that they were speaking and formed in essence this hybrid language that's known in Jamaica as a pet wah Spanish and a West African base that's known in Aruba as Dutch pidgin that's known in Haiti as French Creole that's known in South America as Black Portuguese that's known in Peru as where go that's known in North America in in Georgia as Geechee that's known throughout the western United States as African American language or black English and that's known in South Carolina as Gullah all right what is the commonality the commonality is the same grammatical base will go from country to country is the same rules all right now the third thing that you can point out is that why are you calling it a language because some people they they be tripping on that they were calling it a language well the reason why we're calling the language because the linguist tell us that well you know if you want to define a language you can define it as simply saying that if you have a big army you speak a language if you have a small army you speak a dialect because our world history of languages tell us that there are some countries that when they were dominated they spoke dialects but when they gained independence they spoke languages so it's political the second thing we know is that there is a regional variation to a language that becomes a dialect so I can be speaking african-american language with a southern drawl y'all right or I can do my New York in accent or I can bring it to Chicago uh-huh or I can like do this where we talk in LA like this all the time right but we're still speaking the same rules of the language that means we're still using multiple negation we're still using habitual B although we're in different parts of the country and the last part of this is very simple that part of oppression is taking away somebody's language it's telling them you don't have a language you don't have a culture your skin doesn't match ours your hair doesn't match ours and getting us to think negatively about who we are that's the best the process of oppression and you don't even have to be there to oppress because once the oppressed believe in what has been given then the oppression will be carried out by themselves and the oppressor can remove and it will continue and this to a large extent has happened this is why you have some people who say I don't speak no Ebonics while they're using multiple negation contract you know sentence there so I don't have time to go over the rules with you but I want to give you one example women by the rules but if you look in your packet starting on page 20 and 21 you will see a what we call a contrast of analysis chart which are the black English rules and this is what's published in the prentice hall series because in California teachers have to address non-standard language issues in their teaching it's in the center it's in our education framework so all of our textbook publishers have these elements in the textbooks for teachers who have students who speak non-standard languages so it's part of the IDI the educational policy there okay so if you take for example habitual be habitual B is the one that's made fun of like she said at the end of the clip I be he right if you go to West Africa and you study the B form you recognize that the B form has what's known as an a habitual ality use it refers to things in an ongoing sense as over time in terms of its its in existence so if you really analyze IBG from the scriptural standpoint the quote is I'd be he but it's really saying from if you look at from West African language I am in essence everywhere I am always in this existence that's how it works so in the length in the language you could say she'd be late to work okay so when you translate that to Standard English you must have an is or AR verb plus the use of an adverb or adverbial phrase that is the correct translation so if I say she be late to work someone translate based on what I just explained that girl is always late to work what am i listening for there is and always because that is the linguistic equivalent to the use of the B form if you translate it to XI late or as you translate to she is late to work that is an incorrect translation because the correct translation I just gave it to you is what she late to work so if I want to say present tense like she late right now I would say she late to work right but if I want to say just sit down just take have some coffee because it's gonna be a while because she is always late to work then I would say she be late to work that's the accurate translation if you understand this it gives you a connection with the students a rapport it also empowers them so that when the students used to come when I was on working as like a Dean this is to come to the office never say that teacher she be tripping right now I understand the language so I understand that they're saying what she is always being a bother to me right so I know that it's ongoing it's something I need to investigate it something I need to look into it something I need to call the teacher about but if the tea if the students come down and say man that teachers she tripping then I know it's right at that moment they're saying right now she is a bother to me and I can handle it differently or you know they'll be out on the yard you're gonna say man you cheatin they're saying what you cheatin right now or they'll like walk away from the game so I'm not plow with you cuz you be cheating you always cheat that's how we have to understand the language okay now that's just one rule there we do about thirty rules we do about thirty rules and explain it the way we explain right now let me show you how it looks in the classroom and then we can in with questions in our remaining moments there's about a six minute clip this comes from PBS do you speak America and they came to LA to see how we Howard do this teaching around the linguistic piece and this is a fifth grade classroom I think maybe not I don't know sometimes it takes a while to catch up to where I am so we'll see let me see let me try like this maybe not I have a backup though it's just a longer clip the one that I want to show you actually which is what the universe might be saying to me is a longer clip that I didn't that um so what I'm going to do is I really wanted to show you this clip so to get that was the universal way of telling me you need to show this clip right because this is really our school and how our school looks in its entirety it's just that it's a longer clip right and we're down to the last 15 minutes so I'm going to show it to a certain point and then we'll just stop and then we can have time for question to answer so we'll watch six minutes of this okay it's like nine minutes long or at six minutes of it oh we're onto our sound well technology is that something I'm doing oh wait no various nation builders people helped make this country what it is today one of those people that we've already studied is I to be Wells Barnett so we've already read through the book once I don't be Wells Barnett a voice against violence what we're gonna do today is paired reading so you are going to get with your partner and you're going to reread an important chapter chapter four which is called the struggle against violence now I'm going to review quickly again what's expected of you during paired reading i'm started with culture responsive literature i to be wells burnett because we've been studying the nation villa unit and so after I had already read it aloud to them we went back for a second reread and so we use reciprocal teaching with the paired reading where they use questioning clarifying summarizing etc in order to check for comprehension okay one good thing that a good reader does is identify what a character's life by the things that they do or the things that they say one of our third grade standards is to be able to look what a character says or does and determine their characteristics their personality traits so what we did was using the information from my to be well since we've already read it once and we read read a part of it we went back to find adjectives that describe them so what we are going to do and we are going to think of some adjectives to help describe I to be Wells Barnet adjectives we're gonna use think-pair-share what is an adjective think once you have it in your mind go ahead and put your head your hand on your head to show that you're ready okay turn your partner's para table for person 3a be Joshua what is an adjective an adjective is like a word that describes something about a noun okay so we are going to think of adjectives that describe our to be Wells Barnett and we're going to add them to our bubble map because a bubble map is used to do what give me a shout-out that's why that's right we're using a bubble map to describe something so in this case we're describing Ida B Wells Barnet so let's go ahead and write our subject in the center okay what you're going to do at this time is you're going to discuss in your group some different adjectives that may describe I to be wells I'll be thinking about the things that she did in Chapter four or the things that she may have said in chapter four or even the rest of the book words that you used to describe her whole personality not just how she's feeling at any particular moment so we're going to use numbered heads together so when I say go you're gonna do bottoms up and you're going to decide on one adjective for the group go number one is to stand up please so for table number one Omar what did you guys come up with an adjective to describe Ida good five-star word I'm gonna go ahead and write that in our bubble map what word did you guys come up with the came up with unstuck unstopping all right stop up girl very good Selita did your table group come up with just just excellent give us I'm glad we came up with nice okay what are these works doesn't quite fit as nicely as most of them you guys use some excellent words from your personal is the source of five Star Wars there's one word here that we headed with define some synonyms for and that would be the word nice one way we can use the person with a source is to expand the students own vocabulary and so we started with the word nice and then other students added to that word have already a concept for it so we need other words that we add to it so I want you to think of another word that means the same thing as nice in order to do this you're going to use give one get one where you're going to get up and give your word your synonym to somebody and you're going to get one from them as well so you should sit back down with at least two synonyms for the word nice opportunity to give one and get one we're gonna share out some and the serfs here so I'm going to start with roll up table one person one Oh mark kind kind okay good table two person three my synonym for nice is courteous is a five-star word boy high five from afar Table five person two Zuri big hearted hearted excellent Zuri we came up with some excellent synonyms for the word nice so we're gonna add a start person at the source but before we do that we need to decide what page it is that we're going to turn to in our person of the source me I'm gonna turn it to n4 nice because that's my easy word why did you turn to K and your personal thesaurus Taylor because so that when you go and do your writing and you want to find a synonym for kind you can look up under K find all these other five-star words excellent so once we combine everybody's synonyms for the word nice then we added that to the person of the source now the reason it's a person with the source is because the students put it under their own word according to research okay Billy is one of the primary reasons for students success or failure we want to make sure that they have at the repertoire vocabulary for comprehension purposes for writing and for speaking from there we want to talk about situational appropriateness of language since we do a lot of code-switching and a lot of contrast of analysis and why the form of that is situation program is so that not only can they code switch but they know when and where to do it in Chapter four one very important part is when Ida gets to go talk to President McKinley about what's going on in her country and so some of you have created a roleplay about situational appropriateness and languages that she's going to be using so we're gonna start with her introducer zaleka jefferson and talking about talking to him about the lynching going on in her country it is nice to meet you peasant my name is iws Burnett and I came to talk to you soon so I just came to talk to you about something horrible is happening our country Oh mrs. Barnett what is it that to talk about instance to Superboy I'm shocked my people should not be treated this way and I want you to do something to stop this injustice I will do everything I can to stop these judge injustice right away Thanks thank you for your help with this matter President McKinley me and my people would II need your support about what happened what she went to go talk to president McKenna so what happened item all right I'm gonna stop it there what remains is they're going to talk about which language is appropriate and why and why why do we make the choices that we make that's what it remains through some more activities there but we're almost out of time we have five six minutes for questions comments from the audience Q&A yes what do you what do you do when the class is not on the same reading level that you have some kids who can use the word amicable and others who use kind I mean not that some kids with language difficulties because they speak another language for instance well when it comes to reading what mandated by the state which is which is what they were reading in terms of our school then we are they have to read gray level material and then we have another part of the day where they read at their reading level so by offering them both we think we can get at those issues and then the utilization of the strategy so what the person thesaurus if nice is my word that's still validating an affirm but I'm hearing all that other vocabulary being used in the room and I'm writing them in my thesaurus so they become the synonyms so we work on synonym development but never negating where they're coming from with the use of nice or kind yeah someone else went back there I just had a quick question in terms of the strategies you employed for example the jump in I was talk about jumping reading right it's cultural its I guess my next question really goes to culture its culture something that's really blanket like can you really assume that that jumping in is something that occurs in every african-american no and then furthermore that was one half the question the other half would be what do you do in a multicultural setting to I guess to make sure that your I guess being sensitive to each cultural background and what you employ these same kind of strategies in a multicultural setting right now remember you can be African American and not be black so you we can't make that assumption we don't make that assumption there may be some African students who are uncomfortable jumping in we realize that in a multicultural setting we really give a sort of spectrum of strategies so jump in is just one I have another one that's just the opposite of jump in that may be more culturally sensitive to other cultures the point what the teacher is that you have to do them all so that you can reach all the students and then if I'm doing something that is uncomfortable for your culture I'm going to ask you to come out of your comfort zone and to us that defines what we mean by cross-cultural connections and then becomes the true definition of multiculturalism all right thanks yet and the other one up here great a point you talked about earlier in your speech going with the switch almost switching codes with talking and with not only with talking but the cultural connections of looking away and being able to in a sense how we've all assimilated to the the wasp way of doing those things it can't even think of any one reason why African Americans especially African American men are having more difficulty than the men in other cultures or is there some one point that's causing that you think it's a combination of points well I think most would say there's a combination of points but there are two I think that sort of stand out one is opportunity and what we know is that assimilation is based around economics and most people assimilate they do it because there's an economic viability to it so when you look at it in terms of african-american males you have to look at the opportunity to do that and how that balances out over time so then the argument becomes is it the cart before the horse or the horse before the cart meaning is it a situation where african-american males are not being given opportunity or bent or taking the opportunity and that's to me that's where it gets all into the debate but we know that assimilation is connected to opportunity and that's connected to making money and we use the research of Irish Germans Jewish because what what we find is they want it to be white because it was connected to prosperity it wasn't connected to being patriotic it wasn't connected to wasp culture the second piece then really gets into the heart notion of racism basically and how the black male is really you know as he indicated beginning with all the statistics and such so at the bottom of the totem pole in that and therefore it is a it has a larger climb on two levels meaning that for a black male to assimilate you almost get a harder treatment for a quote-unquote selling out you know understanding so you have to deal with that and then it is it tends to be a harder climb period just in terms of navigating the system and that's where some would say the institutional racism becomes a factor that was right yes so in the early 2000s I did some training with teachers around culture teaching and learning and the the way that I approached it really was to help teachers learn about themselves as cultural beings and so I'm just wondering where does that piece fit into the training of these teachers for the children right it's it's the first it's an important piece and it's the first the the identity exercise that we did that's where that comes out it's a it's a big piece and that's what we start in the first two-hour block and we tell the teachers that in order to be culturally sponsor the first thing you have to do is be attuned to where you are in terms of your identity and how you feel about other cultures now we don't spend a lot of time on that but we do talk about it as an important aspect to becoming culturally responsive because as we know that could be a hindrance if you're not in tune with your own because what we're finding is if I could get a teacher to admit let's just say an extreme sense I'm racist believe it or not that actually opens the door to them using some of these strategies because what they realize is that I can still get more engagement in my room but I don't necessarily have to believe in all the things that you're saying around the culture and language piece like I'm gonna say we believe in a see Banach stuff but if you're telling me if I could get them do some code switching exercises and they're gonna learn you know better quote unquote English then I'll do it and so in that context we take it but I tell them in exchange I need you to open up and talk about who you really are and how do you feel about these students and I've had teachers stand up when we do like we would spend like two or three days with them by the third day admitting I'm afraid of my black male students you know and having that type of open conversation and that's gonna open the door to where we're trying to get with the strategies my school our school it's a about 60% african-american and the rest are why Asian Latino so we're not all black teachers with believe it or not with white people say well who is the prime candidate to do this type of teaching and what we found is it's a young white female teacher because they those teachers tend to have a worldview that allows them to open up and to the approach in terms of use of the strategies and sometimes with older black female teachers it's a hardest sell because they're coming from like bootstrap mentality and like you know I didn't need to do this when I was going to school so they don't need to do it so you have to you have to navigate through that and it's it becomes a harder sell it's not saying that they don't do it was just a harder sell whereas the young white female teacher is it easier it's an easier sell yeah any other questions all right wanna thank you for your time your energy hope you got something out of it as always you ask questions make me uncomfortable I learn something every time you now know why dr. Holly doesn't like me because I always say I need to come for a couple hours just to talk to people one says no I like to do this three or four days so I'm open now that well you found a way to Boston and that will try to continue this in a longer time period next time but tomorrow at nine o'clock and the Student Lounge dr. Holly will be available just to continue the conversation dialogue with any faculty or staff and that and then at 10:30 for students for about 75 minutes so it'll be available we want to break it up because I think that there's different issues in those different groups so he'll be available in the student lounge in the School of Education which is on for two and a half alright so if you've been in the School of Education you know that that's a weird place so it's like the kitchen alright well thank you very much for your time and thank you again dr. Holly you

Channel: Boston University

Views: 1,305,452

Rating: 4.5336995 out of 5

Keywords: boston university, african american studies, boston university african american studies, black male educators, black masculinity, black education in america, boston university lecture, culture vs race, black history, prison system, mass incarceration, black education

Id: 7KyFWKnsnQQ

Length: 108min 54sec (6534 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2010