Double Entry #3

“It's my responsibility to teach the learning standards, but not to change them or take away their dialect." (Epstein & LastHerring-Harris, 2011)

I learned a lot about teaching literacy development. I learned that Appalachian English has changed over the years, and that students find that interesting. One main thing that I have learned as I have becoming a teacher is that students need to be interested to be willing to learn. This activity gives students the background information on how and why people in this area speak and write. I learned that just because a student may not talk “correctly” does not mean they are incompetent and have no literacy knowledge that will hinder them from learning how to speak and write correctly. Through practice and learning, a student can understand the similarities in proper English and the cultural language of their area and apply that to their speech and writings for instance,” engage their students in studies of their home dialect, contrast it with Standard American English, and learn how to demonstrate their ability to code switch in order to succeed in school and jobs.” (Epstein & Herring-Harris, 2011)

The third thing helped me understand not only literacy development, but inclusion also. Each student should be given a chance to succeed in the classroom. Everyone has their differences. Some children can’t pay attention, others use the word “aint.” Does that mean we just forget about them and only teach the kids who are easy to teach? No, we do not. So finding ways to help these students who have unique differences in their dialect can change the way they look at learning the rest of their lives.

One positive experience in my high school that helped students be more professional in their speech and writing was a Senior Project. This project could be on almost anything you wanted to do it on. It was a 15-25 page paper describing the project and its processes. Second was a 5-10 min presentation. It wasn’t your typical project though, this was reviewed by board members and presented to two administrative members. You had to dress appropriate and your paper had to be professional. The point of me using this as a example is that I witnessed many projects that I thought were going to be very unprofessional and incorrect. I was wrong, I saw many people who did not have very proper language skills to develop a project like they did. This project after trial and error of being proof read, made the students learn how to speak and write correctly. Which probably helped them in college, because it defiantly helped me.
Writing across the curriculum: Once every few weeks our school gives out a topic and every student has to write a 1 page paper. This assignment is graded by the homeroom teacher and is given back. There is one problem with this assignment. There is no follow up, no reflection, no instruction on the errors made on the paper. You get a piece of paper back with more red ink on it than in math class. A student who can write correctly with correct punctuation and spelling gets good grades on every paper and keeps on getting good grades. A student who has trouble with literacy problems keeps on getting bad grades, and will hate to write the rest of his or her life. How do you expect someone to get better at something when they are set up to fail each time? It’s funny though, I never thought of it that way until now.

Comparing literacy development and inclusive practices.
Like I had said before, we are all different. There are many students who can speak and write correctly, some that can’t. There are some students who can learn by just listening to a teacher speak. There are some who can’t understand a thing a teacher says, but soon as they see it on paper they are fine. That’s just a couple of the many different types of students that are out there in the class room every day. We as teachers can’t pick out your favorite skittles and give your little brother all the reds. We have to accept every student and try and figure out a way to ensure a student’s success in the classroom, even if that takes some creativity and exploration.

Epstein, P., & Herring-Harris, L. (2011). Honoring dialect and increasing student performance in standard English. Retrieved from http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3655