Recognition of AAVE in the classroom is not about eradicating education about the English language. It is not about raising a new generation of students incapable of speaking anything other than AAVE. Advocates in the AAVE debate are calling for students to no longer be unfairly penalized for the use of their home language in the classroom. They are also pleading for teachers to build on home language to teach about Standard English…rather than ignoring it… (64).
The controversy over ways to “create a classroom environment that genuinely respects the diverse home languages of…students” (64) has been going on for decades. Neither the Student’s Right to Their Own Language document in the 1970’s nor the historic Oakland Ebonics case in 1996 has done a good job providing concrete methods to help teachers better educate their students to become more successful rhetoricians, therefore making many people “as confused about AAVE today as we were eight years ago” (64). This confusion has lead to uncertainty as to how to approach AAVE by educators, often resulting in unsuccessful integration techniques, inaccurate reflections of the legitimacies of AAVE, or naivety to the point of complete avoidance of AAVE. The fact that only “56 percent of African American students graduate from high school…” (66) is evidence of the ignorance of teachers. When teachers do try to address AAVE by the use of “hypercorrection, avoidance, or punishment of students' use of their home language in the classroom” (65), it only further frustrates students and leaves them no better off. To help combat this, Whitney offers five steps for educators to take to alleviate the hesitance associated with AAVE: that teachers educate themselves by correcting common misconceptions society seems to have about AAVE; that teachers incorporate multiculturalism into the classroom by providing “students with a more accurate view of Western culture and allows experiences and voices that have been ignored to be heard and appreciated’; that teachers create a learning environment rich in oral language by engaging students in “small-group discussions, brainstorming, word games, choral reading and creative dramatics, debates, storytelling…” (67) to enhance their reading and writing abilities; that teachers encourage and demonstrate code-switching in the classroom to “work with students to build on their repertoire of linguistic skills” (67); and that teachers allow students to write like real writers by having them cater to difference audiences in appropriate ways (68). Once these steps are correctly instituted, teachers can lay a solid foundation for the revolution towards helping students feel more comfortable in classrooms and flourish in their further education (68).
Who is the author's audience? English teachers? College level writing teachers? Someone else? How might the audience provide us hints of what the author is trying to revise in the field?
ReplyDelete