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December 01, 2005
Chapter 3 comments and questions
Comments:
It was very sad to hear how Maya was treated while in the predominatly white schools and how she didn't have many friends.
When I first read that Maya's language basically "changed" so qucikly when she started school at the charter school, I was shocked.
I thought that the paragraph about how she can "code switch" was very interesting. I think that it is true that when you are speaking in an interview for a job, or for a school, your presentation and how you speak is very important. I think that sometimes I "code switch." When I call someone on the phone, whether it be a company for something or my friends and their paretns pick up, my voice changes and I speak more clearly and slowly.
I don't agree with the comment "Students rarely get to talk in calssrooms." I think that classrooms these days are atleast, if not more, 50% of the time filled up by the students speaking. All throughout highschool and even middle school for me, participation was a big part of school. I don't remember one class where the students didn't speak for atleast half of the class each day.
WIth the comment about "say it right or don't say it at all" I was shocked to hear that teachers would even consider saying this to a student. Isn't a teachers job to teach? If a student does something wrong, aren't they supposed to correct them so the student learns?
Questions:
How come nobody asked what African American linguists thought during the ebonics debate?
where did all the "codes" come from for code switching?
If we were to go to an african american school, where they predomitly speak ebonics, would we be able to understand and to excel?
Do some schools combine standard english with everyday spoken english, tie them together and show the differences between the two and when to use proper english and so forth?
do children at predominatly african american schools learn more about African American culture and history then in a predominatly white school?
Posted by lcisnelson at December 1, 2005 01:43 PM