Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Lisa Delpit: The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children (Quotes)

~ "If schooling prepares people for jobs, and the kind of job a person  has determines her or his economic status, and therefore, power, then schooling is intimately related to that power."
     This quote means that the type of schooling that a child receives plays a key role in determining their economic status and power.  Schooling/training will prepare a person for a job that will automatically place them in an economic status and determine their power.  Therefore, schooling/training directly influences the amount of power of a person by preparing them for a particular field of work within a certain economic status. 

~"Students need "to be taught the codes to participate fully in the mainstream of American life, not by being forced to attend to hollow, inane, decontextualized sub-skills, but rather within the context of meaningful communicative endeavors; that they must be allowed the resource of the teacher's expert knowledge, while being helped to acknowledge their own "expertness" as well, and even while students are assisted in learning the culture of power, they must also be helped to learn about the arbitrariness of those codes and about the power relationships they represent."
     This quote expresses Delpit's opinion of how important it is for students that are not members of the culture of power to learn the rules of the culture of power so that they are given the accessibility to try and change these rules one day.  She wants teachers to use everyday examples of how these rules affect our lives to teach our students what the rules of the culture of power are.  While teaching the children about these rules, Delpit explains that she also wants to make sure that the students understand that these rules should not replace their own and that their own cultural rules should also be valued.  Delpit also emphasizes the importance of teachers and students exploring and sharing their "expertness" in order to learn from each other. 


~"To imply to children or adults (but of course the adults won't believe you anyway) that it doesn't matter how you talk or how you write is to ensure their ultimate failure."
     This quote says that by ignoring the culture of power, we are setting children up to fail.  We would be kidding ourselves to think that people do not pass judgement on others based on how they speak and their language style.  This quote emphasizes the importance teaching children about different language and cultural styles and how expectations of speech will affect how people are often viewed by others.  Delpit uses this to introduce the ideas of "Formal or Standard English" and cultural language styles and how these types of language are viewed as being more appropriate in different types of settings. 

Monday, May 23, 2011

Welcome to my world....

Hello, my name is Jillian and I am a graduate student working on my degree in Early Childhood Special Education.  This is my final class before the internship needed to complete the program, and needless to say, I am very excited!  I am currently teaching 2nd grade at a private Catholic school in Woonsocket, RI.  When I am not in class or at my school, I work as a waitress at an American/Italian restaurant.  I spend my free time (which is not much!) with family and friends, and try to relax with a good book when I can.