Prompt #4 : Delpit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr5Pgf8i2VQ

My experience in my tutoring has really been eye opening. In my high school, there was definitely a majority of white students, probably about 90%. So I’m not exactly used to being in an environment where there are Black and Hispanic as the majority. I was always aware of diversity, but I don’t think I necessarily realized how much different it could be until I started tutoring in this school. Everyone has a bias, whether they like to admit it or not. If you are brought up in a community where there are little to no non-white students, you could develop a bias towards them. It could be the other way around as well.

As a teacher in this classroom, I feel like I would have some challenges. I understand the diversity in the school. It’s just very difficult to take all these children’s different backgrounds and experiences and work them into the lessons. There will sometimes be one or two students that will be unintentionally confused, left out, etc. As a teacher in a classroom such as this one, I would need to be able to do my best to integrate every child’s diversity into whatever type of lesson plan I would be teaching.

As a teacher, we need to be able to recognize the diverse cultural groups that are present in our classroom. Everyone has had different experiences and grown up in different environments. It’s important as a teacher to not only be aware of the diversity in your classroom, but to integrate that and the knowledge you have into what you teach day by day. Lisa Delpit in “The Silenced Dialogue” talks about the culture of power. Basically, she gives five aspects of power then can connect to the role of a teacher and also, the role of the students. As a teacher, Delpit says that you need to be aware of this power to be able to positively integrate other aspects of that into the classroom. There is a “culture of power” in almost every classroom. These are basically codes and rules that go along with this power. Many challenges can arise if a student does not know or understand the culture of power. So if you have a student with a diverse background, they could become lost without knowing the rules or codes, and basically give up all together. The teacher needs to make sure that all the students in the classroom participate in the culture of power so that every student can progress to the best of their ability. If you have a student that does become unaware of the rules, then it’s best to tell the student exactly what the rules are. You can’t expect a student to understand the culture of power if you do not tell them the rules and codes first. It is our job as teachers to take those challenges that come up in the classroom and turn them around into advantages for the students.