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Prompt VI Lisa Delpit

As I have mentioned before my classroom is not only diverse but it is also a special need class. My teacher has to deal with both academic and behavioral problems. Her main aim is to bring out the best in her students. Since I started visiting I have never heard Mrs. D. raised her voice. You can tell when she is upset and the student knows her cue. If the classroom is too noisy or there is too much movement, she will ask everyone to stop what they are doing and take a deep breath. She will then redirect or give them the instructions again. This system works as the students would usually followed her instructions. She usually corrects them with a question, “Are we suppose to be doing this” or “why do you think this is wrong.”
Teachers are part of the dominate culture and sometimes lack the insight into their students values and cultures. Sociocultural deficit sometimes leads to a child’s behavior being misinterpreted.

A teacher’s value systems are showed in the way she organizes her classroom and also on how she interacts with her students. A good teacher takes into account issues of culture in her classroom. This goes along with Lisa Delpit in her book The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children, she talks about the five aspects of power which are:

1. Issues of power are enacted in the classrooms
2. There are codes or rules for participating in power, that is, there is a “culture of power.”
3. The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power.
4. If you are not already in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier.
5. Those with the power are frequently least aware of or least willing to acknowledge it’s existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence.

Sometimes teachers fail to understand their role as the power broker in the classroom. They are in a power to make known to their students the rules or codes necessary to interact successfully within a given environment. Delpit said the “people are experts on their own lives.” Children know how to behave in their homes and the committee, but they may not be appropriate for the classroom as they do not share the same norm. This is sometimes frustrating to the students. In some African cultures it is disrespectful to look an older person in their eyes, when they are talking, but it is the opposite in this culture, not looking at someone when they are talking will make the is considered disrespectful. Something simple like this can be solved with education.

As a teacher I should be able to explain my students that there are appropriate behaviors and language for different settings. In order for them to succeed in life they must know which language to use in the classroom, with their friend and when they are in the community.

Delpit further suggests that “to understand student’s perspectives, we must become ethnographers, researching the backgrounds to have a better understanding of their individual culture.”