Issues of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Identity in the Comp Classroom

As teachers, how should we be prepared to deal with issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and identity in our classrooms and in our one-on-one interactions with students?  How can we create teaching units that help students explore these issues?

I think the best way to deal with issues of race, ethnicity, gender and identity in the classroom is not complicated, but might be difficult: teachers should interact and engage with students as individuals. These students have already had many years of educational experience in the “system,” where they are no more than a number, or a type, or a list of deficiencies. If we can find a way to interact and engage with students on a personal, one-on-one way, then maybe we can help them find their own strength and confidence as they start to navigate the world of academia.

There are some things that we, as composition instructors, should keep in mind. First, that students have multiple identities and that their home identity may not integrate well in an academic setting. They might have to create a new identity for themselves for success  in college, and family and friends at home might not value this new identity. In fact, they might find it threatening, foreign or disloyal to the home culture. Some students might not have a supportive homelife.

For myself and my classes, I plan to use my love of language and language diversity to deal with these issues.  A large part of my class is going to be related to linguistic diversity and language prejudice. I would like to not only help my students build good academic writing and communication skills, but also help them to uncover, analyze and become aware of their own linguistic prejudices, as well as those of American society. I will have a unit on discourse communities and how our language might change as we move among the linguistic communities that we are part of.

Englishes

As composition teachers, how should we understand and deal with the complex issue of “Standard English”?  How should we understand and deal with the complex issue of bilingualism?  How should we understand deal with the complex issue of “Non-native speakers”?  

In the composition classroom, there is a tension between teaching “standard English” and honoring and respecting students’ home languages or dialects. On the one hand, we want to set our students up for success. It is a tough world out there, and they will be judged by how they speak and write, even if it is unfair and based on linguistic prejudice. If we don’t do that, we will not be preparing them for college level coursework, much less professional life after college. Professors, perhaps more than employers or co-workers, have expectations about students’ writing abilities and styles; if our students do not fulfill those expectations, they will not get good grades or be successful.

On the other hand, we don’t want to perpetuate the myth of “standard English” or of standard ideology. We don’t want to continue the years of oppression that our students might have felt throughout their years of education to this point; we don’t want them to resist us or perceive us as oppressors. We want to help our students be successful, and to be successful, self confidence and self actualization are important qualities.

I don’t think it’s feasible to avoid teaching “standard English.” I think the best way to deal with this dilemma is to present the idea of dialects, discourse communities, audience and context. What is appropriate in one context (in the parking lot with their friends) is not appropriate in another context (in the classroom or at a job interview) and vice versa. It’s important to let them know that no dialect is better than any other, and in fact in some cases “standard English” or academic English is inappropriate. If we have to deal with an aggressive person in front of the supermarket, academic English is not appropriate. If I am lost in an strange urban neighborhood, if I use academic English to ask directions, I may be seen as a target or victim. It is not only about vocabulary and sentence structure, but can be about body language and tone. Similarly, if I use “street” language in a college class, I might be seen as uneducated, underprepared, lazy or even stupid—by those who hold such prejudices.  By truly showing students that everyone uses many different registers and discourse styles, we can avoid the trap of standard ideology. We can avoid telling students, “OK, your dialect is just as good as ‘standard’ English, but you have to learn ‘standard’ English anyway if you want to succeed.” Instead, we can tell them that by mastering academic English, they will have another discourse style to add to their repertoire.

Of course the difficulty of this position is still that students who speak non-standard dialects might feel that they are selling out or giving in to an oppressive system. This is a real problem. Let’s face it, education changes us. We might not fit in with our old group or even our family after being remade in the image of academia. I’m not sure how to deal with this problem.

There is another dilemma in the ESL classroom. In the composition classroom, it is fine to let students use their home or community dialect to build community and comfort in the classroom. In an ESL classroom, this becomes more problematic because students would be speaking other languages. For some students, the only interaction with English might be in the classroom; if their classmates speak to them in their native language, they might be missing out on important contact or practice time.

Usually, what I do in this situation is to gently remind English learners to speak English in the classroom (not during breaks, by the way). I have noticed two responses to this reminder. Some students appreciate the reminder and switch into English with no problem (other than the problems related to speaking in a foreign language); other students shut down and stop talking, and don’t make eye contact. Alternatively, they might sweetly say, “oh, sorry,” and continue speaking their native language when the instructor moves away. That is to say, for some students, speaking English in the classroom is nothing more than changing languages, but for other students, a reminder to speak English can be oppressive. I was noticing this happening more with younger students at first, and thought it might be a generational thing, but then realized that the students who reacted the most strongly to my requests to speak English were the ones who went to high school in the US. The older or younger students showed no sign that an English only rule impinged on their identity. It was the students who had gone through the system, who had been told implicitly or explicitly that their language was not good enough. This was a surprise to me at first, but was able to come to an understanding of what was underlying their resistance thanks to the theoretical reading we had done in this class and others.Thi is actually a sad situation, where students resist against English language oppression in an ESL class, much less my ESL class where I had always hoped students would feel safe to try new things, to take linguistic, educational and personal risks with new ways of expressing themselves.

I don’t have a set strategy for this problem yet, though I try to make sure students know that I value their language. Sometimes some tension is dissipated when they realize that I am a Spanish learner, and that I am not putting myself above them or trying to define what is good or bad in terms of language. Sometimes it is enough for them to know that I am on their side, that I am there to help them with their language skills and not to judge them. Interestingly, though, this is often best communicated through actions and attitudes rather than words.

Success and Failure in First Year Composition

As composition teachers, how should we make sense of the successes and failures of our dialect speakers, our new immigrants, and our immigrant heritage students?  What factors (home, school, community, etc) might promote success and failure?  And how as teachers can we foster success? 

In the composition classroom, our dialect speakers, new immigrants, and immigrant heritage students face (and have faced) many challenges. They may have encountered institutionalized racism in their previous educational experiences, in the form of standardized testing, unsympathetic teachers, negative attitudes about their personal variety of language, and even ridicule in the classroom from other students or worse, teachers. They may have experienced many years of subtle or obvious oppression in their classrooms, where their teachers have repeatedly told them that their variety of English is no good. They may have experienced a conflict between their family and their teachers , where the two sides have conflicting expectations and values. They might be a product of generations of oppression, and might be rebelling against this oppression by digging in with their home identity and community dialect, refusing to conform to standards that they see as unjust and foreign.

           

We can do many things to help these students; the most important, I think, is to show them (don’t just say) that we are on their side. That we are invested in their success, and that we respect them as individuals. Because we respect them, we won’t lower standards or otherwise condescend to them, but rather we will keep high standards and do our best to help them achieve those high expectations. The second important piece to helping our students succeed is to be aware of whence they have come. We have to be sensitive to their needs, and know that when we experience rebellious attitudes in class, our students might not be rebelling against us personally, but rather the system that they perceive us as a part of. If they identify school as a system of oppression, we have to convince our students that they are safe in our classroom. That their presence is valued, and that their backgrounds and varieties of language are respected. We can show them this through everyday interaction. Our students will be very tuned in to the way we speak to them, and will be very aware of any condescension in the way we treat them.  Lastly, we should give students readings written by good role models, people who have successfully navigated the educational waters and understand the conflict that these students might be experiencing every day.

I have seen this in action here at SFSU with one of my tutees. W is an African American twenty-something, and she is taking an FYC course for the second time. The first day of class, her instructor announced to the class (according to W) that he did not care if anybody asked questions or made comments in class, because he loved the subjects he was talking about, and could talk about them all day all by himself. W was turned off immediately. I think she felt that the instructor had shut the students out of the class and that he said that they were not important. She decided that she did not like the instructor and I think she is not motivated to do any work for him. I think one of the ways she is expressing her distaste is by not engaging100%  in the class or the assignments. She has said that she wants to take the class credit/no credit, get the no credit, and take the class over in the summer at a community college. Now I don’t really know what happened in her class, or how the instructor makes her feel, but it’s clear that he missed his chance to pull her in and get her to engage in the class and in some deeper learning about herself and the world. This has been a good lesson to me, one that I hope will allow me to avoid similar mistakes in the future.