FNED502-BBC

In the reading about language diversity, Lisa Delpit provides the reader with a vignette of what an elementary school teacher experienced when she used a different code or variety of the English language in her new classroom with a student who had prior experience with her instruction. The beauty of young children is that they have no filter. They speak what they are thinking and surely enough, the student called her out for switching it up. This is something I constantly reflect on because I catch myself slipping from very formal, academic language to everyday friendly banter with my students on a daily basis. None of them have ever commented on it and I justify it as a means of keeping them engaged and alert. However, I am worried that I may be sacrificing exposure to an alternative, more academic form, when I do this. One of the suggestions made in the paper was to record myself teaching so that I can focus in on the vocabulary that I am using, more specifically when I am quest...

            As I was browsing through the materials suggested for the lesson plan addressing gayness, I came across the interview with James Baldwin. He was being regarded as a pioneer for the gay lifestyle despite resenting the word “gay” and all the negative connotations that it has been assigned by straight society. He didn’t feel like a word should possess such power because in allowing someone to use it to describe his sexual preferences, he was allowing them to stuff him into a category. It’s almost as if he felt the world should not see “gayness” similar to how some people don’t see color. However, I’m wondering if it might lead to the same negative outcome as not being identified as black, that we’ve been discussing in class. Is he proposing that because being gay is not something that is immediately identified upon looking at someone, it does not need to be the topic of conversation? He goes as far as sayin...

       I came across this article in my readings, entitled  "What is Whiteness" ,   by NelI Irving Painter. He talks about how a   former civil rights activist and former  Africana studies  instructor resigned after it was revealed that she had lied about being  African American , many other aspects of her biography, and about alleged  hate crimes  against her. The article attempts to explain that there is a big deficiency in our country’s ability to define whiteness. At least in comparison to the lengths that we have taken to describe blackness. He describes whiteness as being on a toggle switch between “bland nothingness” and “racist hatred.” Neither of which proved to be appealing to Rachel A. Dolezal, resulting in her opting out of the white race all together. As Painter explains, white identity has been as unstable as black identity and within white American history, there has been a progression of caste sy...