Dr. April Baker-Bell’s Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy uses a methodical and brilliant rhetorical analysis to address the inequalities within the classroom. Dr. Baker-Bell’s chapters “Black language is good on any MLK Boulevard” & “What’s Anti-Blackness Got to Do Wit It?” center around the themes of “white mainstream English” deprives students of their individuality and reinforces the systemic problems of racism within classrooms.
Summary 1-2:
These first two chapters reveal a severe problem, the silencing and dehumanization of Black language in the educational system. Dr. Baker-Bell said, “Black language for me has always reflected Black people’s ways of knowing, interpreting, surviving and being the world (2).” The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging it and Dr. Baker-Bell clearly identifies the linguistic exclusion that many students face in forced adherence to “white mainstream english.”
Chapter 1 highlights the problem within the system of American education, that black culture is not fostered, encouraged or highlighted. It is reduced to “incorrect” and dismissed in its value, thus diminishing the uniqueness and identity of Black students and reinforcing white supremacy through language instruction. April Baker-Bell uses personal examples from her life and witness to academic blowouts over this issue of “correcting” Black linguistics. Teachers, educators and others within the field of child development have been conditioned and blinded to the idea that White Mainstream English is the “right” way to write, speak and function. There are few positive examples of highlighting Black culture within the mainstream educational system, because these institutions have been geared to white students by white creators. The current system in place is doing a disservice to the idea of America as a melting pot and makes the reality of white washing language leading to perpetuation of racism.
In chapter 2 Baker-Bell offers solutions to the current problems of elimination and discouragement of Black culture within the educational system. There is a call to action to create a pedagogy of teaching Black linguistics including 10 ideas for educators to apply and reckon with the system of racist language instruction. Some of these ideas are hopefully being included in our instruction, “…Critically interrogate white linguistic hegemony… names and works to dismantle the normalization of Anti-Black Linguistic Racism in our research…provides Black students with critical literacies and competencies to name, investigate, and dismantle white linguistic hegemony and Anti-Black linguistic Racism (34).” Its time that instructors look at the terms/ideas and expressions that we are using in standard course design, and challenge these linguistics with the question: Is this the best way to say this?
Classroom Applications:
My current semester focuses on teaching technical communication, a sophomore level course. The main goal within this class is fostering the “professional identity” which is no easy task. To add to this difficulty, the students are emerging from varied pandemic learning practices, and some current trends include little to no communication and missing assignments. How can teachers foster the “professional identity” in the current struggles of the classroom, while acknowledging that each identity is individual and should be encouraged? Looking at Dr. Baker-Bell’s inclusive practices, I have implemented some changes to make the classroom more encouraging by small language changes.
Office Hours to Homework Help:
I have changed the term “office hours” to “homework help” and have received a significant number of visits from students. This change was partly inspired by examining the “white mainstream English” term that puts a barrier between students and instructors. Fellow teacher Barbara Shaddix inspired me to change the term, referring to her office hours to “drop in” to encourage students to come ask questions. I started thinking about how this term feels inadequate, partly, in that I don’t have an office. Homework help allows the setting change, and gets rid of the “hours” which can be daunting. Homework help makes this an easy and less confined experience.
Student/Teacher Dialogue Encouragement:
Teachers are respected in many parts of the world. For instance, Japan’s, teachers are so respected, and expectations on the student are so demanding that students are discouraged to ask questions (https://www.tprteaching.com/japanese-classroom). Taking this into account, I have pushed my students into an anonymous question submission process before any major Unit Assignment is due. Process: I pass out index cards, everyone is required to put a question they have about the Unit assignment down, and turn it in anonymously.
Another personal engagement is taking peer-edit time to check out students work 1-1 and highlight areas for improvement. Most of the time I am pointing to the lesson or resource that shows an example of what they need to do, and ask the student to explain it back to me. This personalized approach to communicating with the student face-to-face helps lower the barriers that might stop a student from getting help.
Summary: In Jessica Edwards Inclusive Practices in the Technical Communication Classroom a number lessons for inclusion are presented. Edwards examines inclusive practices in the TCP classroom, using the framework designed by Nelson-Laird. By performing the qualitative analysis, the open-ended questions provoked responses from the subjects. Professors defined diversity similarly and pointed to the current disconnect between action and policy within their respective institutions. The student responses to the definition of diversity varied, and one student even “intertwined” diversity with segregation. Category 2 calls for content and acknowledgement within the classroom, because saying diversity is important but not providing context to curious young minds is a disservice to the students. Category 3 engages diversity through pedagogy, “More inclusive pedagogies account for the face that not all students are the same, but rather have varied learning needs. At its most inclusive, pedagogy will demonstrate a focus on the learning of diverse students through the interplay of theory and instructional process at a highly developed level (Nelson-Laird p4). (Edwards 211).”
Addressing the different learning styles is always an important part of a teacher’s classroom, and accounting for this will enable these complex conversations to happen. Paulo Friere’s theory of an inclusive classroom, or free classroom encourages input from the audience on directing the structure and conversations they want to have.
Historical Research Activity: The index contains interesting TCP suggestions for lessons in the classroom. What stood out to me was looking at pre-1960s educational materials to expose the inherent and systemic racism that exists in the U.S. school system. This could be a provocative and discussion-based assignment that examines primary source texts to show the explicit problems of exclusion that exist in the classroom past-and present. This activity can be expanded to the 1860s to really show a spectrum of ideas in how we express ourselves in technical writing throughout history.
Suggestions:
Please Comment: What suggestions, ideas, concepts, exercises do you use for an inclusive classroom?
Seeing a positive change in your student’s participation and attitudes after altering ‘office hours’ to ‘homework help’ is so revealing as it demonstrates the necessity of reevaluating our linguistic systems.
For my classroom, I tend to have students work in groups. Some of the best conversations happen when I step away and let them talk with each other. This (I hope) also gets my students talking with someone who maybe they would not have otherwise. The in-class group worked is a great way for students to hear each others language.
I like the changes you’ve made; they seem small but I know that they’ve gone a long way in developing a stronger teacher-student relationship and building a more inclusive classroom.
Language matters, and how we describe things also matter (I often think about the term “master bedroom” and all that we imply when we use it, however unthinkingly).
I think continuing to rename and reconceptualize how the classroom operates is how we build a more inclusive relationship between students and teachers. Rename it — but avoid the trap of thinking that’s enough. It must always be accompanied by permanent behavioral changes.
Love this last question: “What suggestions, ideas, concepts, exercises do you use for an inclusive classroom?” At first I read it as asking students and then thought, what if we asked students “What suggestions, ideas, concepts, exercises do you have for an inclusive classroom?”
Your change from ‘office hours’ to ‘homework help’ seems really promising! I may have to enact that change to next semester, cause it’s true that these kids don’t seem to have any kind of connection to the term ‘office hours’ after such an extended time doing ‘untraditional’ learning in the pandemic years.
I also appreciated how you focus on Dr. Baker-Bell’s personal experiences trying to combat the insidious reach of ‘white mainstream English’ — for the majority of people, that’s just ‘proper’ English, and there’s very little thought about who decided that was the right way to speak, and why other ways of speaking were decided to be incorrect.