Friday, October 24, 2008

How can a teacher manage a multitude of discourse and dialects in increasingly diverse classrooms?

When it comes to the current 'typical' classroom setting, diversity is becoming much more common and pronounced, meaning that schools, and by proxy, their classrooms, are exhibiting a much wider range of diversity than ever before. This range of student diversity is only going to increase in the coming years so how exactly do we deal with the numerous discourses and dialects of English that we will be seeing in our classrooms? I think that it will be crucial to stress the importance and need for diversity and difference among our students. As teachers, we need to embrace the many dialects and discourses that come through our doors and help the kids to realize that there is nothing wrong with any one discourse. But the matter of how to teach our students standard English, and code switching between it and their primary discourse if it differs from standard English, becomes a time consuming and difficult task. When numerous discourses and dialects are represented it is important to help the students to preserve their primary discourse while also giving them the tools necessary to participate in the dominant discourse. To do this we might allow the students to investigate language and inquire into the notions of code switching through their own means. For example, Fecho describes in his article that allowing students to make questions for themselves brings them a metacognitive way of thinking about language and allows them to be aware of the need for code switching between the language of their community and the dominant language.

No comments: