Here's some quotes from the some of the readings I've done this week:
-->"Native American educator Cornet Pewewardy (1993) asserts that one of the reasons Indian children experience difficulty in schools is that educators traditionally have attempted to insert culture into the education, instead of inserting education into the culture."

-->"In their widely cited article, Fordham and Ogbu (1986) point to a phenomenon called "acting White," where African American students fear being ostracized by their peers for demonstrating interest in and succeeding in academic and other school related tasks. Other scholars (Hollins, 1994; King, 1994) have provided alternate explanations... that for too many African American students, the school remains an alien and hostile place... in the "styling" and "posturing" (Majors & Billson, 1992) that the school rejects. Thus, the African American student wearing a hat in class or baggy pants may be sanctioned for clothing choices rather than specific behaviors."
I just read an autobiographical essay for another class called "Indian Education" by Sherman Alexie. It very much touches on the quotes mentioned above. The writer was teased and ostracized as a child for "acting white" aka being intelligent on his Indian Reservation school. He eventually transferred to an all-white school to seek a better education." I find this attitude to be deeply troubling and an example of how elite education seems to be. How did it come to be this way? Are minority populations really this hopeless in their attitude toward education?

-->"These sociolinguists have suggested that if students' home language is incorporated into the classroom, students are more likely to experience academic success."
These quotes also reminded me of a class I took recently called "English language and its social context."We studied African American Vernacular English (AAVE), both as a language and as a culture and I learned much in that course. I believe that it is important to keep up with the languages of the students and use it in the classroom. We as teachers are working with students every day. There should be no reason we aren't fluent in their language.

-->"The trick of culturally relevant teaching is to get students to "choose" academic excellence."
-->"Culturally relevant teachers utilize students' culture as a vehicle for learning."
In order to know what is relevant to the students, what culture they have, it is important to interact with students in a setting outside the classroom. Get out in the community. Live in it. Learn the culture of the students. Use it as a vehicle to teach from.

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-->"After having completed the story [creative writing assignment], I discovered it was a masterpiece... Unfortunately Mrs. Brakett didn't share in my enthusiasm. She praised the story, but said that the language was unsatisfactory because of the word "ain't"... It think it took me a good 3 years to finally put that behind me and start taking creative risks again."
Look, I'm going to often bring in stuff I'm learning from other classes because it's relevant to the discussion. So, um... sorry. My professor of "Rhetoric for Teachers of English" often makes note of how English teachers destroy students' voices, so by the time they graduate, they all end up writing exactly the same way as one another with a set list of explicit rules. It's quite haunting to think that I could end up doing this to my students as well. I fear this. In my view teaching students rhetoric is about teaching them to participate in civil discussion. It's about teaching them to know when use specific language and where. In this case, the teacher of this student failed to recognize that using "ain't" in a creative writing assignment, was in fact, quite creative. Weaving vernacular into a story brings out the students unique voice. We tend to squander away our students voice. That's why learning culture, the literacy of the people, is so important: it's relevant to the students now.
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Fun facts on AAVE:

Habitual Be: A study was conducted on AAVE where white and black children observed a scene such as this. In this video, the child observed Elmo eating a cookie while the Cookie Monster did not. The child was then asked, "Who be eating cookies?" The white children pointed to Elmo, and the black children pointed to the Cookie Monster. Were the black children inherently wrong? No. The simple solution is that the use of be in the sentence exemplifies how different cultures interpret be. In this case, the white children interpreted "be" as who is eating cookies now and the black children who interpreted "be" as who usually/always/habitually eats cookies. We must be aware that our students have the potential to use languages in ways that we may not understand and we should not always automatically mark as wrong.

Take note of how AAVE often gets to the point faster than academic English and reduces unnecessary letters or simplifies complex exceptions to rules. 

LEARNED SOMETHING YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSS!!!!!