Sunday, February 9, 2014

Silenced Dialogue: Lisa Deplit- Connection

After reading the "Silenced Dialogue" by Lisa Deplit it connected me to a movie called Freedom Writers in a different kind of way. In this article that Deplit writes, she claims in the beginning of her article how a black woman who was trying to teach her class, always seemed to be pushed to the side and was thought of as "not good enough" or "not doing her job right" towards other white woman teachers. There was always a problem when students were taught by the colored teacher and then the following year was taught by the white teacher or vise versa. It was hard for both teachers to teach their students considering that they had very different ways of teaching their students.

In the article it also talks about authority. One little passage that I found really intresting was on page 35 and claimed, "Black children expect an authoriy figure to act with authority. When the teacher instead acts as a "chum", the message sent is that this adult has no authority, and the children act accordingly." This short passage is what really brought me back to Freedom writers. If you've never seen Freedom Writers, it is about a middle-aged white woman who goes in a classroom with students that are mostly black and ahve a lot of problems at home. She tries to teach them, and these students see her as joke because she doesn't show them authority but also because many of their previous teachers always gave up on them. To make a long movie short, after several weeks of continuously trying with these students she finally made a diffrerence.

 


Also, another part of this article made me think of something a teacher back in High School once told me. In this article on page 37, it began to talk about how a student was proud of the teacher's meanness. Now why would he be proud of how mean she was? This made me think of the time that my teacher once told me, if you've never said you've hated your parents at least once in your life time, then they aren't doing their job right. Just like in this article, the boy claims that his teacher was mean but he was also glad she was mean because he learned a lot from her. I thought that part of the article was really cool and it really made me conect back to what my High School teacher once said.
Below is a link of an article that I found about teacher authority in a classroom community which I found really intresting.
http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CCC/0612-dec09/CCC0612Close.pdf

5 comments:

  1. Hey, I like how you compared this text to Freedom Writers, I agree they do have some general ideas that are the same, like the idea that teachers do not "teach right" according to other people. I also liked that you including pictures from the movie. I liked reading your piece because you connected it to your life and an experience you had when you were in high school. Good post.

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  2. Hey! I really like your connection to the article. It is something I never even thought of, but is completely relatable. You proved that their are various ways to teach students, and it all depends on how the students respond to your teaching. If a group of students did not like the way you taught a lesson, you know to try new things and switch it up next time. (and vice versa). This idea is very important to what Delpit was trying to say. Good job!

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  3. Hey! While I was reading the article I could not seem to connect it to the outside world, but your connection to Freedom Writers is spot on! The diversity as well as adversity that the teacher in the movie faced is exactly what Delpit was trying to portray and explain. Great personal connection, too!

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  4. Hey seriously awesome connection to Freedom Writers. When I always read these articles I try to connect them to movies and other cultural references, but this one I couldnt much think of anything just like Sarah said in her comment above, but yeah you got it spot on with Freedom Writers, that movie is like a perfect example for Delpit's article. Awesome job !

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  5. Hey! That was a great connection to freedom writers! Spot on! That makes it a lot easier to understand the article. The teacher from freedom writers really does remind me of Amanda Branscombe from the article, when she connected writing rap songs to Shakespeare's plays. Awesome job!

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