Prompt 5: Delpit

Most of my students are of Hispanic decent, and have Spanish as the primary language spoken at home. Because of this, it is very difficult for my advising teacher, Mrs. Smith, to communicate with the parents, as she speaks no Spanish. On my first day of tutoring, within the first 10 minutes of observing the classroom, I noticed an example of how Mrs. Smith and the school deal with challenges of communication between the school and parents.

Mrs. Smith was joking with a student, Thomas, about him goofing off in class. She threatened to call him mother to tell her how he had been acting. He seemed unphased by the attempt of intimidation. She then said “Oh, that’s right- your mother only speaks Spanish. It’s no problem, I’ll just have Principal Rodriguez call and tell her.” At this, he bent to his knees to plead for her to spare him.

Although this was quite funny, and seeing the student and teacher joking in such a relaxed environment calmed my nerves about the hole tutoring experience, this showed me things about the environment of the classroom and school. First of all, some of the student’s parents were unable to speak English. As this was within my first few minutes of the class I had no prior knowledge of the student’s lives. Second, the teacher spoke little Spanish (she would later tell me she spoke none), because she was unable to tell a parent how the student was acting in class. Thirdly, the Principal spoke both English and Spanish, so he was able to communicate between parent and teacher.

The Principal looks very young to be in his position, 30 years old at most. Having a young man of color in a position of authority in the education system is a great example for the students, parents, and community. In our society, there is an overwhelming amount of examples of white people who have control in the system, so having a man of the same ethnicity and speaking the same language of the majority of the students and parents of the school gives them an example of success by someone much like them.

By the conversation between the student, Thomas, and my advising teacher, Mrs. Smith, I see that Principal Rodriguez is used as translator between parents and teachers. I liked how this school’s objective was not to break the lines of communication because of language barriers, but instead develop the ways in which parents could participate in the students’ education. In The Silenced Dialogue, Lisa Delpit writes that “I do not advocate that it is the school’s job to attempt to change the homes of poor and nonwhite children to match the homes of those in the culture of power. That may indeed be a form of cultural genocide.” (pg 7) A school should not enforce the culture of power, because this would hurt the culture of the community. Instead, a school should celebrate the culture of its students.

Not only was a man of nonwhite decent a member of the culture of power, but the school’s objective was to celebrate the cultural diversity amongst its students by changing the ways of communication to better suit the community.

I feel that if I was a teacher in a school where a large number of the students spoke another language and had non-English speaking parents, I feel I would learn how to speak that language. It must be very hard to overcome the barrier between languages, and although there are faculties who speak Spanish, there is a low amount of direct communication between parents, who don’t speak English, and the teacher. If I was able to speak Spanish, even a small amount, I feel the relationship between teacher and parent would be better. I feel it is very important for parents to be involved in their children’s education, especially at a young age, so if I was the teacher, I would try my hardest to incorporate parent activity in the student’s education as much as possible, even if it meant learning another language in order to communicate.