April 9th, 2021

 This week, we read View of Worth the Risk: Towards Decentering Whiteness in English Language Teaching. Our cooperating teacher Angelina had us reflect on the question "why can centering whiteness be harmful when working with an EL population?" EL populations typically are students of color, and so centering whiteness in their academia is harmful in numerous ways, such as; it pushes assimilation, promotes the message that they are “lesser than,” and depreciates their rich and unique identities. It is important to have a diverse teaching faculty. Just as in the film and media industries where representation is needed, it is necessary in schools as well. When you see and interact with adults who look like you, they act as symbols of success. They become role models for others in more ways than one. We have discussed in the past how different cultures share different core values and have different perspectives on things. When you have teachers who strictly come from very similar backgrounds, this becomes a limiting factor for both faculty and students alike. We tend to gravitate towards those who we are most similar too, but if this is not an option, it can make students feel “othered,” as if they do not have any allies in school to turn to. And so this is why having teachers of color is extremely important. Unfortunately in our country, we continue to observe discrimination and disparities amongst BIPOC. Having a teacher who can better understand and relate to these differences is essential for fully supporting our students.  

This week working with Yovasqui, we worked on rewriting the scene between Chris and Starr to be anything they could imagine. I volunteered to be scriptor and document the new dialogue between the characters. When I was doing this, I realized halfway through that I had been adding in words here and there and making it seem more like my own than Yovasqui’s. I caught myself and from there on made sure to type the scenes exactly how he spoke/described them. We talked about this after at the end of our Zoom session and I’m glad that I was able to catch this although of course I wish I had sooner. It is important to not correct the students’ creative ideas and to keep the integrity of what they are sharing with activities like this. And as you said Angelina, the students themselves later are able to recognize where they may have to change sentences to flow better or to adjust spellings of things. I had never thought about this process before being in this class and am thankful that my perspective on this has been changed!