These visual aids invite readers to make code-meshing a "shared project, one that will not only inform instructional practices, but possibly intervene into the culture of prejudices against African American English as a mainstream language variety"
Beyond the classroom and academic settings introducing code meshing into modern "standard" linguistic practice can change how the world views AAVE and other dialects rather than seeing one as correct and any other dialect as inferior.
In Other People's English, the pedagogical imperative moves beyond solely teaching students what the languages of academic institutions are and how to use them. It also moves beyond Delpit's imperative to give students access to the "language of economic success" (Delpit 68). Rather than building a language curriculum that assumes a Standard Academic English code deficiency in students, educators can work with students from a space that emphasizes how their language experiences are already engaging with different linguistic codes, both standard and disenfranchised.
This has so much potential to teach students to their best ability, allowing students to learn language in an entire new way and communicate in ways that don't discriminate large groups of people.
By sharing assignments, student writing, and most tellingly, conversations he has had with colleagues initially resistant to any code-meshing content in the curriculum, Lovejoy teases out the multifarious implications that African American English carries especially in a post-secondary education context.
I imagine as an educator it has to be hard to deny something is working when there is proof of it benefitting students, young students even which are very hard to teach complex things, meaning code meshing is not as complex as people are making it out to be, the transition to teaching these dialects alongside SAE would be seamless.
Y'shanda Young-Rivera offers an elementary education perspective on how code-meshing works on the ground, within several classroom contexts. Young-Rivera, previously a skeptic of code-meshing, offers revealing articulations by fourth-, fifth-, and eighth-grade students of the terms "code-meshing" and "code-switching." She includes daily lesson plans, as well as images of the students' written homework responses, in which the young writers identify and interpret the code-meshing they encounter in their world. This chapter serves to not only emphasize how easily implemented the frame is but also how flexible the code-meshing curriculum can be, given the imperative of a state-wide accountability project like Common Core requirements.
This is the proof that teaching code switching from a young age is shown to work. Even in middle school settings children understand code switching very well and even use examples of it in their own work and decipher other examples of code switching in the classroom. This also proves that this topic can be taught to multiple different people, students ranging young to old.
obfuscates
I had to look this up as well
no language, Standard English included, is a static, neutral, code. In "Code-Meshing or Code-Switching?", Young argues that code-switching, despite well-intended goals of inclusion, is in practice a vestige of legalized segregation, and "an educational strategy that forces African Americans to view their language culture and identity as antithetical to the U.S. mainstream"
The forced assimilation is blatant and it is detrimental to these communities.
the physical body doing the writing and speaking--matters a great deal in terms of how much value is assigned to undervalued codes like African American English
I think this means the person actually using the AAVE dialect's worth is based on who they are, not in a good way.
pedagogical
another word I had to google!
Young continuously points to the elision of the ways in which code-switching is connected to racial self-understanding,
Forcing a large part of the population to assimilate to SAE is harmful to their education and their success level, as well as their racial self understanding. Being forced to speak like white people, for lack of better words, shouldn't be the only way African American students find success in the academic setting or success in a professional setting.
exigency
I also had to google this word because even with the context I could not understand it without looking it up.
"not in your face, not in demand of a conversion, but a conversation based on personal experiences, classroom experiences, and decades of research and scholarship"
I think it should be an in your face conversation! I don't think people should have to be passive as can be when discussing an important cause they are passionate about such as code meshing.
Other People's English unpacks the fluidity, mobility, and heteroglossia of English through the possibilities of code-meshing, and outlines what structures of racism code-switching reconstitutes, despite the good intentions by which it is deployed
I have questions about the word Heteroglossia so I had to google it!
"But how can I let a student, who had come to see me for help, walk out without my having shown them the way the school wants them to write?" At least a dozen hands shoot up. The responses that follow, some echoing this anxiety, some responding critically to the implicated assumptions, are indicative of a tense, decades-old pedagogical impasse in language and writing studies.
I find it interesting that we are all aware of how ever evolving language itself really is and still educators are scared to nudge the norm, let alone teach the concept to their students. I'm confused why we have drawn a line in the sand so to speak, where we are absolutely refusing to let language evolve, benefitting students across the board. Not teaching about code meshing also only negatively impacts minorities, which probably has something to do with it.
Code-meshing, he explains, is an approach to writing and interpreting texts that advocates for blending language codes in the classroom, rather than switching from one set of linguistic codes to another, depending on the "appropriate" social and discursive contexts
There should be meshing of dialects in the classroom and it should also be acceptable in the professional setting. This would help to teach students a wide linguistic variety rather than a limited one perpetuated by the powers that be. The fact is we can change how we teach and view the American language model, most powerful people either don't understand or sadly are too racist to change their views.
that through a pedagogy of "code-switching," the burden of discourse assimilation invariably falls on African American students.
the burden is absolutely on African American student's when faced to assimilate to SAE, this is because of the different dialects spoken across different houses, white house holds tend to already use different forms of SAE, while African American households usually use a different dialect such as AAVE. This puts African American students at a massive disadvantage because not only are they learning how to use the language, it's almost an entirely differemt way to speak it.
The policy still exists
disappointing but expected. change doesn't come easy but I believe with the younger generation (hopefully) that will change towards the right direction.
well-crafted policy, a single professional development presentation or workshop isn't enough to bring about systemic change. The demands laid out in "This Ain't Another Policy Statement!" make clear that, as a WPA, I must continually ask myself how I can meet the demand to "do much better in [my] own self-work that must challenge the multiple institutional structures of anti-Black racism [I] have used to shape language politics."
A simple solution to a complex problem is never going to work. This is an evolution process thar will take lots of work and convincing. Many educators should make the shift in teaching code meshing in itself at the very least and how it fits into our society and our communities, and why it is just as valid of a language as SAE.
This is hard, strategic, long-term work, as the long history of scholarship and policy-making calling for linguistic justice demonstrates.
There is nothing easy about changing a policy that has been used by people in power for decades if not centuries. However, it can be done and has been done before.
Upon reflection, it is clear that this evocation of the policy was just one more excuse for maintaining the primacy of white language practices in academic spaces. Such moments demonstrate the value of setting clear local policies tied to disciplinary scholarship and informed by texts like "Students' Rights to their Own Language" and "This Ain't Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!" Doing so makes programmatic expectations clear to faculty and ensures that anti-Black linguistic policies don't serve as a last line of defense for white linguistic practices in the academy.
The author is making the point that taking about different language practices in academic and professional settings should be encouraged and should be taken more seriously, because the more educators to talk about it with conviction and truth the more people will see code meshing has it's place in the classroom, as well as a work setting.
As he finished and sat looking expectantly at me to answer, I repeated back what I'd heard. "It sounds like there is a policy at your school that requires you to grade students on their use of Standard English. Is that right?" "Yes," he replied and perked up slightly. "Well," I said, "it sounds like you need to change the policy." He let out a small plosive sigh and sank back into his seat, his body language saying, "You don't get it."
This comes off as very immature and saddens me. I can appreciate the other educators letting him know they do not see eye to eye, in fact he should be doing more. He has the power and the voice to at least be heard, but he won't support it because he himself doesn't agree with it. Not only won't he bring up the benefits to teaching code meshing but he hides behind "policy" as an excuse.
He looked at me, expecting my support, as if surely I understood, as if I was a sympathetic ear. Policy. The rules. The law. The last line of defense in unconsciously racist thinking, a way to shift the blame for what's right onto a document and thus deflect anger and judgment onto that supposedly immaterial arbiter of success.
There is a famous quote "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". I think in a way this quote fits in with what the SAE supporting educator is doing. He isn't necessarily being patriotic, but he is using this excuse for "the rules, the law, policy" to justify wrong doing. Such as a "patriot" justifying wrong dling for a "cause".
he looked around the audience of mostly white women spread sparsely around the large classroom where the presentation was being held, until he saw me--another white man, one of the very few white men in the room. And once he had seen me, he started talking to me, solely to me, seemingly, ignoring all of the other faces in the crowd and the panel who was presenting. In that moment, he landed on his final excuse, the one last nuclear option.
Once again the fact a self respecting educator of any level could feel comfortable enough to try and "relate" with the only other white male face while ignoring the women educators is beyond disappointing, and really speaks to who and what SAE supports.
"I want students to value their own language, but where should we draw the line?"; "How do we incorporate code meshing into our grading rubrics and reconcile it with grading grammar?" until his justifications had all been exhausted by kind and quiet replies from the panel that pointed out the differences between grammatical error and the systematic nature of language.
I think this educator is specifically trying to avoid the logic in teaching code meshing, which is a little sad considering he is supposed to be an educator. The panel pointing out the differences between error and the nature of a language should answer more than enough of his questions.
The panelist replied that Black English is a language with regular rules and offered some examples of those rules in context. The man seemed to understand this answer but not accept it as a reason not to teach "Standard English."
I somewhat understand where this man is coming from. Although I think he is misled and maybe even slightly obtuse, I too think SAE has it's place. However, we need to teach more people about the wide usage of AVEE in academic and professional settings.
But one of the things that concerns me about what you've mentioned is preparing our students for the world after college. If we don't ask our students to write in Standard English, how will they be able to do it when they are expected to do it in the workplace?"
This is a point of view I think many people unfortuneatley have due to SAE being so overbearing for so long. The norm for SAE has changed over the course of a few decades and it is proven language evolves, and yet many people discount AVEE or code meshing as "Not as good"
The presentation drew a small crowd of maybe 15 writing teachers representing five or six institutions of higher education in our region.
I think it is important for so many different kinds of educators to be present for a discussion like this to be considered from so many different points of view. If there was only one or two educators there it could become bias.
Vershawn Ashanti Young argues, code switching is a form of linguistic segregation ("'Nah, We Straight'"). The presenter concluded, "saying that Black English is not appropriate for academic situations is saying essentially that African American thought and identities do not belong in academic settings
The argument Vershawn Ashanti Young makes is compelling in that he's saying code switching itself limits language and keeps Black English speakers down, saying AAVE or code meshing does belong in academic and professional settings.
in writing Jayda’s words exactly as she spoke them,meshing together both AAL and Dominant AmericanEnglish in the card. We use the term Dominant AmericanEnglish (DAE) rather than Standard English to reflect howdominant sociopolitical factors influence what is con-sidered standard
It is important for educators to take AAVE seriously given it is an entire separate dialect based on culture, I also like how Dominant American English is becoming the title instead of "standard" American English. The point is who considers what to be standard and why should be call it standard
In both responses, Jayda employed the AAL gram-matical rule in which the third-person singular formis implied based on context and thus does not requirethe verb to end in an s. Ms. Raniya was intentional
I was not aware AAL or AAVE had grammatical "rules" such as those in Standard American English. It is very interesting to use language implied on context, I think most people use their own dialects in this way for the most part but It is still very interesting to see the specific rules for this dialect.