Embracing Linguistic Diversity in the English Classroom
Part 2: “Advanced” (or “advancing”) Strategies to Go Deep
By: Hannah Lewis
Since then, I’ve had numerous opportunities to center language, and I’m excited to share not only some other strategies I use in my classroom but also to talk about what I’ve seen from my students in the past month or so.
Some strategies from the first installment included introducing code-switching, elevating dialect-rich texts, and allowing students to teach you about their languages.
I want to start by sharing some additional techniques and invite you to find ways to build linguistic diversity into your classroom.
4. Invite your students to use their dialects and home languages in their writing as much as possible:
I believe that this is the most powerful and also the most challenging tool in our teaching toolbox. But how do we find the time to invite students to write in home languages or dialects when we haven’t yet guided them to mastery of the SAE we are required to teach? Honestly, it comes down to a question of priorities. For me, it is urgent for all of my students to understand that language diversity is a strength, not a weakness.
One example in which I was very proud of my students who skillfully expressed their linguistic diversity was the “Remember” poem exercise. I introduce students to Joy Harjo’s “Remember” and then invite them to “reflect back on [their] life, education, values, family, community, and goals. What do [they] want to remember as [they] move into adulthood in the coming years? What is important to [them] not to forget?”
The poems students generate are always very high-quality, since (I hope) the question is relevant to them as they prepare to conclude their junior year.
There is nothing in the directions for this assignment that specifically invites students to include home languages or dialects, though I do account for those choices in my scoring rubric, in which “style and conventions” are measured by “appropriate and creative stylistic choices” as opposed to, say, “proper grammar and punctuation,” whatever that might mean. However, thanks to the personal nature of the assignment and (I hope) the culture of linguistic inclusivity I’ve built, I receive beautiful works like this one, excerpted below:
Read
The hospital records […]
“January 30, 2008: 20 lbs. 6 oz., [student full name], severe allergies to animal dander, chickpea,
dairy, gluten, sesame, shellfish, soy, tree nuts…”
Read
The last resort, a homeopathic regimen, a recommendation from a friend of a friend of a friend
(The Desi Way™)
"આસિનકમ આબમ: ખોરાક સાથે દરરોજ 3 વખત 3 ગોળઓ" (“Arsenicum album: 3 tablets 3x
daily w/ food”)
"કક રયા કાબિનકા: 5 ગોળઓ દરરોજ 2 વખત, સવાર અને રાે " (“Calcarea carbonica: 5 tablets
2x daily, morning & night”)
"નેમ ુરયાટકમ: 3 ગોળઓ દરરોજ 3 વખત ખોરાક સાથે" (“Natrum muriaticum: 3 tablets 3x
daily w/ food”)
When I was grading these poems, I saw this as an opportunity to give my students a platform, so during our next class, I created a “gallery walk.” I asked five students (including the poet excerpted above) to lead breakout rooms (remember, I’m teaching virtually. In a classroom, they could just be standing next to their poem, or not representing their poem at all, but visiting other poets’). Students moved from one poem to the next and did a fairly straightforward “I notice/I wonder” activity like this one.
5. Teach the history of linguistic erasure
This recommendation is short and sweet. Although I’m inviting readers to teach history, know that as English teachers, the history of English is a part of our curriculum, and English has a long history of swallowing up or stomping out other languages.
Teach students about how enslaved Africans were forced to learn English as a survival strategy, learning from enslavers and from their peers who spoke dozens of different African languages, and how they were denied the right to learn to read and write because reading and writing give people power.
Teach them how boarding schools in our own state housed abducted Indigenous children and enforced strict “English Only” policies that have decimated Indigenous generational language transmission.
Knowing the destructive power that requirements to speak a certain way can have can help students understand why honoring linguistic diversity is so vital to a fair and equitable society.
What if I don’t have any students who speak Gujarati (or any other language than English), or any students who speak AAVE, either?
First, I’d invite you to ask yourself how you know. Even the most homogenous-seeming affluent, rural, or suburban schools can serve many minoritized communities, and those students may especially need safe spaces to express and explore aspects of their identities that their peers might not share or, worse, might criticize.
However, even if you feel quite sure that there is little linguistic diversity in your primarily-SAE-speaking district, consider this: Your students may need these lessons more than anyone else. Too often, I hear linguistically privileged adults–even teachers–lament students’ “terrible grammar” and “awful writing,” without realizing they are engaging in a form of prejudice. By exposing my students who grew up primarily speaking SAE and being rewarded for it to the beauty English has to offer outside the limitations within which how they speak it, my hope is that, in the future, they will recognize the legitimacy of the language others’ use, and they will be less inclined to judge someone’s intellect or education based on the way they speak.
While we may not all always be able to leverage students’ linguistic diversity to expose their peers to brilliant, interesting, and relatable people who speak differently than they do, we still have the opportunity to be thoughtful about the texts we teach, the media we share, and the way we talk about writing and speaking outside of SAE conventions.
Further Reading:
For those who have not yet read Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” I highly suggest that, as a teacher of the English language, you try to find the time to read it. Anzaldúa does an incredible job of explaining the impact of her Englishes on her identity. I’ve used it in the past with my A.P. Language and Composition students. For younger students or those whose reading skills need developing, Julia Alvarez’s “Names/Nombres” is another great choice.
Call to Action: Maybe you haven’t given much thought to the tensions between building up students and their communities on one hand and insisting on a single, correct version of Standard American English in your classroom. Now that you know, what will you do to ensure that you leverage your classroom to uplift linguistically diverse students and their communities?
Appendix: Want to see how my pedagogy for linguistic equity is playing out in my classroom so far? I’ll attach an appendix with some artifacts from this school year that have really helped me to feel like I’m getting my students to think critically about the role of language in their lives and in the lives of others. Find the appendix here.