As you know, when I attended the Bright Ideas Conference this past spring, I left feeling inspired. So, naturally, I couldn’t wait to attend the MCTE Conference this semester. In fact, though money is a bit tighter now, I actually spent the second half of Thursday selling my clothes, consigning dvds, and returning unused halloween costume accessories I had bought on clearance in attempt to “earn” the thirty dollars needed for the onsite registration in Lansing. I was determined to go, rather than try another less expensive alternative. However, overall, I felt the conference lacked some of the magic that I remembered from my last experience. Don’t get me wrong. I prefer the location (the Sheraton) of this conference to the last, and enjoyed looking through the teacher store. I also actually liked the keynote speaker, Kathleen Blake Yancey, whose energetic address of literacy and technology in the 21st century got the day off to a good start. I thought it was interesting that she explained that students of today are “digital natives” and at the same time are “print immigrants,” while older adults (like their teachers) are just the reverse. Actually, I feel new teachers, people my age, are somewhere in between, because although we have been around computers for many years, I am still a slow learner when it comes to new advances in technology (at least slower than our tech-whiz students!). Another key point that she made was that old assessments will not work with new technologies, kind of an obvious comment, but something to think about none the less.
For the first break out session, I listened to Dr. Julie Ann Mix- Thibault, who lectured about working with marginalized writing students in urban setting and creating community. I was disappointed in the presentation. It wasn’t that her topic was uninteresting, it was just that I didn’t think she was very thorough. Basically, for her disrotation, she conducted research that ended up proving that some African American students that speak ebonics verbally, have difficulty composing acedemic papers in standard English. She went on to describe that they (meaning these particular African American students) spoke using “informal” English, while what we expect them to write in is “formal” English. She then suggested comparing and contrasting the two forms of English, and noting what conventions exactly differ in the two, so that these “troubled” students could basically transpose their work into an acceptable dialect.
For example:The plural patterns in the two differ by simply adding the letter “s”, or “es” etc.
Informal English vs Formal English
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2 dog and 2 cat 2 dogs and 2 cats
She made other observations, such as the habitual “be” and lack of articles, but this was her “surprising finding”. Not to sound like a smart-allec, but a couple years ago, in Professor Shinian Wu’s Modern English class, we read an article about ebonics, and these findings were not only in it, but the article went further and found connections between the conventions of ebonics and the conventions of native African languages. I asked if she had found similar observations, and she hadn’t even thought about it.
The man sitting next to me, however, a teacher from Marquette, said he had also read that same article. It Bees dat way sometimes Interestingly, we started our own little linguistics conversation. As it turns out, Marquette has a large population of Finnish descendants. And when he married a woman of Finnish descent, he decided to find out as much about the history of her people as he could. What he found is that most of these immigrants from Finland, came to America as indentured servants, and the first to arrive were men. I believe he said they were miners. When the finnish men complained of the working conditions, women were brought over to appease them. Soon these depressed men sought comfort in these women, thus producing little ones who needed food etc. Because the indentured servants couldn’t afford to support these families, they paid for everything on credit. This, of course increased the debt they owed to their bosses, making it exponentially more difficult to break even. What does this have to do with linguistics? Aparently it is characteristic of Finnish people to lead nearly every statement with “You know…” and end it with “…right?” The point this man was trying to make was that they were constantly looking for acknowledgment that what they were saying is correct.
So that break off session wasn’t a complete waste of my time. However, the second one I attended was very interesting. I went to the discussion about LGBT Issues. First of all, let me say that Susan Steffel and Laura Renzi-Keener were awesome. They began the lecture by startling us with statistics. Did you know that 77% of teachers discourage class discussion of LGBT Issues? Also, I was alarmed to know that teachers fail to intervene in 97% of anti- gay slurs! 53% of students hear homophobic comments by SCHOOL STAFF!!!! Students hear, on average, 25 anti-gay slurs a day. This, obviously is an issue in need of some floor time in the classroom. Obviously it is a sensitive issue, a tabu. But, even if there isn’t a single gay, suspecting, or questioning student in the school, chances are pretty good that they know someone who is. One thing these ladies said, that I found interesting was that when a gay teacher wants to discuss LGBT issues, they are accused of having an “agenda”. Well, we all should have an agenda: one of acceptance….(at this point, people from the audience spoke different words that we should be trying to do) I walked out of this session with a bibliography of YA lit addressing LGBT issues, and some unanswered quesions: What is sex? What is violence? What is perversion? What is gender? What does it mean to be male/ female? Being the teacher to be the first to step up to the plate in a school will undoubtedly be a very hard responsibility to endure. Those who are will surely meet resistance from very religious, and conservative people. However, there is so much tension and homophobia in the air about these individuals, that if we provide a safe environment to talk about them, hopefully we will make some progress.
