Morning Ramble:
I had a motorcycle when I was younger. I had it long enough to know that – no blame – cars were not trained in SEEING motorcycles, esp. at intersections. I sold it after too many close calls.
So it is with kids of color in language classrooms. We have to learn to SEE differently in our work. Do we SEE all of our students in either our online or physical classrooms? Or do some of our students leave our classrooms each June without having been able to function as an actual person that year?
How much of that ignoring process of certain of our students is a result of the WAY WE TEACH. Should we not at least TRY to learn to teach in a way that no longer favors the white kids who are used to controlling the landscape of the classroom bc of their white privilege, the teacher’s white privilege, etc?
Does the pedagogy we use in our instruction have anything to do with the equity piece? What do you think? Does it?
I am thinking of making some TicTocs on this topic #Tanisha. (I got on TicToc and quickly left if about a month ago bc it eats up so much time, but now, since I only follow people who are talking about BLM – to help me understand my own prejudice – I see that TicToc can be of use, if you limit things to a small group of like-minded people.
So we’ll see if that works. In the TicToc videos I make I don’t want to just address WL teaching, but how WL teaching and BLM interface. I still feel great about kicking those guys off. Why?
It is because they wanted to “agree to disagree”. I finally see now that “agreeing to disagree” is something you do with others about what kind of ice cream you prefer, but not about issues of morality or a system of oppression that is five hundred year old.
I know that people have always found a way to oppress other people, but what we have been developing over the past 500 years – the idea that whites are inherently superior – started with colonialism.
I believe it was the Dutch East India Company that was the first to start the subjugation of people from the equatorial regions – which has now become an art form by American corporations.
Go USA? Not at the expense of other countries. Not when all the men leave Mali to work in Spain and thus kill the concept of families in Mali. Not when kids don’t grow up with clean water. Not when citizens of equatorial countries drink Coke.