Respond to: Silencing and Nurturing Voice in an Improbable Context: Urban Adolescent in Public School
Silencing both in students’ and teachers’ sphere could have such a devastating effect has never ever come across my mind. The passage alarms me that if there is no such a thing as silencing and teachers are encouraged to tap into students’ actual life experience and all the social inequities students may encounter; as a future adolescent educator, am I well prepared to handle thesesensitive topics. Opening up the topics is one aspect, delving deep into it and then leading students to think critically is another far more significant aspect. At this moment, I am afraid I am not qualified. Especially as a future adolescent Chinese teacher, how can I connect seemingly hard-to-acquire and unrelated oriental language to these African-American students coming from low-income neighborhood?As for them, Chinese maybe the least needed skill worth to work hard on or even to take seriously. Or how can I use their prior knowledge and experience to enhance language acquisition? How can I take advantage of some unique elements of Chinese culture to help them handle the real issues they need to face in the society, such as racism and inequity? I have no answer yet.
Dear Sze,
I understand your concern, and I know you are an experienced teacher, I believe you can utilize abundant material to show Chinese culture and language to your future students. For example, you can show them an interesting video introducing the typical Chinese food and start from the simple conversation happening in restaurant for first few lessons. I believe the real and practical conversation will be much popular among students. Unlike elementary students who have fewer chances to order dishes in the restaurant by themselves, adolescent learners are eager to use practical language skill to reality. In New York City, there so many Chinese restaurant for them to know about Chinese culture, e.g. how to use chop sticks, how to name each fingers in Chinese, and how to describe simple hand motions when using sticks. We can discuss this a lot!!