Prioritizing Black Language: Teacher Reflection Plus Action

Abstract

Black Language in students’ lives can inform teacher practices for linguistic justice and affirmation while amplifying academic rigor.

“Writin’ain’t my thang”: creating high school student writers with ongoing support through an urban school–teacher education partnership

“…Perry, 2006;Muhammad, 2020), linguistic dexterity (i.e. McMurtry, 2022), intellectual prowess and potential (Kinloch, 2017), discernable Black rhetorical elements (Smitherman, 1993) and culturally influenced text design patterns (Ball, 1995) reported on African American students. It also heeds a recommendation that emerged from Muhammad and Behizadeh (2015) that African American students preferred structured writing among others (i.e.…”

“Changing the course of the stream”: A retrospective analysis of artful language learning opportunities

“…Literacy research shifted from the focus on cognitive influences on literacy to sociocultural ones in what Paris and Ball (2009) call the "golden age." By the mid-1990s, African American scholars (Ball, 1992(Ball, , 1995Delpit, 1998;Ladson-Billings, 1994;Lee, 1995;Smitherman, 1993) disseminated research on BL that introduced what I call the 3Rs of BL to the field of language and literacy: the historical Roots, linguistic and rhetorical Rules, and the social and political Ramifications (McMurtry, 2022).…”

“…In classrooms across the United States, Young (2010) contests, codeswitching has come to mean "speak this way at school and a different way at home" (p. 114). Conversely, asset-based code-switching approaches, or what Boutte (2015) calls critically conscious code-switching encompasses two elements that make it vastly different from uncritical code-switching: (a) sociopolitical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1994) or including explicit discussions with students about language, power, and linguicism (language-based racism), and (b) the teaching of what I refer to as the 3Rs of Black linguistic justice (i.e., roots, rules, and ramifications) (McMurtry, 2022); that is, teaching students the socio-historical and political history, context and evolution of BL. I also drew inspiration for the ALLOs of my 2011 code-switching unit from scholars whose work reflected critically conscious code-switching paradigms (Christensen, 2003(Christensen, , 2009Delpit, 1998).…”

“…Teachers fresh out of their teacher education programs are unlikely armed with critical consciousness and equipped to employ anti-racist language pedagogies (Baker-Bell, 2020). As an early-career high school English teacher, I entered my first year treating standardized English as the premiere English while all other varieties were substandard, including the one I had embodied all my life and had recently discovered as an "official" language variation (i.e., BL) (McMurtry, 2022). I, too, subscribed to what Baker-Bell et al (2020) describes as respectability language pedagogy; that is, BL is acceptable to use at home among family and friends, but not in the academic or professional setting.…”

“…While I discuss many of these ALLOs elsewhere (McMurtry, 2022), the ALLOs, "Flossie and the Fox," and "The Piano Lesson" were selected as the focus here; further analysis and exploration have afforded me a dynamic opportunity to reflect and improve upon toward a more just end.…”