“HELLO GRANDFATHER” Sarah Girgis

Summary  Delpit discusses her journey to Alaska and her experiences within the Native Alaskan village education system.  Delpit reflects back and draws comparisons between Native Alaskan Culture, her own African American Culture, and the Anglo- American Culture.  Talks about 3 themes connectedness, context, and decontextualization.

 While on Her journey she began to teach the village her own instructional practices but failed to understand and recognize best educational methods used for a particular culture.  Since her role of as a literacy instructor, many school principles suggested that she tries to get the native teachers to change instructional practices.

she wanted to abandon what we grew up as red robin reading (go in a group and read aloud) and have children read silently. Comments from Native American teachers in a discussion included how vital it was to read as a group and eventually lead to reading on their own. They needed to introduce them to the new skill and the new concepts in context they already found familiar which is the interactions with people rather than books. Asked teachers of a multicultural group of middle school children in Fairbanks to answer a brief survey on how they would most like to learn something new. Higher precentage of white people preferred learning from computers or books. African American and Native Alaskan kids preferred human teachers.

Connections  So at that time she realized that she needed to be apart of the world rather than try to dominate it.”  Open to experience and able to adapt to new ways

Context vs. decontextulization  In communities like the Alaskan villages, which are more connected with each other than our modern communities and less dependent on literate means of communication.  Context of the message is often more important than the text of the message. Its not just what is said its what is said, who says, who is present when it is said and what else is happening at the same time.  At the white university, people tended to only listen to what was said whereas at the black university people watched what was said as much as they listened to what was said.

 Jerry Mohatt, conducted research in many Native American communities and captured on videotape interesting of interactions contrasting an Anglo teacher in a classroom of Native American communities and a native American teacher in a similar setting.  Found that Anglo teacher’s words do not match his actions. He frequently directs he children to something while he is physically engaged in a completely different task himself. Example- he says copy the words from the board while he is away from the board looking through his desk. They ask children to attend to what he says not what he does.  Native teacher always matched their words with their actions. IF said copy the words on the board she would point to the blackboard. She supports her words in related physical context. What gets done is at least as important as what gets said.

 It would be easy to suggest that the anglo teacher should be more consistent but in truth he may well be unconsciously preparing children for their future school where they will be expected to attend to the words and not the surrounding context.

 Anglo teachers in villages complain that parents do not care about their children. They complained that they didn’t make their children come to school. But these parents believed so strongly of respecting children’s thinking that they would say that if the child did not want to come to school, then the school must not be a place that welcomed the child.  The teachers complained that children do not do hw. Parents believe that if the teacher could not present the work so that the child understood its value then the work must have had no value. Believed children should be treated with respect not coerced.

 Native Americans believe that the children are being turned into robots and the teachers act as tyrants and that’s why they have not adopted the new techniques. Their teachers attempt to coerce behaviors even when it is a personal decisions such as go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. The bell rings you go to lunch, the lights blink you put your work away. It does not teach children to be independent but rather dependent on external sources for direction, for truth, for meaning.

Teachers finding ways to integrate all..  An Anglo teacher wanted to bring the children’s culture to the class. She asked a bilingual aide who is now a native teacher to write the directions for making an animal trap on the blackboard so the children could make traps in class during their activity period. The aide had a hard time writing up the directions. The kids had a hard time following the directions. So the frustrated aide when home and got a trap took it apart and let the children watch as she put it back together and everyone made the trap in no time. Children could not grasp learning solely through decontextualized word.

 So teaching needs to be transitional by using their culture you can teach them  Had children practicing writing directions to go to or from a certain place in the village. ( they wrote in ways that assumed a great deal of insider contextual knowledge) When they finished she had them go outside and be more explicit as she pretended to be an outsider and trying to get her knowledge solely from the text. They soon understood that they had to use words in a different way in order to get their message across.  She repeated similar activities over the years such as having children write down how to make different native american foods and then having them watch her attempt to follow them.  Over time they learned that they could make use of decontextualized literacy when they needed to. They did not learn that they had to give up their own contextual ways of experiencing the world  By the end of her journey she tends to oppose the typical “mainstream” thinking regarding educational methods.

 Successful teachers of native alaskan children found ways to contextualize the literate endeavors and to celebrate rather than to limit the sense of connectedness which the children brought to the school.

BUT  Most native alaskan children do not have native alaskan teachers and through out the country students do not have teachers from their cultural group so they do not enjoy it as much So how do we figure out ways to make children happy in school so they enjoy learning? Were there any techniques used at your school to integrate culture and learning?

Bring experiences that are so full of wonder of life, so full of connectedness, so embedded in the context of our communities so brilliant in the insights that we develop and the analyses that we devise that all of us teachers and students can learn to lives that leave us truly satisfied She has shown that the combination of language and culture to be a successful component of the learning process not only in the United States but also in other countries around the world. Should engage in school and feel respected, have a voice in decisions give them

Relates to school psychology  Important to realize the all children have a different ways of learning and expressing themselves and you need to be connected with those needs. If you relate topics to what they have grown up with they might have an easier time understanding the material.  Learning styles and basic modes of understanding are shown to be different depending on the cultural backgrounds so educators need to take all this into account. Take time to find out the needs of the child.  Students feel engaged in school, feel respected  Different ways to meet the same ends.