“Yasmin*,” I asked, pointing to a lamented card of a huge printed Y, “What is the letter name of this one?” She leaned over and said “Y,” without missing a beat. “Good. And what sound does it make” I asked. “/J/!” she exclaimed “Like Jas-meeen!”The racial identification of the students in my school is as follows: 66% Hispanic, 23% African American, 8% Asian, and 4% White, with an overwhelming 93% qualifying for reduced price lunches (source: Infoworks). This data implies that almost all of the children in my school are from working-class families with parents who most likely do not have much education themselves. I sat and thought about these numbers for a minute and applied them to my own life. How would my education be different if my parents didn’t have much education? Would things be different if my mother didn’t finish high school or just got had a GED? Would educational expectations be different for me and my siblings?
While I would classify myself as a Latina, like the majority of my students, in elementary school I never qualified for reduced lunch. My parents were married; my father worked and my mother stayed home to raise three children. When a pre-school teacher suggested that my brother be tested for “special needs” (because of his insistence on speaking Spanglish), my parents immediately sent him to speech therapy. My parents knew the rules of the culture of power and they had the means to provide us with tools to operate within that culture. While my family maintains many of the cultural traditions of our native culture, we were always expected to abide by the “rules” of American culture. Why?
I now realize the privilege I had as a child. Although I have come from a Spanish-speaking home, my family internalized the code of power at some point. Most of these children come from a similar culture as myself, but there is a good possibility that their parents don’t know what mine did. There is a good possibility that no one had explicitly told them the rules of the culture. Lisa Delpit asserts that knowing the implicit codes and expectations of the culture of power makes acquiring power easier. I’ve decided that I want to participate in a system that can empower children to have confidence that they can gain by knowing the rules.
Sitting with my students, I realized just how important phonics is to not only successfully participate in our society, but to incite real social change. The knowledge of the game will help them to be able to change it. More importantly, I realized the importance of preserving the pride they have in their language and culture. Making sure that they understand that their cultures are different but not inferior will give them the desire to participate in education, rather than reject it altogether.
“Yes. It’s /j/ in Spanish”, I confirmed. “But in English, what does it say? What’s the first sound in the word yellow?” She thought for a few seconds and then declared “/Y/!”
*Name has been changed.
