What Happened to Ebonics?

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Turmoil in 1980s Oakland Leads to Continued Definitive Conclusions about Language’s Impact on Education in the 2020s by Matthew Bamberg Photo by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash The Ebonics debate has often been misunderstood. It refers to the dialect of AAVE (African American Vernacular English). This type of language is prevalent in the Black community and has also spread into popular culture through lyrics in rap music and similar genres. I be workin’ Yes, I be workin’ on this article. This can be defined as: I’ve been working on this article for a while, although not necessarily at this very moment. I begin here because using AAVE helps readers understand the importance of training teachers to use it in our classrooms. Before getting into the meat and potatoes of the point, AAVE is an important dialect and, therefore, should be treated with the utmost respect, especially when dealing with it as a teacher. Slavery was Brutal The history of AAVE in the United States began in the 17th and 18t...
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Literacy in the Content Areas

According to the Hunt Institute, the problem with eduction is that many students are unsuccessful in reading and comprehending books, documents, texts, websites and other media in the content areas upon high school graduation. Without literacy in the content areas, the supply of professionals in this area will dwindle because the education system is not meeting the needs of students who want to enter the field.

Therefore the standards in these areas--science and social studies, for example--do not merely teach students how to find and cite information, but, instead, to be able to read the media to understand and analyze what it does and doesn't say.

The standards were not only developed by educators, but also by professionals in the content area fields, so that they reflect the need for students to be literate in science and social studies and other technical subjects. 

In the video below, David Coleman, gives an example of building knowledge through reading and writing a document not merely to refer to it, but to have a command of the subject matter.

No longer will you as a teacher be able say I teach science through hands-on learning, but rather, I teach science thorough reading because scientists spend a good part of the day doing that.

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