DW3b

African American Vernacular has been an ongoing topic for centuries. We just can not see to come to an understanding about how to incorporate the usage of AAVE into the everyday classroom. My linguist have presented ideas to what they feel might bring us closer to doing just that, incorporating AAVE into the classroom and using it to help teachers of students that use the dialect to use it as an advantage. Five Easy Pieces: Steps toward Integrating AAVE into the Classroom, written by Jessica Whitney, discusses how to effectively get the students involved with learning Standard English without eliminating their home language. Whitney extensively explains 5 key steps that teachers should go through or follow to make teaching SE easier for them while at the same time making it easier to learn.

*Step One: Teacher, Educate Thyself
In this section Whitney presents the idea of the teachers learning more about AAVE and having a better understanding of the language. She states that most teachers' downfall is "ignorance." Ignorance leads to judgements of on dialect or language being more superior to the other and it's definitely not AAVE. "Working with a student’s home language, instead of against it, is crucial to ensuring students’ academic success"(Whitney 65).

*Step Two: Incorporate Multiculturalism into the Classroom
Here Whitney discusses presenting "non mainstream varieties" such as rap lyrics and fictional articles. With doing this she quotes Kim Brian Lovejoy with his ideas and how he effectively does this in his class. He suggest having the students bring in their own example of non mainstream varieties and that they present these things to the class for a class discussion. This draws the students in more because everyone has a piece of the project to incorporate. She goes on to talk more about how Lovejoy presents this to his class and his ideas about this exercise. "Multicultural texts can connect people of diverse backgrounds and can be used as a starting
point for deeper examination and discussion of our experiences. Students can draw on class discussions to reflect on appropriate uses of home language and school language, as Lovejoy detailed"(Whitney 66).

*Step Three: Create a Learning Environment Rich in Oral Language
"Children acquire language through practicing the skills of speaking and listening"(Whitney 67). Step three talks about not only teaching students to write in SE but also having them speak out loud and making them feel comfortable to do so. By doing this they can listen and hear the differences in the way that they and others speak. "'Allowing children’s home language to serve legitimate functions within the classroom, allowing their home experiences or street experiences into the classroom ‘could be a starting point for crucial and truly enriching discussions’ of relationships among language, knowledge, culture, identity, politics” (Gilyard, qtd. in Sorace 76)"(Whitney 67). She also talks about how the students will be able to go home and translate something in SE to their family in their own dialect.

*Step Four: Encourage and Demonstrate Code-Switching in the Classroom
In this piece she explains the positive side of code-switching and why it is a good skill to obtain.
"When teachers work with students to contrast the differences between non-Standard English
such as AAVE and Standard English, students are less likely to use features of AAVE in
their writing"(Whitney 67). She explains the importance of teaching the students to be able to distinguish the differences between their home language, AAVE, and SE.

*Step Five: Allow Students to Write like Real Writers
Here she talks about teaching the students to have a purpose for writing and to know who they are writing for, specific audiences. They should know when something is or isn't appropriate. The teacher should allow students to write and speak in AAVe when appropriate. Whitney is basically saying that knowing your audience is the main idea for AAVe writers because when they do they will understand how to correctly revise their work to make it more appropriate.

All of the main ideas were summed up in the steps. I believe that this piece effectively discusses scholarship of AAVE because it is a layout for teachers of AAVE users. It explains effective tips to help engage the speaker into wanting to learn SE and to give both the teacher and the student of the opposite dialects. In this reading Whitney makes an argument that teachers shouldn't be afraid to teach students of other dialects other than SE. She pushes the idea that AAVE can easily be Incorporated into the classroom setting and be used as an advantage.