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I think about power with respect to my experiences with students at Parkway.I am supposed to be helping my students learn to write essays. Often the students I work with have wonderfully deep and compelling ideas they wish to write about.   Even the most articulate speakers among them struggle to write.  They find it challenging to put sentences together into a coherent paragraph, and the idea of composing an entire essay feels daunting to them.  When they’re willing to show me what they’ve written, I find prose that is plagued by grammatical errors and problems with fluent usage.  It’s hard to read.  I find myself frustrated by their inability to express themselves effectively in writing.  It’s not their fault.  English classes at Parkway do not teach students to think of themselves as writers.  Essay assignments are infrequent, and expectations are low.  By the time students reach reach their senior year, the teachers and administrators have already decided which students are capable of succeeding beyond high school, and which aren’t.  Lately, I’ve been thinking about this particular aspect of the school’s culture as one that perpetuates oppressive power dynamics.  Some students are told that they will never people able to succeed in an academic setting, that they will never be capable of contributing to the discourse of those in power.  They are told they won’t be  able to participate in this discourse because they are incapable of learning the correct language.  Perhaps they simply refuse to assimilate to the constraints of a dialect that has denied the validity of their voices.

I’ve been thinking about the way voice and validity were explored in the pieces by June Jordan and Laura Delpit.  Jordan, in her challenge to the idea that Black English is “incorrect,”  helps me to complicate my own understanding of the work I’m doing with Parkways students.  I have always questioned whether it ought to be my job to “correct” their grammar as a means of teaching them to participate as insiders in a dominant discourse.  I ask myself how I can provide them with a service that will be useful to them, without insisting that they ways of speaking and writing that I am comfortable with are more conducive to their “success.”  Similarly,  Delpit suggests that educators shouldn’t think of what they do as giving their students voice.  Voice, she argues is something students already have and use.  Educators must learn to hear.  I wonder whether I might be able to hear and appreciate my students’ voices, while giving them tools to participate in a dominant discourse when it would benefit them to do so.