Review Of Other People's Children By Lisa Delpit

In the book, Other People’s Children, author Lisa Delpit does and excellent job compiling her experiences as a black educator through various essays and responses. It is though these essays and responses that Delpit tries to educate the American educator on the diversities we see in the classroom. She makes it known throughout the book that we need to make sure all students receive the same educational opportunities regardless of cultural background, race, or ethnicity. One thing that really stood out to me in this book was that she suggests that we appreciate linguistic diversity in the classroom. Stating that some student’s don’t have access to the “politically popular dialect form” also known as “Standard English”, and these particular

I liked her recommendation of “role-playing”, giving the students the ability to act out a scenario as someone else. Playing a role eliminates the possibility of implying that the child’s language is inadequate and suggests, instead, that different language forms are appropriate in different contexts (pg.53). Delpit follows this up on page 54 by saying that all we can do is provide students with exposure to an alternate form, and allow then the opportunity to practice that form in contexts that are non-threatening, have a real purpose, and are intrinsically enjoyable. If they have access to alternative forms, it will be their decision later in life to choose which to use, we can only provide them with the knowledge

Chapter 6 I like because Delpit talks about rethinking teacher education for diversity. I think diversity in the school setting is something that has always been and will always be a teacher’s most challenging part of the job. Her argument in this chapter is that diversity is not just in our students but faculty as well. She states that minority educators are in decline because they feel they are often victimized by discrimination and bias. This chapter mainly discusses black and native Alaskan cultures and how the two groups find flaws in the education system they share their bad experiences they have had to go through while pursuing their certifications. This chapter was an eye opener for me because I haven’t had much adversity while perusing my certificate. So to hear stories of others and what it looks like through their eyes makes me step back and appreciate those from other cultures who go into the education field. I think it is important to have diverse teachers because we all know we have diverse