This week we finished reading A Raisin in the Sun and I'm so sad it's over!! We acted the whole thing out, and (most of) the kids got really into it. I think one reason is that I've been giving out an "Oscar" to one student performer at the beginning of each class period. My mentor suggested doing this, and I thought it would be just too cheesy and lame for the class, but they LOVE it! I've tried to use this as an opportunity for specific praise, too, so I'm giving each award a title for something they did to earn it. A couple of them gave some pretty funny spontaneous acceptance speeches.
However, there was a lot of difficult stuff with teaching this play, mostly to do with language. One of the reasons I wanted to read this play was because all the dialogue is in Black English. I know that's what all of my students hear every day at school, and most of them at home too, so that would make it simply more accessible than a novel written in white English, like most other "canonical" texts. It seemed like a really good opportunity to use some of the lesson strategies and ideas that we'd talked about in April Baker-Bell's book Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, which I read with Dr. Schey. I was worried that if we didn't talk about the language up front, some kids might make comments about it not being "good" English, which would be a less controlled scenario for addressing the topic.
The language lesson day didn't go as well as I'd hoped, partly because I should have briefed my co-teachers more beforehand. I had assumed that they were at least somewhat aware of the idea that all varieties of English are equally "correct" and fundamentally represent a culture and personality more than a level of "intelligence," but once again, assuming things gets me in trouble. I don't think I was able to create a genuinely open and non-judgemental environment about the ways we use language because I had to work double-duty on both leading the activities and trying to diplomatically correct things that I heard my co-teachers saying about Black language. There weren't any egregious comments made, but now that I have a better understanding of how I talk about language, I can't help but notice how often a hierarchy of language is being enforced by even the most well-meaning of people. The misconception that features of Black English are modern "slang" phrases without a deep connection to Black history is still very strong. I think that approaching this kind of topic might be easier when I have my own classroom next year, and when I can be better prepared to pre-talk with whoever I might be working with.
On to language complication number two: slurs. I had purposefully picked A Raisin in the Sun over Of Mice and Men (which we read last semester) because Mice uses the N-word with a hard-r in a very cruel way several times. I didn't want my kids to have to be subjected to working through that, and I knew that Raisin didn't have any scenes with that kind of language. However, I didn't anticipate how uncomfortable many students would be with the use of the word "Negro" in the play. Most kids would skip over that word while reading without even being prompted. We had talked a little bit before reading about how there was a different connotation in the 1950s, one that was associated with the pride and success of Black people. Even still, I can guess that my students were used to this word being used in a less positive way in modern times, and I wasn't quite sure where to go with that feeling. Should I have told them to skip reading it? Or should I have spent more time discussing the historical context of all the play's language? I regret not setting aside some time in class to at least debrief about everyone's different perspectives. I think no matter what, the kids should have the final say on deciding what boundary lines to draw on what is comfortable and "okay" in our classroom.
Another unexpected thing was a situation we had regarding the use of the F-slur in the play. Later in the play, Walter uses it multiple times to describe another character, and I made sure to point this out the student actors playing Walter before class and ask them to skip over reading that word aloud. I was honestly astounded when one of the kids responded by asking me "why?" I wasn't sure whether he meant that he didn't know what the word meant, or if he knew and just didn't know why it was a hurtful thing to say. I didn't have enough time before class started to continue the conversation, but maybe in the future I should be more flexible and take another minute for something important like that.
I can only assume that the other student actor must have had a similar perspective as well because my direction slipped his mind and he read the F-slur out with no hesitation. It was a really strange moment. I deal with confrontation a lot better when I'm in "teacher mode" but hearing that kind of shocked me back out into my regular self. I know I made eye contact with some of the kids who I know are Queer, and I really feel bad that I wasn't personally prepared enough to know what to say or do to address that moment. I hope I didn't break their trust, but I'm also not sure how I could try to rebuild it if I did... I need to keep thinking and maybe find some older teachers to ask what they have done in the past. It just seems so absurd to me that these kids don't know the gravity of that word. But maybe this is a good thing in some way, because it shows that kids aren't using it so much anymore to be aware that it's cruel?
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