Ebonics Debate: Inverview with Carrie Secret

This is the post about the Ebonics Debate reading that your peer never published; it is composed by Chris Lacy from ENG300-2. Responses are due on Friday, Feb. 6th, by class time.
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*Post from Jan 30th due to snow days*Article

This article is adapted from an interview with Carrie Secret, a fifth-grade teacher at Prescott Elementary School in the Oakland Unified School District. Prescott had been the only school in the system where a majority of teachers voluntarily agreed to adopt the Standard English Proficiency program, a statewide initiative which acknowledges the systematic, rule-governed nature of "Black English" while helping children to learn Standard English.

Carrie Secret instills a very hands-on approach to teaching English as a Second Language to her students. Although she promotes a strong push to use standard English in her classroom, she accepts that Ebonics and other languages are the students "home" or native languages. She allows them to interact in the language that they are most comfortable speaking in. Critics of this approach attest that allowing Ebonics to be used in the classroom will prolong the switch to English. Carrie argues that "If you are concerned about children using Ebonics in the classroom, you will spend the whole day saying, "Translate, translate, translate." So you have to pick times when you are particularly attuned to and calling for English translation." I believe that this method of teaching proper English will be most effective. It reminds the students to embrace their cultural roots, but become mindful of the goal of learning English.

Carrie teaches the students through active listening; making the students read and write in proper English and listening to proper English being spoken. She emphasizes hearing proper English at a young age before habits become too much to overcome. She still reads to her 5th grade students to reinforce proper speaking techniques. She also incorporates black literature into her teaching methods to show students that their own people did wonderful things with standard English.