Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating other People’s Children

After reading Delpit I found myself speaking more about the topic rather than blogging about it. Culture and race has become something that I have become very passionate about. This piece from Delpit made me thin of many instances in life and in my own personal life. When I think about the culture of power I think of how the school system has been more stagnant than prosperous. When you look at the statistics for inner-city kids dropout you think how depressing it can be and how it can make others feel hopeful. The culture of power has been the same for so many years and yet it has not made things better; in fact it has made things worse if anything. When I think about going into teaching I think that I may be more fortunate than some because I come from a diverse background and maybe I can come up with a better culture for my future classrooms. I would never want my students to insecure about their thoughts and silence their voices because of the culture in power. I feel as though the culture of power has shut down many dreams and ideas of children all over the country. I think about myself when I was in high school and when I had difficulty understanding something or even when I over exceeded on understanding; I never had the confidence to speak of either or because I always felt there was a sense of empowerment over me and my thoughts instead of a sense of security and a place of learning. Also I have had man friends who came from other countries who have always strayed away from speaking of an experience from back home or asking for help because they felt as though no “American” could ever relate. I feel the culture of power should be much more open-minded and there should be discussions pertaining to change and how we as educators can make all children and even their parents feel heard.

This video is a clip of a new musical called Hamilton on Broadway. Hamilton is a hip-hop musical and it is one thing I came across this weekend and looked into a little bit. It is just a fun video that made me think about how much culture has changed as it should and how there are many ways to tell and teach stories of things we learn in school for example about our founding fathers.