Alex Ramirez Christine Fail Introduction All across the country teachers stand in front of students with a slew

of different backgrounds. They must find a way to teach each student, while taking into account the various backgrounds and even there own. While some are for a Standard English dialect in the classroom, and others are against it and support dialect diversity, I believe the implication of one or the other would hinder the learning abilities of the students. I believe we have to find a common ground between the two learning styles that would benefit the students the most. Just enforcing Standard English in the classroom would help students learn to read and write professionally and in a uniform style, but would take away from their creative side. While the lack of Standard English in the classroom would result in a cluster of dialect-diverse children who all spoke and wrote differently, and would be to near impossible to grade, as who is to say what is right and wrong. Great introduction! I think you did very well in addressing your issue! I was a mixed Latino child who grew up in shoddy part of town. My dialect was influenced by my home life and my environment, and was a combination of both English and Spanish for some years. I went to a private school, where there were not many other minorities around. The way I spoke was significantly different from the way many others at the school spoke. The school and my family thought it best if I was enrolled into a speech program, which was supposed to improve the way I spoke. After about two years in the program I was deemed a normal speaker. I came out a stronger speaker, and eventually my writing caught up, for the most part. I came out as the system wanted me to, I had conformed my speaking style to that of every other student in the school. The problem that I see 10 years later is that all throughout school, I

lacked a creative writing style. I struggled in writing creative stories, but was able to write in a formal matter. Love the person example! My target level of entry would be the second grade. I feel that students at this young age have a small understanding of the English language, but can still be molded in a strong speaker and writer. However my plan is not only limited to the students, it would effect teachers and parents as well. Dialects are formed through the environment of the student, there home and school. Maybe add a little bit more information about what you are going to do. Review of Literature The article by Howell is about education reform in urban schools. Teachers have adjusted plans to that of the students needs. The research from the article shows that plans implemented put the students at risk of failing the end of year examination. Ives ghetto family is an article that addresses the focus on dialect in the classroom. The students that focused on diversity had a higher failing percentage than those who did not. In Lovejoys article it is stated that while dialect diversity looked at, it is largely unnecessary. It is also rather hard for teachers to adjust to the needs of every students diverse background. Students should focus on the Standard English aspect and not the dialect diversity, as it does not lead to advancement in school. S. Quave states that dialect diversity in the classroom is hard for professors to deal with. Quave also brings race into the argument. Is it racist to put one dialect over the other? In order to not have to deal with the last question he it is best to use Standard English. Add more detail. 3 sentences isnt enough here in my opinion. In Students Resistance by Bracha Alpert, the negative effects of Standard English in the classroom are talked about. The article states that students who are taught with a method that

attributes superiority to academic school knowledge and that promotes a recitation style of classroom interaction typically meet such a method with resistance. No Bedtime Story by Brice-Heath states that we can begin teaching students about dialect as young as preschool. The article compares several cities, and how the children learn in them. It also shows how both home and school are needed to enforce any type of dialect teaching plan. In Johnson and Greens article I Aint Thinkin Bout No is about a study on group work in the classroom. It is viewed as an effective teaching tool when it comes to a diverse classroom. When working together in groups, students were able to deconstruct stereotypes that they had about each other. Good article! In an article by Casteel race is the subject of discussion. It shows how Caucasian teachers, intentionally or not, choose to aid other Caucasian students more than African American students. The study draws that the dialects of the African American students may have lead to the unfair treatment. The article by Garret, Copeland, and Williams is a Danish study that shows how students in Wales are stereotyped by their dialects. It can be viewed the same way in the United States as it is common to do the same here. People are often judged as formal and smart if they are well spoken, or informal and somewhat dumb if they are not. In the article Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in Courts. by Rosina Lippi- Green, it is shown that court rulings are effected by the way people talk in them. The article also states that employers can manipulate the system to discriminate against employees, and fire them, due to their accents.

Bielanski and Speicher state that the differences in the way we speak to each other leads to discrimination, and as stated in a previous article, stereotypes. The article also says that written and spoken English may be similar, but are in fact different. In the article by Michelle Crotteau, the author identifies a small mountain suburb in Virginia. The inhabitants of the mountain community attend regular schools but speak very differently. The school has a 95% passing rate on a final written exam, with the 5% coming from the mountain community. The article goes into depth on how a program was created for these students, and followed their progress until they retook the final written exam and passed. Good use of the article! Solution Proposal As stated before I believe the best grade to enforce this program would be the second grade. The average second grader is 7-8 years old. This is the perfect age to begin remodeling the minds of these students. They havent learned enough yet about the English language to be too stubborn to relearn it, and have enough knowledge of the subject to begin forming ideas. Also being addressed in my plan are the teachers. The teachers are the main point of the plan. They are the ones in the classrooms teaching Standard English to the young children. The final people addressed in my plan are the parents. Since most of our dialect is influenced at home, the parents have a part to play in their childrens education as well. How will the teachers be involved? How will the parents be involved? Every plan has goals, mine is simple: to better educate and prepare our students for future endeavors. I dont plan to change the way children talk. I believe our dialects make us unique. I am simply supplying them with another dialect, a professional dialect. Of course I have long and short-term objectives that are necessary for this goal to be achieved. My short-term objectives

are to have my plan first implemented into a region of the United States. This would allow me to set up my program in schools, and be able to see how the schools my program is in compare to those in its region, and the rest of the country. My next short-term objective is to be the best schools in the region by the end of the second quarter, and best in the country by the end of the year. I believe in order for a program to succeed, it needs to be the best. My final short-term objective would be to have my program in all schools in the region by the end of two years. The long-term objectives that make this plan work are similar to that of the short-term objectives. The most important long term objective of this plan is that every child that goes through my program, goes to college; be it community, tech, or a state college. A strong education is necessary when it comes to a lifetime of success; therefore I want my students to get as strong of an education as possible. Another long-term objective is to have my program implemented across the country in 5 or 6 years. Similar to my regional short-term objective, I want my program to go nationwide, so all students can benefit. Reread the paragraph. Some of it doesnt flow well together. Good ideas, just need better flow At the beginning of the school year, students in the second grade at the schools that my program has been established in will have to complete a written and oral exam. This will give us a basis of what we are working with. From there teachers will implement lessons that instruct the students of proper word and grammar usage, how to use a word in a sentence and how to pronounce it if necessary. Along with these lessons teachers will hand out activities that delve into the creative side of the students. These activities will strengthen the concepts that the students learned in the previous lesson. Along with this will be weeklong homework packets. The students will receive them on Monday and they are due Friday. They are necessary to complete and require the help and signature of a parent. The packets will contain additional

lessons and activities, similar to those at school. Only instead of a teacher, the parents will be helping to form the childrens linguistic skills. Throughout the year students will take written and oral exams similar to that at the beginning of the year. At the end of each quarter the test will be administered. This will provide data to see how the students are progressing, and allow us to adjust if necessary. Teachers will have to learn how to implement this plan in their classrooms. Therefore they will need to attend an over the summer workshop. At the workshop a common lesson plan will be handed out and gone through with the teachers in detail. They will learn what to cover, when to cover it, and how to cover it, for each lesson. They will also learn of the goals and objectives of my plan, and see the bonuses that they could earn, if the objectives are met. The workshops will be long and tedious; therefore teachers will be paid and given a small bonus for attending. This program is easily achievable, with the proper level of input from all necessary parties. Students will be given the best education possible for the future. The teachers first enrolled in the program will learn of the perks at the summer workshop and attain them, if the program is a success across the region. So What? This is an important matter because the outcome of students educations is on the line. It is important to teach Standard English in the classroom, as it may lead to students being more prepared for the real world, and allows teachers to teach all of the students at an equal level. However it is also important to incorporate a more creative aspect to the teaching style. Therefore students will come out productive and professional, rather than just conforming to the professional writing style being forced on them. Further research can be conducted on post-

graduation statistics, to see if students who were taught using Standard English and Dialect Diversity, have a higher rate of graduation, higher employment, or to see if it had any effect at all. Good paper! Great ideas. I would just reread some of the paragraphs out loud to see how they flow. Sometimes I needed to reread them to myself to try and understand what you were saying. Otherwise great job! Works Cited Alpert, Bracha. American Anthropological Association, Last modified 1991. Students Resistance in the Classroom. Accessed October 11, 2012. Brice-Heath, Shirley. "What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School." Cambridge University Press 11.1 (1982): pp. 49-76. JSTOR. Web. 27 Sep 2012. Casteel, Clifton. "TeacherStudent Interactions and Race in Integrated Classrooms." Journal of Educational Research. 92.2 (1998): 115-120. Print. Crotteau, Michelle. "Honoring Dialect and Culture: Pathways to Student Success on High-Stakes Writing Assessments." The English Journal. 96.4 (2007): 27-32. Print. Garret, Peter, Nikolas Coupland, and Angie Williams. Cardiff University, "Evaluating dialect in discourse: Teachers' and teenagers' responses to young English speakers in Wales." Accessed October 11, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4168938?uid=3739776&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739 256&sid=21101256988791. Howell, L. (2011). Yes we can! improving urban schools through innovative educational reform.contemporary perspectives on access, equity, and achievement . IAP - Information Age Publishing, Inc. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=RlRYm3eJ8xYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Ives, D. (2012). Kristina's "ghetto family": Tensions and possibilities at the intersection of teacher and student literacy agendas. National Council of Teachers of English, Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERI ExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ977523&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ97 7523 Johnson, Douglas, and Susan Green. "I Ain't Thinkin' 'Bout No ... : The Development of Two Parallel Diversity-Related Case Studies for Higher Education."College Teaching. 51.4 (2003): 148-152. Print.

Lippi-Green, Rosina. University of Michigan, "Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in Courts." Accessed October 11, 2012. https://moodle.uncc.edu/file.php/88517/ideologycourts.pdf. Lovejoy, K. (2009). From language experience to classroom practice: Affirming linguistic diversity in writing pedagogy. Pedagogy, 9(2), Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu.librarylink.uncc.edu/journals/pedagogy/v009/9.2.lovejoy.html Quaye, S. (2012). Think before you teach: Preparing for dialogues about racial realities. Journal of College Student Development, 53(4), Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu.librarylink.uncc.edu/journals/journal_of_college_student_developm nt/v 53/53.4.quaye.html Speicher, Barbara, and Jessica Bielanski. " Critical thoughts on teaching standard English." Last modified 2000. Accessed October 11, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3202094?uid=3739776&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739 256&sid=21101256988791.