Chats and Spats

We began this week by going over our Ebonics lexicon, a sheet I had typed up and passed out to everyone, consolidating our work from the week before. T. mentioned that her mother uses Ebonics when the kids “ have been bad” in order to scold them, but uses standard otherwise. A.P., who has been transferred down to 1st grade on account of serious lack of progress academically, mentioned that his brother speaks in Ebonics all the time. I told both of these kids and the class that I was thrilled that they were beginning to listen for the shifts in language outside of school, that that was exactly what writers do. We read the words aloud, then made up new sentences for them, then thought up some more words and phrases for the list. Kids used the words in sentences after they introduced them. There was quite a bit of oral story-telling this day, RB and DT especially talking about experiences on the bus, on the street, and so forth. I always listen closely and most of the time their classmates do, too. A, who is rather slow to pick up ideas and activities during class, but always rememembers to raise her hand and play by school rules, wanted to show us her cheer, so I allowed a few minutes at the end of class for her and two other girls to show me their cheers. A’s was amazing: in a very low-key way, she managed to syncopate her clapping, her stomping, and her verbal cheering in a rhythmic pattern that seems impossible to me to replicate. It’s the old story—finding room in the hour for everyone to shine in the way that they can. TJ and RB also cheered. Theirs was neat, too, but not as naturally amazing.

Second hour came in with an agenda: SOCIAL ANGST to straighten out. T needed the floor, so I passed her the polished purple amethyst we use as a talking piece and away we went. Their was so much anger and resentment among the girls for being “popular” or “geeky” or “nerdy,” and involving putting names on the board and whatnot. I facilitated the discussion for about 15 minutes or so—therre was some crying and sharing of very personal stuff– and then declared enough, it was time to get to work. A quick conversation about Ebonics, and we spoke about Barak Obama (nobody knew who he was). I told him that he was a lawyer and a politician and an African American man whose mother was white and father was black and that he is running for president and that he could…..CODE SWITCH JUST LIKE THEM! We got into a little more mechanical tinkering with the grammar of code switching, the way the negatives are formed in standard and Ebonics. It started because someone needed a pencil:

“I never ain’t got no pencil, Ms. Schaenen.”

Aha! The whole idea of multiple negatives was very obvious here, so I wrote that sentence on the board under Ebonics and then wrote:

“I never got a pencil, Ms. Schaenen.” under Standard English.

I circled the negatives in the two sentences and we counted them up to compare. Then a few people mentioned the weird dreams they had had the night before so for a writing exercise everyone recorded a dream paragraph just to get alone with thoughts and images. Finally I passed out journals and people got to writing a little more. It was a seat-of-my-pants kind of day.

Second Grade:

First hour of second grade was back after a long absence. Behavior was rocky from the start. I passed out a page of a coloring book I had picked up in Arizona. It featured some desert plants and animals and other features, and we talked about some desert vocabulary and whatnot. But when I saw that two girls had their heads on their desks I stopped.
“What’s wrong, N?” I asked. “Are you sleepy? I need you to wake up and be part of this class.”
“I’m not asleep, Ms. Schaenen. I’m thinking about my Daddy. He in jail.”
“Have you ever met him?”
She shook her head silently and started to weep.
So I simply asked everyone to turn their paper over and write about “someone you wish you could spend more time with, or a letter to someone.”
Suddenly behavior was fine, silence fell, and kids started writing.
Talk about a U-turn! It was one of those moments when I just had to throw everything aside and do what felt right intuitively. Behavior came around.

A few children were crying as they were writing – M especially, who was crying over the deaths of her cousin, her uncle, and her grandma, she said. Tears were falling on her paper and her nose was running steadily. (I’m not sure how to record these kinds of happenings except drily. The affective dimension these students bring to my classroom is very intense. I’m not sure how it affects the rest of their day, but I do sense that it is a powerful force that, if channeled and focused productively rather than destructively, could help them learn and achieve by leaps and bounds.) Here’s a couple of the samples from this period:

“Dear Daddy,
I miss and love you. I want to come and visit you all the time. I cry all the time. Sometime I watch my favorite TV show That So Raven. I think about you all the time. I am sorry that you got in jail. I wish you did not get in jail. I wish you can get out of jail. Sometimes I make up my own games. I made a game about you,
Love,
N.”

“I wish I can see my grandma cause I miss her a lot and I cry cause I loved her when I was a baby. And my cousin died I miss her.”

“I wish I saw my dad in his home where I can see him every day for he can come and get me some time for we can go to the park with him. Swing, paint, color, draw, make puppet, make plants, make maps, make clothes, make colors.”

“I wish I can see my Daddy more often. I think he died but I don’t know for sure. And I only saw him at McMillon. I want him to know that I am in school. I like I play cilaman [?] Dear Dad Chris.”

Second grade, Second Hour

I passed out a poem by Harryette Mullen (thank you Sally!) called Ask Aden.

Are aardvarks anxious?
Do dragons dream?
Ever see an eager elephant?
Newts are never nervous, are they?

We read it aloud, talked about the words they didn’t know. Then I asked people to tell me something they noticed about this poem. All on their own, astute answers followed:

“Every line is a question.”
“It’s all about animals.”
“It’s make believe.”
“The sentences are short.”
“It does not rhyme.”

With some help, they also saw the neat pattern according to which the first letter of each line spellled out Aden’s name, and also the repetition of the letter throughout that line.

Then I passed out paper and they got to write their own acrostic poems about themselves. I’m not sure how to do this without using their names….only first names will be OK, I think.

“Ask Kelcie?

Kind kid Kelcie.
Eager every day.
Little lime Kelcie.
Cute cuddle cube Kelcie.
Interesting Einstein Kelcie.
English speeking Kelcie.”

(Chris made himself laugh with this one)

“Ask Chris

Cool dude
How can I help
Rhyming words
Is he nice
Since I can’t get out of the tree I shall fall out of it.”

We’re beginning to collect signatures for the cover of the lit mag this year. In general, things were OK this week, but I did feel an overwhelming sense on both days that these children are coping with a great deal of stressful daily life, stress that can’t help but occupy psychic space, space that would and should be given over to learning. Reconciling two needs: the need to address this distracting and distressing stuff AND the need to get all this important school material firmly hardwired is a huge task. There seem to be many paths towards reconciliation. At least three include:

1. Alternating one with the other, clearing up the emotional/affective piece when it’s just too much in the way, and then “getting on with school;”

2. Harnessing it in order to more meaningfully acquire the schooling;

3. Ignoring it completely and creating “a separate peace” of an environment in which the outside world has no place.

Thank goodness Room For Writing is enrichment, not regular class, so we can tinker around with the methods and ratios of each somewhat. When I find that the baggage my students bring into the room is simply too heavy for them to bear, we open it up in a controlled, safe way, and deal with it frankly. I find that usually there are ways of tying baggage to curricular interests. And while I guess I have practiced all three ways at times (and have observed classroom teachers at work in all three ways), I mostly seem more and more to be hanging with the second.

-Inda

Making Poets of Ourselves

I love haikus. I love, love, love them… which is funny, because when I was younger I found them tremendously boring. In recent years though, I have worked haikus into every corner of my life. I write them for employees at work. I give them to sick friends. If I am stuck and need to feel creative, I whip one off. The great thing about haiku is it’s short. Very short– three lines. The next great thing is: anyone can write a great haiku. Stick to the form– write about nature or the seasons, make sure it has the right syllables, and it will be beautiful. Because haikus are so short and so brief, it is a lesson in imagery, in the economy of language… and so I told my students this week.

Moving into our last segment, I told my students we were going to work on some short forms of writing. Many are still finishing their short stories from before the MAP tests, many are done, and many have lost their drive. I explained that we would have ten minutes of free write time (or more, if they finish earlier) each class for them to finish previous drafts, revise, start new pieces, or write journal entries.

We also discussed my plan for their end of year event- Cafe 213, and the process to get from here to being ready for that. The 4th and 5th graders and Ms. Mills’ 6th grade class seemed especially excited. The other 6th and 7th graders seemed slightly more weary. I am guessing for two reasons. As they get older, they seem to understand more and more the social factors of baring their souls to the public, and the possible ramifications. So for them, I am trying to give them more opinion pieces they can write, almost like small arguments for or against topics so that they will have things to read that are not quite so personal and that doesn’t put them in such a vulnerable position.

This week, with the 7th graders, we spent time talking about rap and hip-hop lyrics, centered around the current debate. Aside from this topic being all over the news in recent weeks, April’s National Geographic ran a big story on the roots of hip-hop, and I also brought in a good Washington Post article from last week about the double standards of lyrics in rap music and how it’s complicated by race.

We discussed gender, age, language, racial slurs, and the roots of hip-hop. We compared the lyrics of early hip-hop like the late seventies Sugarhill Gang “Rapper’s Delight” with eighties LL Cool J, and then contemporary music– most of which I could not play in full because of the language. K.H. told me he had been working on several raps, had finished two last month, and was hoping to go to the studio and record with a cousin this summer. S.R., a newer joiner to the class, who is usually very, very quiet was the most outspoken within this discussion. And not only did he speak, but he had great points and excellent reasoning. (As an interesting note, as a group, they all seemed to agree that much of what they hear\on the radio and in hip-hop is inappropriate for kids under 12. They thought 13 to be a good age because you are more mature and understand that words aren’t always just words.) The students then began to write for a while about hip-hop, free-writing or answering questions I had put up if they got stuck. It was a great discussion of media and culture, and we will keep going with it next week.

With my other five groups, we worked on haiku. The sixth graders were very good at it, having worked on them earlier in the year in their class. (In particular, that group seems to be getting a very good language arts base and it’s clicking. By sixth grade, they’ve seen many things for the second or third time, so it’s resonating more. But about 2/3 of what I have done with them this year, they already know the structure, which is fantastic.) Hayes-Adams 4th/5th mixed class did a great job, especially with some of the images they fashioned (as did Allen’s class)– it seems that’s a great age to pull the larger issue of figurative language together. The fourth graders were new to the idea of syllables, but they did very well, especially L. We went around the room and clapped out our names and other words so that we could hear the syllables. All in all, they did extremely well and seemed quite excited.

For the groups that finished (they had to write two correctly), each student chose one haiku and wrote it on a post-it note to put up on a poster I made in the hallway. I want to have a living wall of poetry, and one that we can easily change or add to. I loved seeing the haikus grow out there last week and more will be coming.

This was a great lesson, again in part because I love it so much. But also because they saw what I meant, that it’s hard to write a bad haiku if you do it correctly. It was frustrating– the syllables– for many of them, but when we worked on it together, they got it. There was such obvious pride as they read what they wrote– even some who just had a line or two (we had done prewriting to gather images, so they would have an easier go at it). It’s nice to have something like a haiku. Different writers are good at different things, but in all my years, I’ve yet to meet someone, of any age, who can’t write a great haiku. The trick is persistence, and patience. It’s all very zen, of course.

-Allison

Allison’s update

I can’t wait for my students to finish testing. I have gone in the last two Wednesdays, but they have still been Mapping. This week, only the 3rd and 7th graders were supposed to be testing, but all my groups except Ms. Allen’s were, and she seemed relieved to have an extra week to catch up.

I spent last Wed., April 11, working on typing up the kids’ best work for the anthology. I got through a good 1/3 of it or so (3 of my current six classes, but I still have all the previous groups that switched out as well). It was really nice to read through some stuff again that I hadn’t seen in months. And in some cases, I found some treasures that the kids didn’t share with me, or we ran out of time to read in class. Over the pages of their notebooks, I felt like I could see both their confidence rise and their sense of trust flourish.

This week, I had worked at home on making a big poster about Australia. I wanted to be able to show the kids more than me pointing at a map, and I knew they would have lots of questions about my trip, so I figured that could jumpstart a few different things. I printed out facts and maps, and poetry, as well as getting some of my most illustrative pictures re-printed to narrate certain things. My hope is that it might make another place come alive, and that perhaps just one of them even, might see one of those pictures and remember it and decide that they have to travel when they are older.

I also worked this week on writing posters and rules for my end-of-year culminating event. They love to read their work out loud so much, and I decided it is that simple. That is what this is all about. So I am creating an open mic event I am calling Cafe 213, for each of my groups. I am going to treat it as an end of year party, a privilege. They will each receive fancy invites, and provided the school signs off, we will make invitations for their parents (though I imagine most will be working) and I will invite springboard and other guests. I want it to feel festive and casual, but to give them a serious audience who respects what they have done. I am working on some friends bringing in really good mics and perhaps some other sound equipment to put some music to their more urban poems. I think it should be a lot of fun.

The kids will go through a rigorous edit before that of the work they choose, and I spelled those steps out for them on a big poster I made for the hallway. There are rules for participation as a reader an an audience member. I hope to invite the rest of their classes as well.

So the next few weeks, we will be finishing up our short stories, editing our favorite work, and working on writing haikus for my haiku wall as we go. Then the last day of class, which should be mid-May will be our open mic (except I have jury duty that week, so I am hoping to postpone).

Now, I just need the kids back in the room with me. I’ve missed them, especially their questions.

The Names We Call Ourselves

This week the first hour began with a conversation about my name, and why I had not changed it to my husband’s name (they know that my son has a different last night than I). I talked about my job as a writer, and that it was important to me that my name be “my name,” and we connected that later to Ma Rachel (in THE WELL) repeating over and over that “they” took her name, meaning the white people during slavery.

Then we talked about the word “nigger.” I had printed out a piece from the African American Registry (on-line) that traced the history and meanings of the word and its use over time. Of course this was a scholary text, and I did not hand it out for them to read, but I wanted the kids to see with their own eyes that African Americans could and did talk and think and write about this kind of loaded word, that there was not consensus in the African American or larger community about how it should be used and by whom, that all of this needed to be thought about seriously and not just taken for granted.

On the chalkboard I wrote the word NIGER and labeled it as Latin. I explained that just the way we all have ancestors, our languages do too, and that one of the ancestors of English is an old language called Latin. Then, using descending branches like a family tree, I wrote down some of the other languages that had Latin as their ancestor, their more direct ancestor – Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian…the romance languages, and wrote the words for BLACK in those languages – negro, etc etc. A few of the kids knew this, but didn’t realize exactly the derivation and history. Then I wrote NIGGA and NIGGAZ (singular and plural) on the board, which is something Smitherman calles attention to, the way African American usage of this word (the counterhegemonic usage, I might add) is different than NIGGER and NIGGERS (the derogatory usage). Again, some of the kids sort of seemed to get this and be fascinated, others tuned out. In general, when the preponderance of kids tunes out, I move on.

Then I read some more aloud from The Well, pafges 42 through 47. I have to admit it is difficult for me to read this book sometimes, even in character, when the clearly “bad guy” characters use the word “nigger.” I have to really disguise my voice so that it’s very clear to the kids (and to myself as a text performer using language with the kids) that I am impersonating someone, reading dialogue that is written. At one point I actually said, “This is hard for me to do.”
“What, Ms. Schaenen?”
“It’s hard for me to say nigger. Even though I know it’s these mean boys and their father who are saying it, it feels wrong for me to say. I would never say it in real life.”
They just look at me but I think they understand. I can hardly describe the way these conversations bring words, thought, and feeling into the same space and time. There is no consideration of this kind of subject without an acceptance of discomfort – mine or, at times, the kids’. Creating the safe space in which this can happen is what I’m trying to do. One key is being able to lift off the subject butterfly-like when necessary – intuiting when enough is enough and moving on.

Anyway, DH, who is really into the story, reads over my shoulder (DT does too). As the week before, we broke away to discuss the language sometimes, the Ebonics/standard listening practice. (TJ, who had gotten giggly and silly last week and had been excused from class, then wrote me an apology and had another chance this week, got to shine. I saw that she was really getting this code switching thing and homed in on praising her. She was so happy. How satisfying to find a child redeemed!) We read until the end of class.

Second hour, as I had promised they could, the kids got to scatter about the room in their own space, sit down and write about the word nigger, how it made them feel, what they thought about it, where they heard it and so forth. I also began the class with the print-out of the scholary explanation/history, and we talked about how lots of people had lots of ideas about this subject, that whatever they wrote, there was no right or wrong answer, that this was one way of getting to the heart of what they thought about something, this writing it out. (Next week I will tie this experience to the word “essay,” which comes from “essayer,” to try in French. An essay is really a trying or testing of a thought or series of thoughts. ) The writing produced this hour was stunning. So here are some excerpts from the essays…Remember: these are THIRD GRADERS!

SA:
…”I think it’s O.K. to say the word at times but when you’re using it to offend or hurt someone it’s not O.K. and I think everyone knows that. The word nigger… could hurt someone so badly that it makes you not want to know of a word like that as you could see the word nigger is use 75 percent of the black people say the word when they are angry and when they sometimes think it’s cool you might hear me say it but not to hurt someone…

AE:

“My mom does not like the my sister saying the N. word because she is light-skinned and my mom is afraid that she is going to get beat up…My brothers and my cousins act mean to her beacause of her skin…I want my sister to go to the same school as me so I can protect her. That’s why doesn’t want her to say word nigga and I don’t either that’s sister love.”

JR:

“Is it OK to say nigger? I think it’s not OK because it can cause people to argue and fight and die. But people say it like it’s a standard English. But it’s really not. But a lot of people say it in my family because usually people in my family say it to babies, kids, adults, teenagers, elders. But it is not not not absolutely not positively not definitely not OK. But it is not an easy subject to stop saying it. But if you can control your bad words that come out your mouth but try to might can really really really help. But mostly I hear it on streets, in stores, in cars, radios. But mostly rappers, singers. But I said it a lot of times. But I am getting scared I mean very very scared. Because I going to die. But mostly I hear it from bloods, crips. But I’m still wondering………I’m next?”

[I had a one-on-one talk with this child after I read this to get a sense of what she meant exactly. She is afraid that she might be the next one to be shot (the ellipses at the end is her own: three tiny dots followed by twelve whole circles). Clearly, the word is associated with all kinds of social practices and circumstances that make her afraid; the word cannot be heard or used out of context.]

DW:

“The word niggaz is not okay for some people. But nobody should use it…Whoever made that word is foul. And sometimes when grown up use it I feel afraid.”

AW:

“I think that the person who changed the word negro to the word nigger should change it back because nigger is bad. I think they should change it because the word nigger make people feel bad and hurt. When … you say the word nigger people try to fight. The End.”

TJ:

“The word nigger is not okay for me to say it. My mom says not to say it. It is very bad. And I hear people on the streets saying it. And mostly thugs say it and they be shooting. And I be scared.”

MW:

“Some people in my family think it is OK to say the word nigga but I don’t. I don’t think it is OK to say the word nigga because I think that some white person made it up. My cousin think it is OK to say the word nigga probably because she say the word all the time. But my other cousin think it is not OK because she think it is inappropriate. But usually the only places I hear it is on the streets and on rap songs and sometimes I see it in the bible and sometimes I hear it in church but evidently the word nigga is not bad because everybody say it. I be getting confused sometimes because one minute the preacher would say that the word nigga is OK to say but then other preachers think it is not OK to say.”

A quick analysis of this last piece: Notice the topic sentence, and the way the student supports it with her next sentence: the word is not endogenous [write word?] to the community that is using it (“some white person made it up”). But then the paragraph shifts into truly an essay, a trial, of thoughts – some people think it’s OK (her cousin), but only as a justification (because the cousin says it all the time). Then she explains where she’s heard it. Then she “thinks aloud” by saying “evidently,” based on her perceptions, and finally we can see that she is confused by all the evidence, which leads her to two different conclusions – it’s OK and it’s also not OK, depending on who is doing the preaching. This writing reveals an engaged mind wrestling with a complicated concept and a writer using observation (hearing, perception, etc) to come to a conclusion, even one that feels unsettled – Montaigne’s notion of essai, to say the least.

That’s all for this week!

-Inda

Thinking/Speaking/Reading — April 2 and 9 with Third Grade

Well, MAP tests have made meeting with the 2nd grade impossible for a couple of weeks. Alas. On the other hand, I have been able to exchange letters with several second grade students who leave their mail for me in the mailbox outside our R4W. I love arriving at our door and seeing those long white envelopes in there. I open them up and write back either right away by hand or at home on the computer. Then I deliver them either to the room or to the students via their teacher’s mail box in the office. It’s a fun new mode of communication.

Meanwhile, I brought in copies of the first several pages of Mildred Taylor’s THE WELL, a story about a rural African American family in the south early in the 20th century. The narrator is a 10-year-old African American boy, and the language he uses is very interesting – much of it is standard English, but depending on the characters, a reader might notice southern white vernacular and also black vernacular (Ebonics, or African American vernacular English (AAVE), or Black English, or African American Language, all academically acceptable terms). Every student had a copy of the story in their hands. We read the story aloud—mostly I read, but sometimes we took turns — and the children highlighted passages/phrases they found to be AAVE. A few of them commented that it was hard to read the vernacular aloud. “I’m a good reader in class but I can’t read this,” one girl remarked. And we talked about why this might be so.

Every so often we broke away from the text and talked about its ideas – notions of black racism (exhibited by Ma Rachel, a character) and how that played out in real life today. Almost all of the students cited an example of people they knew who didn’t like white people. An aunt or a godmother or someone who had a bad experience out in a store or on the street or with the police. Even, at times, they themselves: “No offense, Ms. Schaenen,” said one, “but I don’t like white people.” Needless to say, this was all very clinical and interesting, and we all agreed that what we really should be talking about was the way people acted, not the way they looked. A few of the kids have white relations, and have felt this already. Actually, thay have all HEARD words like this, but for many it’s just cliché, or pablum, something people say but do not practice. Much of their experience has shown them that color determines actions, not that color is somehow abstracted from behavior, or an after-the-fact consideration.

If someone pointed out an example of Ebonics, I always praised their observation and asked them how they might say the same thing in Standard English. Throughout the lesson, I reminded them of our overarching goal, to be able to recognize the ways in which both codes are used, and to know really well and truly which code was right for which place and time.

The next week (the day after Easter) I began by asking about Easter and how they celebrated. Most of the children ate candy and decorated eggs. Only one in 20 mentioned anything about Jesus or Christian belief, and I honestly think (because I pressed them)_ that they did not associate the holiday with anything religious, that they were not simply avoiding mentioning their beliefs. I passed out some buttered matzo and talked about the legend of the former slaves in Egypt fleeing from pharoah…that they were in such a hurry that the bread had no time to rise, that matzo reminded us all not to be “puffy headed” and proud and vain, but to remain flat and humble sometimes. It was all in passing. Adorable D. said, “Aren’t you not supposed to be talking about religion in school, Ms. Schaenen.” I agreed that this was just a story and we moved on. With the first hour I read some more of THE WELL while they munched on matzo. AP. RB, and DH were especially focussed. We read all the way to page 43 and they were on the edge of their seats. They called out when they heard Ebonics. We broke away to discuss the way Taylor allows her characters to use the word “nigger,” and how that makes us feel, and how it makes her characters feel. And so we talked also about the use of the word today—who uses it and why, and how it is used and heard in many different ways depending on who and why and where it is said, whether by black or white speakers, or adults or kids.

With the second hour we moved straight from matzo to beginning to write up our Ebonics lexicon. In small groups the children made lists and talked about how to define these words or phrases and how to use them in a sentence. I played “student” and they taught me about what they were writing down while I took notes. This was lively and fun for all of us. I plan to write it up and see if we can create a growing text that changes over time as these words and phrases change. Some precious moments: I was sitting watching and listening when I heard JR say to me, “Ms. Schaenen, is ‘retarded’ Ebonics or Standard English?” So we talked about how just because a word seemed like slang or local and particular, if not derogatory, it wasn’t necessarily Ebonics. Then this group got caught up in the “nigger” conversation, which seems unavoidable because it’s really part of the fabric of their auditory/textual lives. When is it funny and good-natured, when cruel and racist? Who “gets” to say it and when? With whom. Obviously, this is all sociocultural stuff, and well worth discussing. I asked D: Why do you think it makes you so mad to hear it from one kind of a person, and not mad to hear it from someone else? “It’s just the way I am,” he said. I urged all the children to think about the word in general from now on, think about when they heard it and where, and why, and how they felt about it so that we could talk some more about it.

[See Geneva Smitherman (1997), an expert and professional linguist, THE Ebonics person, who writes: “Because ‘nigger’ is a racialized epithet in European American Language, African American Language embraces its usage, encoding a variety of unique Black meanings.”]

Here’s one example: “a shot calluh,” noun. someone who’s in control, on top of things and in power, one who “calls the shots.”

And yet here’s another word that SA wrote down on her list:

“Moe: Having more than someone else.” So I said, “ S, I think this word is simply your way of pronouncing the standard word “more.” That makes it an Ebonics pronunciation of a standard English word. So we talked about similar words: four, floor, store. And I asked her to say them both ways – Moe, foe, flow, stowe and THEN more, four, floor, and store. A bunch of other kids tried this too—everyone was smiling and amused at this whole thing– and we talked about how they could always switch from one pronunciation to the other. We did the same thing with “th” words. They said “den and dey and dat” followed by “then and they and that.” We talked about how it was only a matter of where you put your tongue – whether between your top and bottom teeth (the interdental fricative, as the linguists say) or behind your teeth (I think this one is called the labialdental fricative, but I’m not sure). Anyway, it was all very casual and interesting—kids on their feet right in front of me sounding out words for fun. SA asked if next week they could write about the word “nigger” and their feelings about it. I said of course. So that’s the plan. These were two amazing weeks.

-Inda