There have been many inspirations for me in choosing African American Children’s Literature as my final research topic. The first inspiration is reading an article by Rebecca Wheeler and Rachel Swords on code-switching for African Americans who you the BEV (Black English vernacular) in my TE 301 class. This article really sparked my interest, because before reading this article I had never considered the idea of how to effectively teach mainstream English and the BEV. I am also inspired by student teaching in an urban school district where there is a high percentage of African American students. Within this experience, I have felt like this group of students is not included in school libraries or classroom assignments. I think that it is so important for children of underrepresented groups to feel included in classroom literature. So it is my goal to find authentic, high quality pieces of literature that share knowledge and information with students but are also enjoyable for students. Right now, I am very excited to read Monster, by Walter Dean Myers. It has won many awards for its high quality of text. I am enthusiastic to put it to our class standards of analyzing diverse literature! Through doing this project, I hope to improve my skills on critically analyzing books, specifically focusing on African American children’s literature, which will aid me in choosing books for my future classroom library.
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I think it's great that you are getting interested in African American studies in urban areas. I'm a little more interested in the urban areas part of your post. That is where i want to do my work professionally someday. I had a great experience last summer in Detroit. I was working as a part of the Broad Fellowship, which you mentioned you were familiar with, and I was in Mexican town. I am just curious about how you feel about this BEV thing. I can't deny that is widely recognized, but I am not sure how i feel about it. I don't think that it is a reasonable argument that some students are having trouble in school because they speak BEV and not standard English. On the on hand it seems that students are getting an excuse for not working in class or not putting in extra effort. This problem falls again on the teachers as well. On the other hand, it feels like this is another way of separating African Americans from the rest of the community. I've worked with a lot of youth in urban settings and especially African American students and I have never come across one of them who i couldn't talk to because their BEV was too strong.
I like what you had to say and I'm just thinkin outloud.
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