Guiding Questions for the Delpit readings

“SKILLS AND OTHER DILEMMAS OF A PROGRESSIVE BLACK EDUCATOR” Consider Delpit’s conundrum and discuss where you see yourself as an educator. Is the debate she posits here still an issue in education or has it been replaced by one of equal merit? When I first read this article and later the Hirsch book we briefly discussed in class (the one which promotes canonical readings) I quickly understood that I would be one of those teachers that has to straddle the fence on this debate. Much like Delpit, I wanted to give my students voice by reading and writing in ways that did not stifle creativity but I also realized that my students desperately needed to be exposed to the canon and to the mainstream writing and reading skills that they needed to master before they could then continue to develop their more creative skill set. In other words, my students needed to be able to read and comprehend Shakespeare first so that they could then incorporate that knowledge in a rap or into a funny story usually told orally but with masterful strokes of poignancy. “LESSONS FROM TEACHERS” Now that you have read the first article, “Skills and other dilemmas of a progressive black educator,” do the suggestions made in this article make more sense, and if so how would you go about implementing them in your lesson plans? In essence, think of how you will reconcile teaching the skills with teaching how to think critically.