Delpit

In reading Delpit's Lessons from teachers, I immediately zeroed in on her words under the heading "See Their Brilliance: Do Not Teach Less Content to Poor, Urban Children But Instead, Teach More!" I definitely agree with this statement and with the points she made after. Oppression is not always intentional and it is not always easily identifiable. Sometimes it can dress in a disguise of care and concern. We do our students no favors when we ease up on them. Of course we want to build their academic confidence and thus will assign tasks that we know they will succeed at, but eventually, children must be challenged. 

This is all easy to say, but I realized that if a teacher approaches her classroom with this mindset, she must also be extremely and resolutely resilient. Even if students don't react favorably in the beginning, or even if they don't see the true concern their teacher has for them conveyed through the assigned tasks, she must persevere. The only way to make this approach work is to consistently follow through. To start expecting a lot from students and then relax standards and then try to regain them is confusing for students and very unrealistic, therefore we must rise in the face of apparent failure because thats the only way to succeed. 

Delpit also says critical thinking is an essential ability we must demand from our students. In order to foster this, we need to "teach understanding" rather than definitions, grammar rules, literary terms, etc. This does not mean these are unimportant bits of information. To the contrary, Delpit says, "when we teach appropriate conventions and strategies within the context of critical thinking, we can produce the educated people we strive for." Skills and thinking go hand in hand. We want to challenge our students to develop their critical thinking abilities and use them in tandem with their learned skills in their life in general.