ABSTRACT
In Chapter 13, we discussed how, through altering their discourse, teachers could change the position from which they and their students negotiate testing and learning, especially for students whose familiar cultures are not school congruent.29 We observed how, under pressure, and even with the best of intentions, teachers cannot always be aware of the choices they make, of the alternatives available, or of their implications. This is true whether the discourse is spoken or written. In Part 1, when Marita challenged the truth of Nathan’s statement that drugs are not a problem in his neighborhood, she was talking about the paragraph he had just written. This paragraph was the result of a graphic organizer Marita had drawn on the chalkboard. Five boxes, connected by lines, were presented in hierarchical order: the topic sentence box at the top, the three evidence boxes drawn below it, and the conclusion box on the very bottom. Marita had considered the graphic organizer a useful scaffold for test preparation writing, and it could have been. But the way Marita implemented the paragraph organizer, as we glimpsed in the excerpt with Nathan, limited rich interactions that support thoughtful development of student writing. Marita’s discursive application of the organizer in her teaching served to limit possibilities for learning. With Nathan that was because she called up the everybody-is-influenced-bydrugs-in-the-hood discourse as well as others from beyond her classroom: accountability, standard English as a gatekeeper of academic achievement, and African Americans becoming successful within the dominant system. Over time, this interdiscursivity shaped what was possible for Marita and students to say and do in her classes. Marita’s example informs teachers that they need to be vigilant of the interdiscursivity and the hidden assumptions in their teaching discourse. Without that awareness, teachers can inculcate the very discourses they believe compromise their best teaching.
