Tell Me How the Sausage is Made

My first year teaching (aka last year), I received the advice to only create a few, simple, easy-to-understand classroom rules. The four rules I created included cell phone use (none), touching each other (please don't), and being respectful (what does that even mean?). Students also created class norms over the course of several classes for each group, but the rules were mine. Midway through the year, trying to get a student to stop wandering around my classroom and/or yelling to her friends across the class, she said something along the lines of, "Mr. KV, you have so many confusing rules and you don't write them down!" 

In the chapter "The Silenced Dialogue," Lisa Delpit notes that oftentimes white liberal educators create a white supremacist culture of unspoken expectations and rules that mirror the SCWAAMP power structure we've discussed in class. Delpit argues that students should be explicitly taught that structure and codes of power in the classroom, and to do so teachers need to be in consultation with adults who share their students'  culture. Delpit follows a theme of this "culture of power" that exists within classrooms, reflects our current society, and is often blindly perpetuated by overly defensive do-gooders. 

Early in the text,  Delpit provides several examples to demonstrate how unhelpful ignoring unspoken rules or expectations is for someone who does not comprehend how they are failing to meet that standard. Her example of the interview hints or asking questions that are intended as directions illustrate how accepted language can derail someone. Classroom rules often perpetuate this issue, for example in the image to the left. What is "showing respect" in Rule 3? What are safe choices, or active participation and cooperation? Will a student be rewarded if they excitedly yell out their opinion during storytime? Or will they be confused on why their active participation was not wanted? These are the indirect ways of telling students that there is a code of conduct that they are expected to follow. This code will be simple and easy for some students to follow, and meanwhile others will be continually confused why they are failing to meet opaque expectations. 

To borrow an idiom, Delpit's chapter seemed to me like a detailed argument on teaching how the sausage is made. She notes several students' frustration with indirect methods of instruction, as they vent that the teacher did not do anything to actually teach them. She references a prevailing worry that there are secrets being kept and deliberately not shared with students who are outside of the existing power structures, when in fact it's more likely that teachers are designing lessons based on reinforcing or reviewing information that they assume students already possess. In the middle of the text, Delpit notes that the strongest teaching methods that she sees are explicit direct instruction, followed by student-centered conferencing. 

And yet, there still lies the question of how. I struggle with this question, because of the balance that must exist. I agree with the point that ignoring these power dynamics perpetuates the status quo, as it mirrors work that I've done earlier regarding aspects of white supremacist work culture. However, with a classroom there is a delicate balance that I'm not completely confident in navigating. It seems like a thin line between trying to incorporate instruction and committing the type of cultural genocide that Delpit references early in the text. However, luckily for me, she provides an answer. 

The last key point that Delpit notes in the idea of consultation. She notes how liberal academic spaces silence people who can speak from direct experience, and how ostracized the community can be from schools. It's only by working within and with that community that teachers will be able to navigate these questions. Because not all lessons are as easy as realizing you need to give direct instructions on 7th graders. Luckily for my students, that one was a quick one for me.