This week I would like to look at the other side of the controversy of teaching ELL or NSE speakers in the classroom. Truth be told, I used Stanley Fish in the last post to be provocative; no one stirs it up more than Fish, well, perhaps E.D. Hirsch, but that is another post. This week, I would like to approach the controversy through the lens of critical pedagogy. Norton and Toohey state in the intro of their book "Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning" that "language is not simply a means of expression or communication; rather, it is a practice that constructs, and is constructed by, the ways language learners understand themselves, their social surroundings, their histories, and their possibilities for the future" (1). With this in mind, how can we carefully consider students' home/private/intimate language in the writing classroom? Too often, testing, especially high stakes testing, eradicates the possibility of pedagogy that sees language as identity. Students must find a way to become fluent in the dominant discourse, at times at the expense of their primary discourse. Of course, these are the times when the relationship between power and discourse become most prominent.
I think about my students who come to the writing classroom with alternative discourses or epistemologies. I also think about my position within an institution that perpetuates power structures through pedagogy. How can I resist the power structures as a teacher; how can I help my students see the power structures and hope that they will resist? At times like these, Anzaldua's works always come to mind. Linguistic domination is all too real, especially in education. My goal with these marginalized students is not to further their marginalization, but then what am I doing?
So this week's driving question is:

At what point does acculturation/assimilation into the dominant/academic discourse become violent oppression?