Post 1- Bridging our differences

Successful, committed teachers look for ways to bridge the differences that exist between their
ways of learning and the ways of their students. Chapter eight of Ways with Words provides
several teacher-inspired strategies for closing the gap effectively. Below appears a breakdown of
what Heath (and the teachers she mentored) proposes and what I hope to do more deliberately
this school year:
Be open to change.
o Reassess past patterns of success and failure in [your] classes and re-examine
[your] own evaluations of students (Heath, 1983, p. 267).
o Individualize teaching materials and offer supplementary explanations of general
classroom activities (Heath, 1983, p. 272). One size does not fit all.
o Look for ways to adapt your teaching methods and materials in order to
accommodate and merge student norms with the mainstream, school-oriented
ways of approaching tasks (Heath, 1983, p. 284).
Embrace home funds of knowledge (specifically ways of talking) in the classroom.
o Students want to retain [their] identity and self-respect while learning to talk
your way (Heath, 1983, p. 271).
o As argued by the South Carolina State Department of Education, the language a
child [brings] with him to school should not be eliminated in an attempt to teach
him Standard English (p. 276).
Get to know your students communities in order to bring in authentic learning
opportunities and to open up communication lines with families.
o Create a partnership with parents; show them that you are invested in their
childrens lives. A few teachers agreed to pick up several children once a week
during the summer and to take them to local libraries for story-reading, short
activities of drawing and writing, and selection of library books (Heath, 1983, p.
282). This small act opened the doors to both teachers and parents working
together to help ensure that children were better prepared for school (p. 282).
o Learn a thing or two from Mrs. Gardner. Be an advocate for your students; ask for
the moon and see what happens. Reach out to parents in your surrounding
communities as resources (Heath, 1983, p. 284-286).
o Make learning authentic and meaningful. Pull in photographs from the students
daily lives as part of the curriculum (Heath, 1983, p. 292). Use student interest in
documents from their communities as the stimulus to lead them to numerous other
kinds of reading (Heath, 1983, p. 313).
Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and
Classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.