“HELLO GRANDFATHER”
Sarah Girgis
Summary
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Delpit discusses her journey to Alaska and her
experiences within the Native Alaskan village
education system.
Delpit reflects back and draws comparisons
between Native Alaskan Culture, her own African
American Culture, and the Anglo- American Culture.
Talks about 3 themes connectedness, context, and
decontextualization.
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While on Her journey she began to teach the
village her own instructional practices but failed to
understand and recognize best educational methods
used for a particular culture.
Since her role of as a literacy instructor, many
school principles suggested that she tries to get the
native teachers to change instructional practices.
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she wanted to abandon what we grew up as red robin reading
(go in a group and read aloud) and have children read silently.
Comments from Native American teachers in a discussion included
how vital it was to read as a group and eventually lead to
reading on their own. They needed to introduce them to the new
skill and the new concepts in context they already found familiar
which is the interactions with people rather than books.
Asked teachers of a multicultural group of middle school children
in Fairbanks to answer a brief survey on how they would most
like to learn something new.
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Higher precentage of white people preferred learning from computers
or books. African American and Native Alaskan kids preferred human
teachers.
Connections
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So at that time she realized that she needed to be
apart of the world rather than try to dominate it.”
Open to experience and able to adapt to new
ways
Context vs. decontextulization
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In communities like the Alaskan villages, which are more
connected with each other than our modern communities
and less dependent on literate means of communication.
Context of the message is often more important than the
text of the message. Its not just what is said its what is said,
who says, who is present when it is said and what else is
happening at the same time.
 At the white university, people tended to only listen to what
was said whereas at the black university people watched
what was said as much as they listened to what was said.
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Jerry Mohatt, conducted research in many Native American
communities and captured on videotape interesting of
interactions contrasting an Anglo teacher in a classroom of
Native American communities and a native American
teacher in a similar setting.
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Found that Anglo teacher’s words do not match his actions. He
frequently directs he children to something while he is physically
engaged in a completely different task himself. Example- he says
copy the words from the board while he is away from the board
looking through his desk. They ask children to attend to what he
says not what he does.
Native teacher always matched their words with their actions. IF
said copy the words on the board she would point to the
blackboard. She supports her words in related physical context.
What gets done is at least as important as what gets said.
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It would be easy to suggest that the anglo teacher
should be more consistent but in truth he may well
be unconsciously preparing children for their future
school where they will be expected to attend to the
words and not the surrounding context.
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Anglo teachers in villages complain that parents do not
care about their children. They complained that they
didn’t make their children come to school. But these
parents believed so strongly of respecting children’s
thinking that they would say that if the child did not
want to come to school, then the school must not be a
place that welcomed the child.
The teachers complained that children do not do hw.
Parents believe that if the teacher could not present the
work so that the child understood its value then the
work must have had no value. Believed children should
be treated with respect not coerced.
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Native Americans believe that the children are
being turned into robots and the teachers act as
tyrants and that’s why they have not adopted the
new techniques.
 Their
teachers attempt to coerce behaviors even when it is a
personal decisions such as go to the bathroom or get a drink
of water. The bell rings you go to lunch, the lights blink you
put your work away. It does not teach children to be
independent but rather dependent on external sources for
direction, for truth, for meaning.
Teachers finding ways to integrate all..
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An Anglo teacher wanted to bring the children’s culture
to the class. She asked a bilingual aide who is now a
native teacher to write the directions for making an
animal trap on the blackboard so the children could
make traps in class during their activity period. The
aide had a hard time writing up the directions. The kids
had a hard time following the directions. So the
frustrated aide when home and got a trap took it apart
and let the children watch as she put it back together
and everyone made the trap in no time. Children could
not grasp learning solely through decontextualized
word.
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So teaching needs to be transitional by using their culture you can teach
them
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Had children practicing writing directions to go to or from a certain place in the
village. ( they wrote in ways that assumed a great deal of insider contextual
knowledge) When they finished she had them go outside and be more explicit
as she pretended to be an outsider and trying to get her knowledge solely from
the text. They soon understood that they had to use words in a different way in
order to get their message across.
She repeated similar activities over the years such as having children write down
how to make different native american foods and then having them watch her
attempt to follow them.
Over time they learned that they could make use of decontextualized literacy
when they needed to. They did not learn that they had to give up their own
contextual ways of experiencing the world
By the end of her journey she tends to oppose the typical “mainstream” thinking
regarding educational methods.
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Successful teachers of native alaskan children found
ways to contextualize the literate endeavors and to
celebrate rather than to limit the sense of
connectedness which the children brought to the
school.
BUT
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Most native alaskan children do not have native
alaskan teachers and through out the country
students do not have teachers from their cultural
group so they do not enjoy it as much
 So
how do we figure out ways to make children happy in
school so they enjoy learning?
 Were there any techniques used at your school to integrate
culture and learning?
 Bring
experiences that are so full of wonder of life, so full of
connectedness, so embedded in the context of our
communities so brilliant in the insights that we develop and
the analyses that we devise that all of us teachers and
students can learn to lives that leave us truly satisfied
 She has shown that the combination of language and culture
to be a successful component of the learning process not
only in the United States but also in other countries around
the world.
 Should engage in school and feel respected, have a voice in
decisions give them
Relates to school psychology
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Important to realize the all children have a different
ways of learning and expressing themselves and you
need to be connected with those needs. If you relate
topics to what they have grown up with they might have
an easier time understanding the material.
Learning styles and basic modes of understanding are
shown to be different depending on the cultural
backgrounds so educators need to take all this into
account. Take time to find out the needs of the child.
Students feel engaged in school, feel respected
Different ways to meet the same ends.