Podcast Transcript
Mike: Hey everyone, welcome to our podcast. My classmates Kayla and Emily are going to have a discussion about very important topics pertaining to education, more importantly Linguistics and culture, and how the different cultures and languages come together in a classroom. I really like what they have to say. And I hope that you guys give it a listen and take away some valuable information from it. Thanks and enjoy the show.

Kayla: So the first thing I wanted to talk about is code switching regarding AAVE. A lot of black students learn how to code switch at a young age. Code switching is when you talk differently around certain groups of people in your life. so a lot of black students speak AAVE at home and in their neighborhood, and amongst their friends. At school they usually speak more mainstream or White English.

Kayla: So on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to children who have no access to mainstream English and their only exposure is really to AAVE, there are children who are really exposed to mainstream English especially at school, so they go to school, the stories that they are being read are in mainstream English and are about maybe white children or children that are not black or African-American. So at school they are not really being represented, and it's basically kind of like trying to understand a story in a completely different language than what you speak at home and what you normally understand.

Kayla: So, because AAVE is often associated with people who are uneducated or is seen as broken English, some people only have access to AAVE and mainstream English is not within their realm of I guess opportunity. So a lot of kids don't learn how to code switch. As soon as you don't spontaneously learn how to code switch or subconsciously learn how to code switch will experience a lot more hardships and struggles regarding racism later on in their life because of the way they speak.

Kayla: As an educator I think it's important that you find out what your students speak or how they speak at home. Maybe they speak a completely different language, maybe they speak AAVE, maybe they’re bilingual. I think it's important to just acknowledge that they speak a different language than you do which is mainstream english probably, and i think it’s important that you find value in it, instead of labeling it as “wrong”, maybe incorporate these words and these phrases with mainstream english, let’s combine them, let’s find like a middle ground, a compromise. From just acknowledging and finding a compromise or a middle ground between AAVE and mainstream English for students that speak AAVE at home and mainstream English at school, it’s just showing that you, as an educator, have accepted their language. And for a child being accepted is really important and acceptance is a link to their success for sure. Refusing and rejecting a student’s language or rejecting AAVE in school, that’s their home dialect and it will definitely diminish their identity and make them feel kind of like “stupid” or “ignorant” or “uneducated” when in reality, they know 2 languages! And that’s a really important thing to acknowledge, accept, and celebrate.

Emily: The topic that I'm going to be talking about is stereotyping. Bilingual people often get stereotyped for their accents. They may be knowledgeable in two languages but still seen as unintelligent and uneducated by others. People usually tell them things like that they speak broken English or say things like “speak American you're in America now.” People think that the United States has an official language even though it does not. There's no such thing as an American language; everyone has their own way of thinking and pronouncing words. In the classroom it is important to demonstrate the differences which exist by challenging basic stereotypes. It is important to teach students that everyone has their own perspectives, challenges, and experiences. They should try to understand others with sympathy to allow them to engage with differences in a positive way. It is important as teachers to teach through popular cultures into the classroom, these can be incorporated through things such as music, movies or images. For example, Teachers can do a movie which shows how discrimination affects people emotionally, mentally, and socially students can be taught that discriminating people based on their race is not okay. Teachers should educate their students about racism to make their students aware and allow them to challenge these stereotypes.

Mike: Hey guys, that’s it for our podcast, I hope you enjoyed listening to what my peers Emily and Kayla had to say, I think they shared some very valuable information. Thanks for staying until the end of our podcast and hearing it through, I hope you were able to take away some good points from it! Thanks for listening, have a good one guys!