Lisa Delpit: The Educator

This post is for the group of Joe, Drew, Cale and me(marc).

Lisa Delpit is the Benjamin E. Mays Chairholder of the Urban Educational Leadership of Georgia. She also was awarded the MacArthur award. Delpit also wrote an instant classic article for the Reading Culture.

What is said?
-Delpit was a firm believer in the open-classroom teaching style. What she found out though was that as the white children excelled in the program, her black students fell behind.

-Due to the failure Delpit changed her style of teaching to try to include all of her students.

-After her "failure" in Philly she went to grad school. It was there that she was told that her teaching methors, the open-classroom, was correct.

-Delpit would eventually return to Philly and when she did she met with her friend Cathy. Cathy told Delpit her opinion of the Bay-Area Writing Project. She beileved it was "a monumental disservice to black children." Cathy also told Lisa that black children were just as fluent as their white counterparts. She said that her students would write rap lyrics that proved her belief, just that most of them lacked the skills to advance to a college setting.

-Cathy brought up one of her students that she said was brilliant. But, she said that, "But he can't get a score on the SAT that will even get him considered by any halfway decent college. He needs skills not fluency."

Main Issues:
-Lisa Delpit believes that it is much harder for an African-American student to advance to the college level. This is due to the teaching practicies and lack of communication between dominant and minority cultures.

What statement would Delpit agree with?
-She would agree that there needs to be a balance between literacy development and a skills oriented program.

How does she do write?
-The kind of writing that Delpit uses is one that includes peer interaction. Everything she says is from personal experience.

-Delpit's structure is that she talks about her life, shares her conversations she had with peers, then develops a more conservative style of teaching, and finally states her beliefs.

-The voice she uses is first person.