Feature Story

Bridging the Gap Between Students of Color: Implications for Curriculum and Instruction


By: Christie Jones, M.Ed., M.J.


When I taught in the Florida public school system, my Haitian students were constantly being made fun of because of how they looked, dressed, and spoke. Many of the other students in my classes looked down on them and made them feel like they didn’t belong. Many of my Haitian students did not want to participate or read out loud because other students laughed at their accent. Many of my Haitian students didn’t reveal that they were Haitian; they pretended to be something else, but I always knew the truth.

Haitian Flag Day was also a huge problem in the school districts. My Haitian students expressed that this day was a time when they could show others how proud they are to be Haitian by displaying their flags. They said that they had to protect themselves from Jamaican and African-American students by bringing weapons to school and having fights. The Jamaican and African-American students shared different views saying that Haitians were starting the fights by insulting their culture. The discussion of Haitian Flag Day allowed my students to talk about painful issues of racism, discrimination, and prejudice. Many of my students said that no other teacher had ever allowed them to have an open forum on the topic. After the discussion, I taught a lesson on Africa and the Diaspora to show my Haitian, Jamaican, and African-American students that Africa binds us all together. I also took the time to highlight the achievements of all cultural groups to promote solidarity and tolerance. Even though Haitian Flag Day continues today, I feel that as an educator, opening the lines of communication will slowly alleviate the misinformation that all cultures involved receive from the media and other sources and begin to heal the hurt that these students felt.

Since my Haitian students were self-conscious about the way they spoke English, I helped them attain English proficiency through pronunciation and the use of normal stress patterns. I would model carefully how to say words for meaning and also pronounce phrases quickly and casually to show ESOL students the difference in aural/oral clues under both circumstances. I also demonstrated to the students that most frequently used one-syllable words are mostly unstressed in sentences and phrases, weakening their vowels to schwa. It is important to note that native speakers divide all but the shortest sentences into two or more parts. This helps to make the meaning clear, for emphasis, and to take a breath.

I helped my ESOL students acquire a good English speech rhythm by showing them how to give proper emphasis to stressed syllables and make them recur regularly. I taught them that they must weaken unstressed syllables (obscure and unstressed vowels). Students must be able to organize and break thought groups meaningfully. The only way that my students were going to make any sense of English stress was for me to demonstrate to them that stress can be used in several distinct ways. I taught my students how to blend the final sounds of words within each thought group and how to fit the entire sentence into a normal intonation pattern. If a particular student was having trouble with pronunciation and stress, I would give a lesson to the entire class to reinforce practice for everyone and to make this student feel comfortable.

I would use a lesson from the Jazz Chant book. My favorite chant that I have used with my Haitian students is “I Love to say I Won’t.” I gave all of my students a copy of the chant for them to follow. I started out with activating prior knowledge and the attention grabber, which was and overhead that we did as a group. After that, we all started to recite the chant. I walked around the room and observed students, listening closely for stress and intonation patterns. If I heard something pronounced wrong, I just simply said it correctly for them to hear. The next round, I listened again and everyone was starting to get into the rhythm. The most common mistakes that my students were making were that they were pronouncing every syllable in every word. They did not sound natural. I helped them correct this mistake by having them listen to me reduce vowels to schwa during rapid speech. I then increased the tempo of the reciting of the chant to force them to speak faster and shorten those vowel sounds. It felt funny to them at first, but after a few rounds of reciting, they began to feel the rhythm and use schwa.

This activity was not only fun for the entire class, but it really boosted my Haitian students’ self-confidence by creating a positive environment for them to practice speaking without being laughed at or looked down on. It is my hope that this experience gave them the confidence to keep speaking and not be ashamed of their culture, native language, or accent.

Read more about Haitian Culture:
http://www.heritagekonpa.com/abouthk.htm

To learn more about Jazz Chants:
http://www.esl.net/jazz_chants.html

Image taken from:
http://www.haitixchange.com/article_0040.asp