Chris Andresen

Critical Analysis Paper

TE 822, Dr. Watson
November 2021

Throughout this semester’s readings, one consistent feeling stuck with me from one week

to the next: relevance. Obviously, these are studies and articles written for and by educators.

However, I am consistently struck by just how much the readings connect with me as a high

school teacher in the year 2021. I work in a large, diverse district in suburban Flint, in a town

named Grand Blanc. The demographic makeup of our high school is relatively similar to that of

our country as a whole (75% white, 20% black, 5% Asian), and every class I’ve taught here

contains a wide array of ethnicities, languages, and religions. Each reading forced me to grapple

with ideas and truths I’d never really considered before, and pushed me to explore new ways to

lead a more equitable classroom for my students.

I was fascinated by Terry Pollack’s treatise on teacher talk, especially how teachers

talking shop can often turn into “deficit narratives”. I’m a seventh year teacher, and a large part

of my daily life, both in and out of school, consists of speaking with teacher friends of mine. It’s

just something every teacher has in common: stories about silly stuff the kids do in class, funny

answers on tests or assignments, a good joke a kid tells you...it just leaks out when you speak

with other teachers. More harmful, however, is when teachers commiserate about the conditions

of their jobs. It is cathartic, of course, to vent about the (many) troubles we deal with on a daily

basis. However, as Pollack points out, this “shop talk” can often take on some racial undertones.

Pollack mentions a story of a student they observed named Darnell. Darnell, a fifth grader, is

allowed to sleep in class because “school was supposedly the only place he could get any sleep.”

(Pollack, 2021, pg. 94) Over the years, I’ve had several students who just can't seem to stay
awake. I have had several Darnells in class. Teachers hear that you have Darnell in class and

oftentimes make light of the fact that the young man just can’t stay awake. Pollack concluded

this anecdote with a chilling quote from a “motherly” woman who worked in the school:

“Darnell is lost to us. He’ll probably never see his 18th birthday.” (Pollack, 94). Wow. That

quote hits hard, and this is coming from a woman who many considered to be a mother-figure!

The racial undertones of that comment can’t be ignored, and it hits me that much of the teacher

banter I hear and take part in has some element of injustice about it.

Darnell more than likely has trouble finding a comfortable place to sleep at home and

finds his desk at school to be the safest place in his life. Yet, the older, more experienced teacher

in this story has already written Darnell off, even when she is visibly supportive of him. This is

the “deficit narrative” Pollack describes when teachers talk shop about their students. There are

undercurrents of the “oh, we can’t help those students” mentality everywhere in teacher talk.

We’ve written kids off and hold them to a lower standard just because of their skin color.

Pollack’s article really shook me for how true it rang. Even the most well-intentioned teachers,

who genuinely care about their students, are guilty of this from time to time. It harms a teacher’s

ability to construct a more just, equitable classroom.

April Baker-Bell’s work describes another subconscious way many educators create an

inequitable classroom for their students of color: through suppressing their language and ways of

speaking. Growing up, throughout both high school and college, we were taught that White

Mainstream English (WME) was the proper, academic language for business and professional

life. We wrote, spoke and conversed with teachers in WME. Admittedly, I went to a

predominantly white district (Haslett) where the majority of students were on the university

track. It was just a given that WME was used in a school setting. Working in a much more
multicultural district now, Baker-Bell’s work hits hard for me. So much of our curriculum

focuses on “Black students rejecting their language and culture to acquire White Mainstream

English.” (Baker-Bell 2020, 9) This ties into Pollack’s deficit narrative theme--many teachers

write off students of color simply because they speak differently than they do. Baker-Bell calls

this attitude one of “linguistic hegemony”. She states that black students are systematically

“conditioned to despise themselves and regard their linguistic resources as insignificant.” (Baker-

Bell, 2020, 13) I strive to make sure this is not the case in my classroom; I hope my students are

comfortable enough with me to speak with me in the way they feel naturally. I often wonder

what the future holds for WME as our default “academic” language. Our demographics are

shifting--by the 2050s I will be a minority in the country as a white male. Languages are

dynamic; they constantly evolve. Perhaps in the not too distant future, the linguistic hegemony of

WME will erode.

Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade’s thesis on the various forms of hope helped me to bring the

ideas discussed earlier into a practical application in my own classroom. He discusses how

students, especially our students of color, can suss out “hokey hope”: enforcing the white middle

class opportunity structure that is typically unavailable to “the overwhelming majority of

working-class, urban youth of color”. (Duncan-Andrade 2009, 183) This projects a “false hope”,

Duncan-Andrade argues, “informed by privilege and rooted in the optimism of the spectator who

needs not suffer.” (Duncan-Andrade 2009, 183). Simply put, we cannot push that 1950s

Americana dream of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps to our students anymore. It just isn’t a

reality in 2021. The way forward for teachers is to develop genuine, meaningful relationships

with our classes. When our students know that we care about them as people, not just students,

learning is more productive and authentic. We have to continue to provide spaces for our kids to
thrive, both academically and socially. Duncan-Andrade closes his essay with a call to action for

young people to enter education as a profession. He claims (correctly) that schools need to attract

motivated, socially conscious young teachers to work in their districts. Of course, every school

needs a younger cohort of teachers that can connect more naturally with the students. It is getting

harder and harder to find good candidates, however.

Duncan-Andrade seemed genuinely optimistic about the future when he wrote this in

2009. So much has changed in the past decade, obviously. Most alarming for me, however, is the

lack of people going into education. It’s not hard to see why: low salaries, crumbling school

buildings, lack of administrative support, increasingly antagonistic parents--it is a challenging

time to be a public educator. I experience all of this myself in a relatively well-supported district.

I am curious if, if Duncan-Andrade wrote a follow up in 2021, he would close his essay with a

similarly optimistic outlook. I know that in my classroom, I strive to create a positive

environment for my students to learn and have fun. I can control that. It’s what is out of my

control that leads me to a more cynical outlook in regards to the future of public education.

The readings provided this semester opened my eyes to several new ways of looking at

my profession. The tangible and intangible racism presented in our curriculum and ways of

speaking were especially thought-provoking. Baker-Bell and Pollack theorized that in no

uncertain terms, teachers perpetuate inequitable thoughts and structures just by how they speak

and write. Duncan-Andrade’s essay on the use of genuine hope in the classroom helped to bring

these other ideas into a practical framework for how a genuinely equitable classroom operates.
Works Cited

Terry M Pollack (2012) The Miseducation of a Beginning Teacher: One Educator’s Critical
Reflections on the Function and Power of Deficit Narratives, Multicultural Perspectives, 14:2,
93-98.

April Baker-Bell (2020) Dismantling anti-black linguistic racism in English language arts
classooms: Toward an anti-racist black language pedagogy, Theory Into Practice, 59:1, 8-21

Duncan-Andrade, J. M. (2009). Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in

Concrete (Vol. 79, pp. 181-193). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review.