Dr. April-Baker Bell highlights stories and narratives in an urgent call for anti-racist language and literacy instruction.
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In this video, Dr. April Baker Bell raises strong concerns about the treatment of ‘Black language’ in education. Her experiences with her math teacher commenting about the poor grammar and ignorance is a powerful reminder that our standardized English – the language of school, and the language of power – is absolutely reinforced in this this curriculum and is the norm of our school system. So my continued and ongoing questions include, how do we include Black speech in classrooms- without reinforcing the radio linguistic heirarchy of white English over Black English?