Race, Language, and the Classroom: Facing Classroom Differences

The American school system is comprised of mostly middle-class Caucasian teachers who are unilingual English speakers. Fortunately, those numbers are beginning to change due to persons of other races teaching in public school systems, but just as those numbers are changing so are the numbers of students of diverse races in the classroom. As America continues to become a more diverse nation, so will its classrooms. While many Caucasian teachers are doing a wonderful job at educating all students, language and race still play a major role in the classroom. Language is not just the way in which a person communicates; it is a key element in an individual’s culture and identity, and it uniquely shapes the way people see the world and themselves. If Standard English is considered the only way to communicate in the classroom, then we eradicate the transferring of culture, history, identity, and character because languages and language variations are what help us to know about different groups of people. Language and race in the classroom have the ultimate ability to affect student identity, classroom participation, teacher and student relationships, and a student’s ability to interact with multiple cultures