SRTO....WHAT?

I can say the most interesting thing we've learned so far was the concept of SRTOL. In general this class has opened my eyes wider than I knew they could. I'm realizing that there are invisible narratives everywhere and how each of these invisible narratives play a role in all of these different concepts in our society, especially in our schools. The first stance was the topic itself. The topic of students being able to speak, write and use their primary dialect in their English classes. The second stance being that students shouldn't be able to use their primary dialect and standard English is encouraged and required. Lastly, students a very complicated explanation as to why students should be able to use their primary dialect. I say complicated because of how the piece is written in the writer's primary dialect, which isn't "Standard English."

I never realized this was such a huge issue. Growing up, my fellow classmates and I didn't grow up speaking standard English in school, outside of classes. In Oakland, a good amount of the population are African American. During our breaks, when we hang out outside of school, and after school, we are used to Ebonics. The thing is, although we speak in our primary dialect outside of our classes, we leave that out of our papers, writing assignments, and presentations. You can say we code switch at the right time in place. Before learning about this in class, I just thought that it was common sense to leave the "ghetto" language outside of classroom. It was also common sense that it was English class because we had to speak "proper" English as us Emery High kids would say. It wasn't really required for us to code switch back to standard English when talking to put teachers, but some of us, like myself, chose to and found that it was necessary.