Warm Up 9-3-08

• What patterns did you see among the Language Investigations you wrote and read?

The patterns I noticed the most were that many people seemed to elicit a closeness and a personal tone within their blogs. Many called on cultural traditions of the family and words and phrases that were passed down among generations and throughout extended family as well. Each writer became the expert in his or her own family language while also being able to relate the ideas and expressions of other families. Each family was different in the words they chose that had significant meaning in their family but each blog was interconnected because all families seem to have a "secret language" of sorts.

• What do these patterns reveal about language and its conventions in family contexts?

These patterns show langauge to be a way that families bond together. They are from their culture, common family experiences, inside jokes, needs and wants of each family to create meaning. Everyone had the ability to write about some significant word or phrase which show that all families seem to operate in the same way of creating a familiar language that is unique to them.

• Thinking about these Language Investigations in conjunction with what you’ve read so far in Lives on the Boundary, what does it mean to be an “insider” in terms of language? What questions and issues do your conclusions raise for you as a future teacher?

Being an "insider" in terms of language means not only that you are familiar with how things are communicated to you on a substantial level, but also that you can trace how that language originated and how to use it in daily life. It is a feeling of a bond and a connection that allows for comfort and further learning experience, i.e. growth within the family. This parrells to Lives on the Boundary because Rose as a student is on the outside for a long time, he is trying to fit in a school but is placed on the "boundary' of education in the vocational program. It is clear when at the end of ch. 2 he finds a teacher who he can really relate to and understand that his level for wanting to read and know things increases greatly. As a teacher it is imporant to make language seem accessible and familiar, like in a family, so that the student is passionate about involved in the process.