Week 3

I work in a predominantly white female school, with most of them being from middle class environments.  As black teacher, it is very difficult to really be myself without feeling like I can truly let my “hair down”.  I am the only black teacher and the other two blacks are teacher assistants.  This is really not an unusual setting for me, because I was used to being the only black in elementary, middle, and high school in many of my classes.  It doesn’t bother me, but it taught me to “code switch”.  Today, I still do it.  “Code switching and style switching are types of accommodations in which communicators change their regular language and slang, as well as their tonality, pitch, rhythm, and inflection, to fit into a particular group” (O’Hair & Wiemann, p. 121, 2012).  The purpose for my doing it is that I didn’t want other people thinking that I was uneducated or didn’t know what I was talking about, just because I used a certain word in the wrong context or didn’t pronounce the “t” at the end of a word.  I am much more relaxed when I am not code switching, but it is something that I think more people should do to get a job, look better while on a job, and make others see who you are on the inside.  I also communicate differently with others by saying things that are normal in their language or culture.  I often times do this with my Hispanic families by throwing in a Spanish word every now and then.