Lisa Delpit is a progressive African American educator who obviously had a rude awakening.

She taught at a public school on the border between a low income minority area and a higher income

white area. She is surrounded by other white progressive teachers except for the older African

American teachers who are still teaching the students in a traditional manner. Its quite a shock to

Delpit when, using her progressive methods her white students excell and her black students are

almost completely non-responsive. The really sad and startling thing is that you feel her shock with

her, her almost stunned reaction to her own failure.

How does something like this happen? The older, black teachers claim that the black students

need skills, not fluency. Perhaps coming from a less supportive home life the black students are

deficient in their base skills? In her desperation, Delpit feels herself falling into traditional teaching

methods in order to reach them. You feel her desperation at trying to make her progressive

methods work for her black students. You understand her frustration at trying to do something

better for her students, all her students.

Personally, I would like to know what happened to Delpit. Clearly she is a academic now and

no longer works in the classroom. But I would be most interested to know how her opinion has

changed over the years. Does she see things differently now or does she use her story as a teaching

tool for new teachers? I would hope both. Maybe young teachers can learn the main lesson of this

story which seems to be... stay open, to your students, to new ideas, to old ideas even! Mostly just

keep an open mind to what is best for your students, their needs and how you can meet them.

Surely if you keep to that, no matter what the color of your students, you'll be a successful educator.