Influencing Learners Realities and Identities

If there is one thing that has worked wonders for me in my classroom, it is the conversations and talks I have with my learners. We cannot overemphasise the power of our words and how the words we choose to use on a child can alter the child's behaviour or actions. I once had a male student who enjoyed bullying his female classmates. It all changed when I offered him friendship and told him my friends don't bully. I watched him literally struggle for a long while trying to keep up with that identity that he would literally take a quick look at me whenever he's tempted to hit another girl, then stops.

Language, then, is not merely representational (though it is that); it is also constitutive. It actually creates realities and invites identities. Saying, "You are so smart" is different from saying, "You are so thoughtful." The phrases invite different views of who I am, and how a person like me behaves. In a classroom, the phrases invite others to view and interact with me differently... Language works to position people in relation to one another.

... The teacher can position children as competitiors or collaborators, and themselves as referees, resources, or judges, or in many other arrangements. A teacher's choice of words, phrases, metaphors, and interaction sequences invokes and assumes these and other ways of being a self and being together in the classroom. [Page 9]

In quick reference to my last review, the responses and identities portrayed by your students reveal to a significant extent your history of language use in the classroom.

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