Ebonomics - Masters Smasters

After a nice winter break from my master program classes, I am back at it again. My new class began on January 17. I am currently taking a special education class, Students with Linguistic Disabilities. For a masters program in differentiated instruction, I am learning more about special education rather than the entire spectrum of gifted and talented children and"regular" children. I thought the whole goal of differentiated instruction was to be able to teach all children of all levels. Not the case at CSP or I have been seriously misinformed! Apparently Carol Ann Tomlinson is wrong!

Back to my point, I am currently enrolled in a linguistic class. It is taught by an African American female professor. The students in my cohort are all white, suburban teachers. I am building background knowledge, for you, the reader. So our assignment last class was to read an article entitled, "Ebonics, a dialect of American English." Our professor quickly hands out the article at the end of class and asks us to read it and be prepared to discuss it.

Being the studious person I am, I read the article, and even highlighted and marked text. We get to class and begin discussing the article. My professor (let me remind you of the above background information), asks us what we think about the "Ebonomics" article. We were all dumbfounded. Perhaps she gave us the wrong article because we read about ebonics not ebonomics. It turns out, in a linguistic class taught by an African American professor, that ebonics is pronounced EBONOMICS! I used my decoding skills I learned in this class and I still can't figure out how you get ebonomics. It must be due to the fact that I am white and racists (thanks Carolyn O'Grady!).

Oh, I hope this masters degree proves that I learned something!