Pratt, Arts of the Contact Zone

While writing this text Joanne was attempting to prove the point of if a teacher is stern it might be for the greater good, as she increased her confidence while playing in the orchestra and became what she is today. Without the assistance of Mr. K I don't believe any of the students would have been taught discipline and dedication on their everyday activities in

Ronald Morrish notes that, “we have to teach students how to behave properly because many of them do not learn how to do so at home” (Charles, 2014, p. 72). This means as educators, it then becomes our duty to not only foster a supportive environment, but also teach students about self-control as well; which goes hand-in-hand with Morrish’s phase theory of “Managing Student Choice” (p. 81). Establishing authority is extremely important in this case, meaning that the teacher must be consistent with their disciplinary actions and use this opportunity to produce desirable results. For example, Chris and his teacher can review homework assignments together and go over questions that Chris might struggle

The first thing I will talk about in this book is the positive and negative effects of physical contact with your students. Michie, the main character, was in an incident where he was accused of touching a student inappropriately. Although the truth was revealed that he didn’t do what he was accused of, it shows how physical contact with a student can have a negative impact on a teacher’s career. Even though Michie was merely trying to console a person, children look for attention in any way they can find. This incident nearly cost Michie his job, but at the same time, a big part of teaching is showing the kids you care for them. Michie believes it is hard to care for people if you keep them at arm’s length, and I agree. Physical contact is an

For instance, “Miss Doyle made it a rule never to tolerate interruptions or careless behaviors in her class.”(Choy p.391). Miss Doyle is not tolerating any bad attitude in her class, that’s why she’s being strict to her class for them to respect her and improve the children’s discipline in their self. In addition, during Miss Doyle class, “ in training us, she never hesitated to use her desk ruler repeatedly on our burning backsides, nor was she slow to engage the leather strap on our stinging bare hands” (Choy p. 392). She always want her student to be scared to her so that the student will focus to her and learn and to make themselves discipline in any ways. She is just using the leather strap just to get the students attention in the class. Therefore, Wayson Choy utilizes the classroom as symbolic representation of how Ms. Doyle discipline her

Language, culture, and self are inseparable, as one cannot exist without the other. The structuration of one's consciousness stems from the language that one learns as a child, thus the formation of self is largely out of one’s control. As humans we live to experience, for our native language structures the world at which we inhabit and molds one's very modes of conscious awareness. Simply put, “who we become is not a matter of our own volition” (Encyclopedia of Identity 384), how we perceive and evaluate the world at large is entirely out of our control. Our development consciously is driven by the world we are brought into, ergo the language and culture we are raised with ultimately determines who we become.

The “Arts of the Contact Zone”, an article written by Stanford professor Mary Louise Pratt, discusses many different ideas about culture and communication by utilizing what she calls the literate arts. Pratt explains many terms that she believes are beneficial in gaining a further understanding of a literary piece. Key terms such as, contact zone, autoethnography and transculturation are introduced in her essay. She describes contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”(Pratt 487). The contact zone can be summarized as a space where two groups with different beliefs or ideas intermingle. In the essay, Pratt also describes the literate arts that come out of the contact zone. Literary arts are ways of addressing problems in the contact zone and sometimes make an attempt to resolve the issue that is happening or has happened. Two terms heavily discussed in the essay are autoethnography and transculturation. These are only two of the many literate arts that precipitate out of the contact zone. Pratt defines autoethnography as a “text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them”(Pratt 487). The culture often takes on those stereotypes in some form of literary work and presents it to the dominant culture often trying to change their views or perspectives. Autoethnography is often used as an effective method

     The Arts of the Contact Zone by Mary Louise Pratt opened up a whole new concept for our class. The new term “contact zone” appeared and Pratt defined it as "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today." The idea of the contact zone is intended in part to contrast with ideas of community that trigger much of the thinking about language, communication, and culture.

Mary Louise Pratt wrote the essay “Arts of the Contact Zone” with the purpose of explaining that society would benefit if people were exposed to and understood the concept of “contact zones”. She refers to contact zones as social spaces where cultures meet and clash with each other, usually with one culture being dominant over the other. A person living in a contact zone is exposed to two different cultures, two different languages, and as a result is presented with a struggle in each culture to maintain themselves. From being surrounded by several different cultures, people begin to integrate the concept of transculturation—a process in which subordinate cultures evolve by taking things from dominant, more advanced cultures, and make it

In 1990, the second Modern Language Association Literacy Conference was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the conference Mary Louise Pratt a Stanford Professor delivered a keynote/lecture that revolutionized how people think about their social spaces. She introduced a revolutionary way to think about these social spaces, instead of calling them communities she started calling it the “contact zone”. According to Pratt a “contact zone is a place where cultures meet, clash, and grapple” (Pratt 487). While lecturing her fellow colleagues Pratt argues that our idea of community is strongly utopian. She continues to plead her case by saying that societies often profess, “embodying values like equality fraternity and liberty, but

This teacher provides multiple instances where she is rewarding the students with posticve reinforcment. An example of this is when the teacher provided a type of verable reward to one of the students when she told one of the girls that " you have an amazing peice of artwork you could hang that in a muesume sister." This reward is a postive reward becuase she is postively complimenting the child for her artwork. Another example of this is when the teacher states" o my gash its beautiful." She once again is demonstrating a postive reniforcment of this childs ablity to perform art. She again in this example is providng postive renforcment to the student when she asked " now did you print a little bit on top of here? Oooh, look how suddle and

In our world there are so people that are being overrated, from their skin color, to how they talk or to where they came from or the way they walk, everything from what people wear to where people come from and their ethnic background. These people are looked down on from the rest of society for just being themselves and doing only what they know to do.  For some, it’s wrong if others do not act just like them and they put them down for it. Stereotypes can be described someone of a certain race, religion, gender, nationality, or other groups. You can see that language, gender, and culture (class and race) does relate to power because men’s have more power than women’s, the way you speak, your

According to Mary Louise Pratt’s Arts of the Contact Zone, an autoethnographic text can be defined as a text where the author describes himself or his people using mechanisms provided by others. Such texts are almost always the product of a “contact zone” or a place where cultures meet and clash. In other words, autoethnographic texts are those in

Pratt uses many examples. She talks about her kids as examples. On page 326 she said, “when speakers are from different classes or cultures, or one party is exercising authority and another is submitting to it or questioning is.” One of the examples she uses is a classroom. In a classroom you are with people from many different backgrounds. While being a classroom many different cultures can mesh together.

needs are met and they feel as if they are respected by the teacher. Mutual respect is once again

There are three teachers in the classroom, one does reading/lesson circle with a small group of students, another does arts and crafts, and one of them circulates throughout the room helping students with their work-plans. The teacher that circulates around the room all the time appears to be the head teacher and when a conflict arises she is the one to mediate it. The way that the teachers speak with the children is as if they are equals, they aren’t talked down to and the students give the teachers complete respect.