Lisa Delpit facts for kids

Lisa D. Delpit is an American expert in education, a researcher, and an author. She used to lead the Center for Urban Educational Excellence at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. She also held important teaching positions at Georgia State University and Southern University and A&M College. Lisa Delpit won a special award called the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship for her work on how schools and communities connect, and how people from different cultures communicate.

Early Life and Education

Lisa Delpit grew up in a part of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, called "Old South Baton Rouge." Her family's house was right next to a community restaurant, the "Chicken Shack," which her father started with very little money. She spent a lot of time helping her father, Thomas Delpit, in the kitchen.

Lisa remembers a time in Baton Rouge when things were very different. Her mother couldn't even try on a hat in a department store because of her race. Black children and white children had to go to separate schools. When her father passed away at age seven, she remembers the hospital had a separate area for black patients.

She also remembers her teachers and nuns trying to make her speak "standard English," even though she spoke "black English" at home. She learned a lot about grammar but didn't write long stories until high school. Lisa Delpit was one of the first black students to attend St. Anthony's High School, a Catholic school that used to be only for white students.

After high school, Lisa went to Antioch College in Ohio. It was known for its new and different ideas about education. After getting her degree, she was excited to use these new teaching methods in her first job at an elementary school in Philadelphia. She noticed that her teaching methods worked well for her white students, but her black students learned much slower.

This made her think deeply about teaching. When she went to Harvard Graduate School of Education for her master's and doctoral degrees, she learned how important it was for students to write about things that mattered to them. Later, she received a special scholarship that allowed her to work in Papua New Guinea for about a year, where she learned even more about culture and learning.

As a scholar, she worked on important committees about black education. As a teacher and professor, she taught at Georgia State University, Florida International University College of Education, and Southern University and A&M College.

Lisa Delpit's research mainly focuses on how young children learn language and reading. She also studies issues about race and how minority groups get access to education. She started the National Coalition for Quality Education in New Orleans. She also helped organize the Conference on Education for Liberation at Georgia State University.

Lisa Delpit has won many awards for her work in teaching and improving education in cities and for diverse groups of students. In 1990, she was the only educator to win the MacArthur award, often called the "Genius" award. Other awards include the Harvard University Graduate School of Education Alumni Award in 1993, the American Educational Research Association Cattell Award in 1994, the Sunny Days award from Sesame Street Productions in 1998, and the Kappa Delta Phi Laureate Award in 2001 for her work with teachers.

Important Ideas in Her Work

Helping Students Access the "Culture of Power"

In one of her most famous books, The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children, Lisa Delpit talks about something she calls the "culture of power." This means there are certain ways of speaking, writing, and behaving that are common among people who have power in society. She believes that schools need to teach all children, especially black children, these "rules" so they can succeed.

She explains that:

• Power is used in classrooms.
• There are rules for being part of this "culture of power."
• These rules often come from the culture of those who already have power.
• Understanding these rules is key to gaining power.
• People within this "culture of power" might not even realize it exists.

Lisa Delpit emphasizes that teachers, no matter their background, need to communicate well with black students. She says that teachers should not be the only experts in the classroom. Students should also be able to share what they know. She believes that simply telling students what to do is not enough. Teachers should use different ways of teaching that let students have a say in their own learning.

Preparing Teachers for Different Cultures and Languages

In her book Lessons from Teachers, Lisa Delpit stresses that teachers in city schools need to change how they teach. She suggests several important ideas:

• Teach more, not less, to children from poorer backgrounds.
• Make sure children learn the skills and ways of thinking they need to succeed in American society.
• Connect what students learn in school to their own lives and experiences from home.
• Recognize and respect students' home cultures.

She believes these ideas can help teachers make big changes in education. They can help fight against negative ideas about students of color in the American school system.

Being Open-minded and Fair to Everyone

In Educators as "Seed People" Growing a New Future, Lisa Delpit talks about how important it is for educators to have positive attitudes toward students of color. She says that we should look beyond just test scores and strict teaching plans. Instead, we should create exciting and challenging lessons that are based on students' cultural, intellectual, and historical backgrounds. She believes that educators can learn a lot from older African-American schools that celebrated black intelligence and motivated students to achieve.

Teaching "Other People's Children"

In "Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom," Lisa Delpit discusses how some teaching methods might put non-white students at a disadvantage. She talks about how some schools tried to raise test scores by cutting things like field trips and arts classes. She also highlights the importance of teaching all students different ways of speaking and writing, including the dominant language forms, so they have more options. This book encourages a wider conversation about education.

"Multiplication is for White People"

Lisa Delpit wrote a book with this title to discuss how African American children might not reach their full potential. She explains that this can happen because of a "deeply ingrained bias" in society that sometimes links being black with being less capable. She wants everyone to recognize the brilliance in all children.

Awards

• Recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship - GSU (1990)
• Award-winning author of Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, The Skin We Speak and The Real Ebonics Debate
  • Winner of an American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Award and Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic book award, and voted one of Teacher Magazine's "great books"
• Harvard University Graduate School of Education 1993 Alumni Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education
• 1994 American Educational Research Association Cattell Award for Outstanding Early Career Achievement
• 1998 the Sunny Days Award from Sesame Street Productions
• 2001 Kappa Delta Phi Laureate Award for her contribution to the education of teachers.
• 2002 AACTE Advocate of Justice Award
• 2003 Antioch College Horace Mann Humanity Award
• 2006 Martin Luther King Service Award from Florida International University

Selected Works

• Delpit, L. D., & Kemelfield, G. (1985). An evaluation of the viles tok ples skul scheme in the North Solomon's Province. Statistics, 15(4), 168–170.
• Delpit, L. (1986). Skills and other dilemmas of a progressive black educator. Harvard Educational Review, 56(4), 379–386.
• Delpit, L. D. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280–299.
• Delpit, L. (1990). Language diversity and learning. In S. Hynds & D.L. Rubin (Eds.), Perspectives on Talk and Learning (pp. 247–266). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
• Delpit, L. D. (1992). Acquisition of literate discourse. Bowing before the master? Theory Into Practice, XXXI(4), 296–302.
• Delpit, L. D. (1992). Education in a multicultural society: Our future's greatest challenge. The Journal of Negro Education, 61(3), 237–249.
• Delpit, L. (1994). Seeing color: A review of White teacher. In B. Bigelow, L. Christensen, S. Karp, B. Miner, & B. Parkerson (Eds.), Rethinking our classrooms: Teaching for equity and justice (pp. 130–131). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
• Delpit, L. (1995). Teachers, culture, and power: An interview with Lisa Delpit. In D. Levine, R. Lowe, B. Peterson & R. Tenorio (Eds.), Rethinking schools: An agenda for change, (pp. 136–147). New York, NY: The New Press.
• Delpit, Lisa. (1995). Other People's Children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York, NY: The New Press.
• Delpit, L & Perry, T. (1998). The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children (Eds.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Delpit, L. & Dowdy, J. K. (2002). The Skin That we Speak: Thoughts on language and culture in the classroom (Eds.). New York, NY: The New Press.
• Delpit, L. D., & White-Bradley, P. (2003). "Educating or imprisoning the spirit: Lessons from ancient Egypt." Theory into Practice, 42(4), 283–288.
• Delpit, L.D. (2006). "Lessons from teachers." Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 220–231.
• Delpit, L. D. (2012). Multiplication is for White People: Raising expectations for other people's children The New Press.
• "Lisa Delpit Says Teachers Must Value Students' Cultural Strengths." Education Week, 24 Feb. 2019.