The Skillful Teacher

part of this country for centuries but rarely seen as college-level
material, Indigenous peoples that traditionally have been excluded
from higher education, students for whom English is a second or
third foreign language—all are now present in college classrooms
in ever greater numbers. Sometimes students born and raised here
may not speak what many teachers consider standard English.
For example, in California the Oakland School Board claimed
Ebonics—“the language of West African, Caribbean, and U.S.
slave descendants of Niger-Congo African origin” (Smith, 1998)—
as the home language of inner-city African American students. In
college classrooms in my own twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul,
Hmong students sit next to Somalis, who sit next to Ukrainian stu-
dents, who sit next to the children of Mexican migrant workers,
who sit next to African American learners, who intermingle with
Tribal and Indigenous people, who learn alongside working-class
White Minnesotans—and all these students are the first in their
families to go to college. Sometimes tribal and ethnic conflicts pres-
ent in the homelands of learners reemerge in college classrooms.
And, of course, class differences also become apparent among
all students, including those of color. For example, Guy (2004)
notes how a class-based conflict develops amongst African Amer-
ican students attending GED programs “between students who see
themselves as members of the hip hop culture and those who
do not” (p. 52).
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As we can see, then, the twin impulses of democracy and 
capitalism—of trying to widen student access while simultaneously
attracting as many paying customers as possible in an era of brutal
budget cuts—have combined to present contemporary college
teachers with incredible challenges. Not only are we having to
teach ever larger classes that contain ever greater diversities, we are
also required to do this in a system that assumes the essential homo-
geneity of teaching and learning. Colleges are run on predetermined
timetables, with curricula neatly sequenced and a certain amount
of time deemed appropriate to cover the required content or skill
sets. Woe betide the teacher who tries to buck this trend by slow-
ing down, allowing more individualized instruction, or taking the
time to develop her own teaching materials that are grounded in
students’ experiences, rather than using those prescribed by licens-
ing boards or superiors.