Little Letters, Heavy Lessons: A Black Mother's Critique of a “Simple” Phonics Lesson and the Myths of Neutral Instruction

ABSTRACT

Racialized multilingual children need their cultural and linguistic sophistication to be seen and heard in their classrooms. Drawing from my daughter's first grade educational experiences, this article explores how the teaching of a popular phonics‐based sorting lesson centered around the pronunciation of the inflectional suffix “‐ed” became an unintentional site of anti‐Blackness, even in a school that purported to center and celebrate linguistic diversity and social justice. Using a BlackCrit analysis of the lesson and a Black feminist Motherwork reflection on my conversations with my daughter's teachers, I highlight how White Mainstream English was foregrounded in the teaching, assessment, and justification of the lesson. I suggest approaches to teaching elementary‐aged children the dynamic nature of the pronunciation of the inflectional suffix “‐ed” that celebrate and justly center the use of Black languages.