Discourse Community

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Education may be the mold of our future, but the mold behind education is teachers. Behind all intelligent students lays a common factor, teachers. This paper will be focused on the discourse community which lays within the walls of James Bowie Elementary in Richardson, Texas. From interviews and observations to external research, I have been able to find and understand the most important aspect of this chosen community, communication. Communication is a vital role in this community because not only is it the way that they communicate with their peers, but when teachers communicate with each other they are showing their students how to do it. To begin, I brainstormed about my knowledge of this community. From the time I was a child to now, …show more content…

The observations I did in Lauren Lechlitner’s classroom prior to reading Swales gave me an insight on this characteristic. What I concluded after observing Mrs. Lechlitner for fifteen hours was that the means teachers communicate through is mostly emails and text messaging with phone calls for more dire instances and newsletters for parents. I was told that when speaking about a specific student to never talk about it aloud, so you can reference the email or text at a later date, but most importantly to stray away from breaching confidentiality. Referencing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), teachers cannot “sent students grades and other non-directory information via e-mail – if parents ask, pick up the phone instead,” (Geronimo). Although I had an abundance of observation hours, I still had many questions about communication to be answered. With that, I contacted Michael Tibbets, a previous third-grade teacher at James Bowie and current curriculum coordinator for the school. She said, “our organizational culture of communication is primarily email driven though I also communicate via phone, which is my preferred method,” (Tibbets). Ms. Tibbets then follows saying, “communication with parents [is] through weekly school publications, phone calls, in person conferencing, and automated notification/update systems,” …show more content…

He states that “in addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired a specific lexis” (Swales). While I was observing Mrs. Lechlitner’s class I was instructed to take very detailed notes. After thoroughly reading through those and Ms. Tibbets’ interview answers, I still was not able to come to a concrete determination that teachers have a specific lexis. While they may not use a specific set of words, in an elementary school you can not speak like you would in a high school. I did external research finding that teachers “use a lot of procedural and control talk…because he or she introduces new curriculum topics”; however, I was still unable to find anything that led me to believe my chosen discourse community participated in a specific lexis (Seifert). Mrs. Lechlitner tended to use a different tone with her students versus with her peers and Ms. Tibbets stated in her interview that when speaking to students you talk in a way that you would not to your coworkers. Even though I was not able to find specific words or phrases that these James Bowie teachers use, I did conclude that they spoke in a “child talk” when they were referring to their students. Since a specific lexis was not found, I brainstormed a couple different ways teachers communicate with each other that is special to their community. I found that at James Bowie lesson planning and using it as a reference during

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Discourse Community