Academic Code Switching

There is a time for everything. Knowing when the time is right is one of the most powerful pieces of knowledge we can help students learn, practice and experience. Often we talk about social code switching, having one set of behaviors for church or our family gatherings, and another for friends and school. At school, students know they are supposed to be learning, that they are supposed to follow the rules and act a certain way but the idea that school is a place of business is not part of our society. Yet those who insist that schools and the teachers within them should be accountable understand them to be a place of business and if the business is not making a profit then it fails. After watching ACE Leadership students over the last three years I have come to realize that as students begin to see their school as a place of business, they engage differently. Those students that can move from hanging out with friends during lunch, to a tall posture and a hand shake when a guest walks by are the ones who have discovered the power of code switching in social situations. I have begun to think about academic code switching separate from social code switching. I think learning how to do this is just as powerful and much more difficult to realize.

At ACE Leadership, we teach everything through the lens of real design and build projects. Students are not assigned to classes, they are assigned projects and they work on two projects a trimester. I watch students do math, read text, practice critical thinking skills and problem solve at levels their standardized test scores say they are unable to perform. This observation has fueled my passion for the work I do for a long time, but yesterday is the first time I named it. My entire career I have emphasized the generalization of skills in my practice; the skill of being able to learn something and apply it to other situations in the future. I think this makes sense for young learners but as I watch my teen and young adult learners there is something else, something more powerful happening. Those that feel successful, that perform much higher than they test, are beginning to make the distinction between academic behavior in different contexts. The students who are confident in their skill and understand that it looks different in different situations are most successful; they do well on performance and standardized assessments. However, those students who are confident in their skill, but lose confidence when they see the skill required in different contexts have not yet realized their power to code switch academically. Code switching is not about conformity, it’s not about doing as you are told and losing your individuality. It’s about appreciating your own ability to read a situation, understand the norms expected in the situation and having the confidence to engage to the extent you choose to.