Reflections on Ways with Words--overall

Many of the issues that we encounter in Ways with Words parallel what we, as instructors, often observe in our own classroom. Heath writes, "For the children of Roadville and Trackton, school is the first place in which they meet on an extended basis the townspeople's ways of using oral and written language" (p. 265). I observe that this is the case here at IUP as students from various socioeconomic backgrounds interact with one another in various classes. For example, many students from the inner city schools of Philadelphia have different experiences with oral and written language than students from more rural communities, like Indiana, Erie, or Warren. As a result a gap in literacy can clearly be observed, even in classes at IUP. If we were to use Heath's book as a model for an ethnographic inquiry into IUP, I wonder what it would look like.