What I Hold Close to my Heart
Treasures are things or memories that I care for deeply and that I hold close to my heart. My family came from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Germany and they all settled in the Canadian prairies. My father also told me that we are also descended from the Roma people and perhaps this is why I have moved around so much.
My personal treasure has to be my embroidery bag that I inherited from my grandmother Edith Layland. She taught me how to embroider when I was a child and I have continued to embroider throughout my life. My grandmother taught me that women could create beautiful things from nothing to decorate a home. I have a strong image of a community of women at quilting bees in the kitchen of my grandparent’s farm in rural Manitoba. My mom told me that lots of hot tea and cookies were consumed and much lively conversation took the chill off the winter afternoons. Women could talk openly about their feelings in this uniquely feminine space. I have one of the quilts that my grandmother did not finish and I hope to finish it someday soon so that her memory will live on. I am teaching my daughter to embroider and I hope that some day she will teach her daughter.
My family treasure has to be the china platters and silverware that have supported so many family dinners. We serve turkey for Thanksgiving, ham for Easter and other food for birthdays on the platters and they are lovingly passed around the table each holiday. Before family dinners, we polish the silverware that has been passed down to each new generation and I can imagine all the people who have cradled a fork in their hand while laughing, crying, or arguing around the table. Many of my family were farmers and family dinners are a celebration of the people who produce the food that sustains us.
My cultural treasure is the Potluck Dinner. The idea that everyone can bring a dish to a party or a dinner and share food together speaks to how my prairie upbringing is all about community. I have been to many amazing Potluck Dinners in United Church basements, in campgrounds, at my parents’ house and with friends. Every one brings what they can and we share food and fellowship with each other. Potluck dinners at the church and at my parents’ house are always blessed in prayer before we eat and then the consumption begins. There is always a kind soul who puts out more food as needed and a whole bunch of people join together at the end of the meal to wash the dishes. I love the culinary cooperation of Potluck Dinners so much I even had one organized by my mom, aunties and Mexican mother-in-law for my wedding.
We must work to create classrooms where there is a discourse of possibility and hope... where we are much more attentive to using the text of students' lives in our work.
-Enid Lee
Enid Lee's quote evokes my idea of an ideal classroom where the focus is using the life "text" of each student for learning. There have been a universe of cultural perspectives this week and even my cultural junkie head is spinning. Again and again, I come back to the idea of questioning and inquiring instead of automatically forming assumptions and judgments. However, we are culturally hard wired to make judgments based on our cultural lenses that we inherited. It is challenging as the dominant culture, white, English speaking, middle class, educated to re-calibrate our cultural lenses to see the world the way others do.
I had a student from China who sobbed for an hour in my class when her mark in Spanish 11 went from 98% to 96.8%. I immediately thought give your head a shake but I needed to delve deeper into her reaction. The student had incredible parental pressure to do well in school and her grade would be part of the calculation for applications to universities and applications for bursaries and awards. I was looking at the big picture of life but she was overwhelmed by the stress of getting a bursary so that she would be able to go to university. If you have no relationship with the student then you do not see what is shaping the student. A parent teacher interview with one student might seem like a casual affair of just checking in to see how their son or daughter is doing in the course but an interview with the parents of the Chinese student was a serious and formal affair. I thought this student would crack under all of this pressure so I helped her to have some perspective and to schedule some fun into her hectic schedule.
If expectations and behaviors are culture specific, there is be a clash of cultures as
we ask students to transform themselves from being information "parrots" to become information "creators" and to advocate for their own learning. What happens when two different cultures come together? It reminds me of the Borg from Star Trek, "You must be assimilated". As the data-driven learning culture meets the creative thinking learning culture heads are going to roll. But are we really that creative thinking based in North America? Faced with provincial exam pressures, I have watched creative teachers transform into "Teach to the Exam" robots!
When students are required to do cooperative activities all students struggle as we expect them to magically work together when we give them no scaffolding to hold on to. This challenge of sharing information is even harder for some ESL students I have taught who keep their information and ideas close to their chest to get their "A". Some ESL students hate group work as they are used to the parrot method of teaching. The more that I unveil the complexities of ESL learners in this course and throughout my career; it is a miracle that students do not run screaming from the building everyday. The gestures of clenched fists may be from pure frustration and confusion.
We need to choose a variety of teaching strategies to need the multifaceted needs of all the learners in the room. The teacher sets the learning atmosphere in the room and she has the power to shape the culture of a classroom that promotes cooperation and mutual support. The challenge is showing students both ESL and monolingual that we are not just in the classroom to get a mark but to learn how to work together. Our attempts to do this are fraught with challenges as our Western tendencies of direct communication, assertiveness, and disclosure can come into direct conflict with other cultural beliefs. At least by being aware of some of the differences can inform and enrich our teaching and meet the needs of all of our students.
Week 6: Five Continua
Most of my personal ratings did not move much after the reading but the readings made me realize how much I change or modify my behavior based on the circumstance and cultural group I am in. I worked for so many years overseas that I had to learn to “fit in” as much as I could to get things done.
assertiveness <---X-------------> compliance
I would have to say that I am much more assertive than compliant however this totally depends on the circumstance that I am in. If I am working on a committee and we are trying to work on consensus then I am much more compliant but if I want to get my point across to a student who is being disrespectful then I am much more assertive. I also change when I am with family in Mexico and I become one of la familia and I go along more with the crowd.
dominance <-----x--------------> submission
I
n Canada, I am definitely more in the dominant side of things. I like to get things done and others call on me for leadership. My cultural awakening as a feminist allowed me to see my power as a woman but my “assertiveness” is sometimes seen as by others as something negative. Sometimes women in other cultures are viewed as others as being submissive but they are quite the opposite. I have seen many women in macho societies using their intelligence in creative ways to get what they want done. My mother in law in Mexico runs her household finances and the finances of the businesses of her son but when someone sees her serve her husband food before she eats she might be viewed as submissive. Let me tell you that she is the least submissive person I know.
disclosure <---------x----------> privacy
I definitely rate myself in the middle. If I feel like I can trust the person that I am talking to then I will disclose more but overall I am quite a private person. I disclose a bit more of myself to my students because I want to show them that I am a human being and to get to know me. There are many parts of me that people will never get to see unless they become close friends or family. I have many acquaintances but a few close friends. The readings made me think of North American TV programs like Jerry Springer and Oprah were people bare their souls for others to see. I can see these programs and Canadian classrooms now more through immigrant children’s eyes where they are asked to show parts of themselves that they consider to be “private” and only discussed with close family.
direct communication <--x-------> indirect communication
I am usually very direct in my communication and I do not fear dealing with conflict and misunderstandings. However, I am getting better at “reading the room” and adapting my communication to my audience. I can be quite diplomatic at times but sometimes I wish we could just talk more openly to each other. In my first years in Latin America, I used to get so frustrated with everyone talking around a subject but I soon realized the cultural politics at work in the room. Conflicts that come up in communication sometimes look like the fun mirrors in the PNE when we find each other saying, “Did he really mean that or what is he trying to say?” I am so intrigued about how people communicate and I loved in the reading how we fall into traps on misunderstandings when we judge others instead of looking a bit deeper.
flexible time <----x--------------> time as commodity
Oh I fear that I am starting to sound like a cultural chameleon but the clock controls me at work and getting my daughter to soccer or dance but in my home we exist in Latino time. My sister calls it being caught in the “Suarez family vortex”. Relationships are held more important than the clock and if we are talking together at home then we often arrive “late” in the North American idea of being late. Things are more fluid at home and things just organically happen. When I am with Mexican family members then time as a commodity is thrown out the window. Things get done and we all have clear work schedules but time is more flexible and I have never heard people complaining about not having time to do things because they make time. Family get-togethers happen on the spur of the moment and people spend more time together sharing stories and chisme/gossip. This Latino idea of flexible time has also influenced my way of being in my job as I always have a moment to share a conversation in my office with my colleagues and students. I probably could get more work done if I did not do this but my job would be way less fun.
Learning Styles:
I believe that learning styles have a great deal to do with our ability to learn. The challenge is how to address the diversity of learning styles in our classrooms. I agree with others that as teachers we need to present information in a variety of ways. The message also sometimes chooses the medium. I would not give notes to students if I want to challenge them with new ideas. Film, music, art or photography along with text communicates ideas with more impact then just notes on an overhead. I talk a lot about learning in my classroom and now as a Teacher Librarian I work with teachers to help them present information in a myriad of ways. How do we educate youth who are used to multi-tasking and creating original content on a variety of technology? This generation’s brains are being wired differently than former generations and this is already having an impact on learning styles. The new technologies of web2.0 applications on hand held devices such as ipods, cell phones, laptops, and video cams give teachers a variety of ways to present information. ESL learners can find much content on the internet to augment their learning and teachers can use wikis to provide resources to support the learning that is happening in the classroom. However, content needs to be at the centre of the use of technology and perhaps technology is one way of giving students choice on how to learn.
Again, I must return to the reality of teaching and how we can possibly meet everyone’s needs. I think of it like a multicultural buffet. If you just eat mash potatoes all the time you will get stagnant. This week the readings were useful to be aware again of my learning style and to see how it shapes and/or limits my teaching style. The more that I learn about learning styles helps me to become a better teacher. I am mostly a visual learner but I really enjoy hands on task to make learning more concrete through experience. However, I can’t let my learning style shape everything I do as a educator as I have to meet the needs of others. My job as a teacher librarian is to introduce teachers to strategies on how to meet the diversity of students’ learning styles. Some teachers are flexible and open and some others are more set in their ways.
However what do you do if your personal learning style clashes with your cultural upbringing and/or where you find yourself now? It is a big culture shift for immigrant children to come into a Canadian classroom and to be expected to jump into the conversation when dissension, creativity and original ideas are encouraged. First of all, students need to discover their own learning style either through experimentation or a survey like we took this week. Hopefully, in a good high school environment a student will find a variety of teaching styles in all their teachers and they will learn how to adapt material to their own style. I took Biology 100 at UBC a century ago and I created mini-dramas with hand puppets and went for walks in the woods to experience flora and fauna to get through the course. I tell a lot of stories about learning for students to get the idea that they can be advocates for their own learning and that the process is often messy.
Since a small percentage of the message that we give to others is through our spoken word then we will fall into a morass of misunderstandings if we do not examine how we speak volumes with our non verbal communication and co-verbal behavior. I spent some time observing students and staff this week and I would like to marry these observations with my years as a student at the school of cross cultural communication. First of all, I have to admit that I often feel like an anthropologist observing people because I have since I was a child felt like an outsider. Being the “fat” girl who moved often from province to province gave me that unique position of being on the outskirts of communities. As a Spanish teacher, I always taught about language and culture simultaneously as I could not teach students on how to greet each other with out addressing culturally differences of proxemics, haptics, time, kinesics and paralanguage. Often monolingual students never have a chance to explore how they communicate unless they travel with their families, study a second language, or have a teacher who introduces them to complex process of communication. Immigrant students do not have the luxury of going back home after a 2-week holiday as they are often here for life.
In the last couple years, I have started to hear students referring to how someone is too far into their “personal bubble”. Probably, a movie or TV program used this to set up for a joke but now students are aware that they have a “personal bubble”. With the reality now of larger classes, there is a lack of space in classrooms. Teenagers are really big and they struggle to get around desks and bookcases to get up to the teacher’s desk to hand in work or to ask a question. Students are reacting negatively to the “lack” of space and it causes conflict in classroom. My friend Julia teaches in a high school in Lima, Peru with 40-50 students to a room so I guess it is a matter of context. Canadians do have bigger personal bubbles than Peruvians so conflicts arise when a student can get by another student or if a student has no room to work on a desk built for fewer students. One of my colleagues talks to everyone way too close for a Canadian comfortable level and it is interesting so many people comment about it. She is perceived as being “way too intense” and “in your face”. Well, she is in your face because she is very close to you! Another teacher in the school always carries a clipboard that she holds horizontally in order to create some space between her and this teacher. I think I will bring it up to her in the context of teaching her ESL students about proxemics.
When I came back to Canada after 3 years in Ecuador, one of my friends put her hands on my chest and pushed me back an arm length away from her and said to me, “OK! That is better. You were way too close”. I had not adjusted the distance between others and myself to the Canadian context as I was still in the Ecuadorian personal bubble mode. Now my friend was comfortable enough with me to physically move me but usually people just make mental judgments about others instead of questioning why people act the way that they do. Over the years, I have gotten better at living bi-culturally and I automatically shift my mode of communication when I get off the plane in Mexico or when I get home to my family each night.
Non-verbal communication and co-verbal behavior are part of the unwritten rules of a culture and they are often brought up in conversation when there is a perceived “violation” of the way of doing things. So how can I as a teacher bring immigrant students into the “cultural loop”? Obviously we need to teach about non-verbal communication and co-verbal behavior as we teach about English but how can we get students to critically look at their communication styles and what it takes to adapt to Canadian culture? Perhaps we need to survey students in their home language and elicit from them their questions or comments about Canadian culture and communication. Place the questions in a box and pull one each week to openly discuss as a class. This way, students can ask questions anonymously and they can honestly ask the questions that are potentially embarrassing. Invite other staff members or students into the class to give their feedback or ideas about the questions. These conversations perhaps will be the forum inter-cultural understanding. ESL students could also ask the questions to students in the hallways and video their responses. I am using my Flip camera with my students and they love using it to to make mini-movies and videocasts. There are a lot of ESL teachers using video to help ESL students learn more effectively and ESL students could make mini-videos about an aspect of non-verbal communication or co-verbal behavior and the teacher could make up a bank of these videos to show future students.
Example questions:
- Why do Canadians always wait for the other person to stop talking before they add something?
- Why do Canadians get uncomfortable if I sit beside them on the bus?
- Why do other students get mad if I budge in front of them in line for the cafeteria?
I also think we need to educate teachers about the communication myths about ESL students. Perhaps at my school we will do a workshop at a professional day and place teachers in a language class like the one in the video Listen with Your Heart. Afterwards, we can debrief the experience by taking about non-verbal communication and co-verbal behavior and brainstorm strategies to talk about communication in the classroom. It is a challenge to see the messages we are giving out to our students, as we can’t watch ourselves as we communicate but we can learn more about the complexities of communication and become better educators.
