Blog #5

A MOOK... I like the idea of reaching out beyond the classroom, but I am daunted by the amount of work this would entail. I have just been doing research on a fairly narrow aspect of writing race (aimed at teachers - how do writing teachers reach students with different ethnic backgrounds? is it important to share a cultural background with the majority of your students? how much should writing teachers focus on race/ethnicity?) and I really feel I would need a more thorough grounding on the theoretical and practical reality of race and writing. I am definitely still in the learning phase of this project, and I don't know if I am even finding any of the resources that everyone already knows about. I, at least, would feel extremely self-conscious pretending I was capable of creating a MOOK on this topic (or maybe any topic?)

Regarding my research for teachers, I have stumbled across some good resources. I have been re-reading a book called Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire and it has a lot of parallels to the movie Freedom Writers. While it is encouraging to find these positive examples of reaching at-risk students, (sometimes of the same ethnic group as the teacher and sometimes not), it is also discouraging to me because these examples show teachers who have sacrificed almost every other part of their lives to reach their students. Above all, the lesson is that it is not easy for anyone to reach at-risk students and teachers are often left to fight the powers-that-be (administrators, standardized test producers, big business, government bureaucrats)--the very forces that should be helping teachers help students. This fact is discussed in "This is Not a Test" when a math teacher in Washington Heights provides a narrative on how schools can serve the needs of all children. but how it is teachers working against the system to make it happen.

I am still reading an old, but interesting to me, article called "The (In) Visibility of the Persona(al) in Academe." This article discusses the need to provide relevant, multi-cultural resources to all students. But she also narrates her struggle with finding literature for a composition class after dealing with an episode of anti-Semitism in one of her classes. The author is Jewish and she said she had no trouble selecting reading assignments that reflected a wide range of cultures, but she struggled with finding literature to describe the Jewish experience. She said that she "became hypersensitive to references to Jews in literary works by writers who are not Jewish" and she further struggled with any negative depictions of Jews in literature. Later, she said that she learned to read literature as literature, instead of a representation of an entire race of people. Furthermore, she said that sometimes it takes someone with more distance from an experience to show it in another light. I thought it was a different take on multicultural discussions--the author was stressing that literature is a work of art and it requires an open-minded reader to see it from all different perspectives. Maybe this is just a rationalization for more inclusion and less exclusion?

Blog #4

Why do we need to have these conversations about race?
I guess because conversation should help us hear and understand other people with backgrounds and views different from our own. Conversation should ideally be a place where both sides are able to be heard, not just a place where one agenda overshadows any other.
 What can we do to shift the tides towards justice and change?
Idk. It seems that history repeats itself over and over and people tend to have very short attention spans.
How can we connect to make our projects matter in the world outside our classroom?
It seems that twitter and blogging are a way to connect with people outside our classroom, although there are so many tweets and so many blogs, it is hard  to be sure that it will matter in the long-term. I am sorry...I am just so cynical....

Blog #3 (skits, etc.)

What will I bring to our presentation? This is what I've been thinking about regarding our skits/presentation about race/ethnicity in the classroom:

I've had some more time to reflect on race/ethnicity/difference in the classroom. I was first thinking about how to best approach multi-culturalism in the classroom from the perspective of the teacher. One example I had was when teaching Romeo and Juliet to a group of ninth graders, I made some comment about how there were many things we could no longer relate to from that period in time. I said something like "really--who here has grown up with servants and nannies?", and one of my Haitian students, who rarely spoke without prompting, raised his hand and said "I did." And he proceeded to share how his family had been quite well off in Haiti before the earthquake and they lived in a big house with a whole staff of servants. Abiola further clarified for me that because wages are so low, it was very common for even families of modest means to have servants and nannies. So-- I learned that day that I can't make assumptions about other people's backgrounds--even though the place I live and work are working class areas, it doesn't mean that everyone has the same experience.
But-- I also don't feel like I should beat myself up for not knowing that. I can't know every detail of every culture BUT I am happy to learn from anyone willing to share their culture. I think the key is that I can say, as the teacher, thank you for sharing that--I learned something today--I see that you have great things to share with us and I hope you will share again. I think that is ok. Just mutual respect.

This led me to think about an experience that I had as a student in kindergarten--something I didn't share with anyone until this past year. When I was five, we were having a conversation in my kindergarten class about New York, and I raised my hand to say something (I always had something to say...) about my grandmother who lived in Brooklyn. My family is Ukrainian and we call our grandmothers Baba so I started my sentence by saying "My Baba..." and my teacher immediately interrupted me to say "What kind of baby talk is that?! 'My Baba..??'" and then she continued to berate me by saying "you are supposed to be so smart--you can read--and yet you use a word like Baba!" so I never finished that sentence. On reflection as an adult, I think she thought I using baby talk for a bottle or blanket or something? I don't know... but the point is she never found out what I was trying to say and I felt completely humiliated. I never told my parents or anyone until this past year when my four younger kids were telling me how kindergarten was just fun and games (they never went to kindergarten...) and I told them, no, it was in kindergarten that I learned to not share anything about my family, culture, language or religion because it was not ok to be different from everyone else. I know I was the only Eastern European person in my school, so even without knowing anything about my culture, she needed to listen to me finish my sentence so she would have figured out who I was speaking about. It was just a general lack of respect for me as a person and anything that was different... (Sorry for that cathartic rant... really I felt so much better when I told my kids about it and they said they totally understood how I felt because maybe to most people it doesn't sound like a big deal but at least they could relate...)

In general, I think that we need to continue to promote understanding of each other as much as we can...really listening to what other people have to say even if that hasn't been our experience. At my last job (FedEx in Newark), my black and Hispanic male co-workers finally convinced me that the reason they got tickets when I didn't was because I am white, not because I'm cute. Conversations at that job were eye-opening to me because I didn't have to deal with racism on a daily basis as they did. However, those conversations (like our skits) have to be for the purpose of both sides trying to hear the other, assuming good intent on both sides, which sometimes seems impossible .

Another thing that is impossible in the current climate: altering the standards that I have been hired to teach. The days when teachers could close the door and do our own thing are over. My lesson plans are posted on-line for all administrators to view and they can walk in at any time to see that I am focusing on the Common Core State Standards. I know that teachers take the blame for many educational problems, including the imposition of a particular discourse in writing and speaking. But the common core standard for language states that students must "demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking." (CCCS 11-12.LS.1) There are many things I don't agree with in public education--the focus on "control" and the lack of individualized education and the focus on one-size-fits-all standards and tests--and that is why I homeschooled my kids for 10 years. But homeschooling doesn't pay very well and I believe the only way I can make a difference for my students is to work within the system and keep my job.

Finally, what is the way our presentation can be more connected? I think we would like to have a panel of teachers, administrators and students share things that work in multi-cultural classrooms. That could definitely include video chatting during the presentation so that we could include a larger range of experiences. Or we could tweet out questions during our presentation. It would definitely enrich our presentation to get as many perspectives as possible. Looking forward to working with the group on this.

Project Proposal

My proposal:
I am planning to create a series of skits. I will use my classmates (you!) as my high school English class. I was originally planing on assigning you roles, maybe giving people different races or genders, but I was afraid it would turn into that #likeagirl commercial.... So everyone will be themselves as they were in high school.

I will have a variety of different things to accomplish (maybe five different scenarios) and I will do each of them poorly and then try to improve. I don't mean that as a "bad teacher" I would be intentionally racist or derogatory or anything like that--I mean that I just wouldn't provide the richest learning environment for all the students in a diverse classroom. I am looking for specific methods and best practices that educators can use to encourage their students to self-actualize. Since I am dealing with adolescents, this is their time to really find their place in the wider world and race/ethnicity plays a role in how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them. Teachers fortunate enough to work in diverse classrooms know all of our students have a lot to share--the trick is getting them to find the best way to express themselves.

My materials (so far) include articles I have read from English Journal that deal with multi-cultural English classrooms. I am currently reading a book entitled This is Not a Test--A New Narrative on Race, Class and Education, written by a teacher in Washington Heights, NY. Esquith and Owens are other authors I have read that deal with practical teaching methods in multi-cultural settings. These sources will guide my skit production.

For the website, I don't really want to tape the skits, but I would be interested in creating a "new teacher's guide to teaching English in a diverse classroom". It would be more a pamphlet on things teachers can put into practice immediately rather than a more theoretical discussion about race relations. Teachers are busy people and everyone is telling us what we are doing wrong--I would like to glean some of the best ideas from the research and share it with other writing teachers.

Looking forward to reading the other proposals.

Week 1

Reflection:
What we discussed last week in our break-out group was how we learn best. I like a multi-faceted approach--watch a short video, read, think, talk --maybe with someone I don't agree with, think, write, discuss... --- for me learning takes time.
I am hoping to learn more about race and ethnicity as it plays out in the classroom. Students should be determining their own identity--racially and otherwise; we shouldn't be labeling anyone, but that's how it often plays out. How can educators facilitate self-actualization? What can we produce in class that might help teachers reach all our students from diverse backgrounds. Since I like a variety of media in learning materials, I think other teachers might like a video, a podcast, a short pamphlet, a panel discussion... there are a variety of directions we could go in.
I also am personally interested in race and ethnicity in my family. My kids embrace both Ukrainian and Chinese ethnicities, so we do things like put keilbasa in our fried rice, but they still have to pick one box on school forms and they are often labeled as Hispanic based on their appearance.
Looking forward to class....

Writing Race and Ethnicity

Starting to blog for Writing Race and Ethnicity. Only thing to report is that I am excited about working on the syllabus so that I can work on something relevant for those of us who work and live in diverse settings. The other interesting thing is that I asked my son Aleksei how race and ethnicity play a role in his writing. And he said "it doesn't--unless I'm writing like Dostoyevsky." It was funny because I thought he was going to say something about his identity as a half-Asian kid, but he went in another direction...