Making Money Versus Making a Difference: One Teacher's Story

Some people go to college to make money, others, to make a difference.

I started out as a money-motivated college student.  Chasing the ever elusive brass ring of financial stability and social status, I worked my way into politics and business during my time at the university.  I was elected to hold an office in the campus arm of a major political party, I worked part-time at a bank and then at a law firm, and I carefully constructed a life in which I could move easily between reclusivity and opportunistic friendships.  I was well on my way to becoming the high-powered attorney I thought I would be--that rugged individualist workaholic who blazed through the professional sphere, shaking up norms and taking no prisoners.  

Somehow all of that changed.  

I don't know how it happened, or exactly when, but in the year I took off between graduation and law school I began to realize that there was an incredible world all around me worth exploring before settling into the rigid expectations of the career path I was pursing.  For the first time, I traveled in Europe, eventually deciding that I would attend graduate school in Amsterdam.  And I almost did attend school there, except for a fortuitous turn of events that brought me back to settle in my hometown.

And here I sit.  Writing thoughts on a page that I'm not sure how many will actually read, unaware of how many people I might inspire or help.  My motivation has completely shifted from wanting to make money to wanting to make a difference.  My audience?  Middle school students.  And if I'm lucky, you, too, will be changed by reading what I write.

My travel experience and my language background led me to become a bilingual educator instead of the wildcat attorney I thought I would be.  In exploring the world, I developed a sense of my place in it and I wanted to help others do the same.  My selfishness slowly turned into selflessness and I became more interested in bringing opportunities to my students, who generally come from financial hardship and instability. 

Demographically, these students have systemically been denied the kinds of opportunities I forged for myself--access to an appropriate and responsive public education that supports them in gaining access to higher education, access to that expensive higher education, and access to travel opportunities that help foster the sense of interconnectedness and shared global responsibility that is crucial to addressing our 21st century problems.  I am no longer blazing the trail for myself; now the trail is for my students.

This trail has come at a cost.  Becoming an educator was as expensive as becoming a lawyer, but with a fraction of the salary.  Unforgiving student loans, at credit card interest rates, plague me every step of the way, and I live in a precarious balance between wanting to forge ahead in this work or to choose a different path altogether.  

Fortunately, there are just enough opportunities for travel and extending my own education that help me rise above the financial struggle of life as a teacher in America.  Every time I travel to a foreign location, I am humbled by the immensity of our planet and reminded of my responsibility to teach others about the life lessons I am learning. I realize that my own situation is minuscule compared to the greater needs of others across the globe.  I am inspired by people who live in harmony with the Earth and whose judgement is not clouded by delusions of money or grandeur.  Throughout our world, there are many forms of mind and many ways to live happily beyond what we see here in our own location. 

Every day that I am in my classroom working with students I am reminded of the importance of my work. To see my students get excited about possibility and opportunity is an eternal gift.  To challenge them to see a bigger picture beyond their immediate surroundings and to listen as they develop their own opinions and voice regarding meaningful topics is the reward.  To know that our future is a little bit brighter because these young visionaries are in it is the payment. 

On this path that I have chosen, I might not make money, but I certainly do make a difference.

Digging Deeper: Addressing the Social and Emotional Needs of Our Students Through Anti-Bias Education

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."

Aristotle  

In my experience, no truer words have been spoken about our education system.  

My K-12 education certainly educated my mind.  I excelled in many subjects, and my teachers consistently provided academic differentiation that satisfied my need to be challenged through advanced coursework and independent studies in math, science, social studies, language arts, foreign language, and music.  They made time to meet with me after school to discuss academic topics, gave me plenty of individualized instruction, and even went above and beyond to create and monitor independent studies for me.

With no shortage of intellectual challenge in my education, I look back and wonder why I was so miserable in school and why I felt ill-prepared to deal with real-world issues.  The answer is simple:  my education severely lacked the anti-bias, social-emotional component so critical to a well-rounded education.

Don't get me wrong.  I was challenged socially and emotionally every day and I certainly experienced and recognized bias.  In a small town where there is little to no ethnic or racial diversity, socioeconomic status and generational residence became the defining factors in whether one was treated respectfully or cast aside and vigilantly monitored by school officials.  In my experience, rewards and punishments in our small town were clearly delivered based on social merit:  who you were, how deep your family roots went, and where you lived meant more than your academic achievement or future career goals.     

My education focused so much on developing the student in me that the human in me struggled to eke out an existence.  We were never instructed in how to deal effectively with major life challenges, and nobody seemed to want the system of privilege to change.  In hindsight, I wonder if anybody even realized that this system existed in our town?  In any case, I don't remember anybody explicitly teaching us how to respect each other, we rarely worked collaboratively, and social boundaries pushed people to conformity and rejected those who refused to do so.  As a result, the system of privilege and power continued to be perpetuated.

So how could my education have been better?  What will make the difference in future students' lives in the place where I grew up?  And how can we apply this to the bigger picture of education?

We educators must be explicitly responsive to the needs of our students in the greater context of the world around them.  This means that when the system within which we operate--the wider community culture--perpetuates discrimination and rigid hierarchies, we must be brave enough to teach students more positive and humane ways to treat each other.  Our classrooms must include a variety of collaborative practices and instruction that values each and every student.  We must learn to see students as agents of change in their respective environments, humans who are just trying to figure out how to survive and enact positive change despite oppressive conditions. Furthermore, we need to effectively address privilege in our instruction, raising awareness of how privilege, or lack thereof, affects people's realities.  Privilege may always exist, but equipping students with the capacity to positively address oppressive situations will go a long way in helping them be successful in their lives.

This work is not easy, nor is it very popular.  But it is crucial.  

To prepare students to be effective global citizens with 21st century skills, we need to teach them how to think critically about the world around them.  They need to understand systems of oppression and balance of power.  They need to understand how the world works and how their actions positively or adversely affect others.  Most importantly, they must be educated to be compassionate and empathetic, to care deeply about the ripple effect they have on people across the globe.

In short, we need to re-frame our instructional practices to assure that we are educating both the minds and the hearts of our students, giving them both the intellectual skills and the emotional capacity to effectively solve problems in our ever-changing and interconnected world.  

Our educational message?  Be brave, be innovative, and, most importantly, be yourself.

Breaking From Tradition: Notes From a Non-Traditional Teacher on Building Cultural Competence

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Albert Einstein

Despite our best intentions, our American education system remains highly traditional.  Access to a high-quality education is still reserved for students with high amounts of privilege, standardization continues to coerce diverse students into conformity, and educators, who are also products of this system, are perpetually confused as to how to address the changing needs in our classrooms with ever-dwindling budgets and stressful working conditions.

Popular rhetoric regarding our public system leads us to believe that it is failing.  Our students are failing, our teachers are failing, and the politicians who construct the budgets and create the legislation that dictates our service delivery are failing.

But we are not failing.  Within our school system I have discovered many relentless, visionary educators who continue to adjust their practices, develop their professional knowledge, and who change students' lives in positive, meaningful ways forever.  These people make it possible for students to succeed. 

What is it about these people that makes them so effective?  How do they do it?  

In short:  they learned to develop their talents in cultural-responsiveness and they are courageous in their endeavors to break from traditional teaching, paving new pathways for a new generation of learners.

So what does it take to be a culturally-responsive educator?  

The following list of qualities I have observed in culturally-responsive educators is by no means exhaustive, but for those who are interested in learning more about how to develop your own talents in cultural-responsiveness, it may be a good start.

Education/Background

Culturally-responsive educators often have unique educational or life experiences that have helped them develop a global awareness of the education system, how education works in our own nation and other places, and why there is diversity in the expectations their students' families bring to the classroom regarding education.

To learn more:  

Don't be afraid to take that Art History or Chican@ Studies minor in addition to your traditional teacher preparation courses.  Take advantage of that study abroad opportunity or teacher summer professional development experience in another place.  Learn another language or spend some time in the Peace Corps. Volunteer at the local homeless shelter or food pantry.  If none of these experiences are possible for you, read books or watch documentaries about people and places all over the world.  The goal is for you to learn everything you can and develop an appreciation for the experiences of people who come from backgrounds different from your own.

Life Experience

Culturally-responsive educators often spend significant amounts of time traveling and developing friendships with people from diverse backgrounds.  This helps them see the world, and their students, through the complex realities of our society, making adjustments to their approach to situations where necessary.

To learn more:

Travel, travel, travel!  And when you travel, don't just do the "touristy" thing.  Find out where the locals go, what they like to do for fun, and go do it.  Visit local museums, afterward checking out their websites for any possible free curricular materials they offer for you to bring back to your classroom.  Check out local music venues, social gathering sites, and local shops and restaurants.  The goal is for you to meet new people and hear about their experiences.

Professional Knowledge and Skills

Culturally-responsive educators often stay up-to-date with the latest news about education.  They are critically aware of the politics, pedagogy, and practices of school systems.  This helps them understand the bigger picture of the system within which they work, providing them the tools they need to diversify their practices and advocate for their students.

To learn more:

Attend professional development seminars and engage in professional conversations routinely about education.  Find out what other people are doing in their classrooms, what kinds of opportunities they are accessing outside of their classrooms, and how they are updating their instructional practices or curricular units. Develop a collaborative culture in your building and extend it to the wider community.  The goal is for you to network with colleagues so that you can continue enhancing your curriculum and learning new strategies for meeting the needs of diverse learners.

Conscience/Awareness

The most effective skill I have observed in culturally-responsive educators is their keen awareness that they will never know all there is to know about education or about learners...or about anything at all for that matter!  Effective culturally-responsive educators are always learning, trying new things, reflecting on the outcomes, and redesigning in response to said outcomes.  Culturally-responsive educators essentially see life as one giant learning experience. Because of this, they are open to new ideas and are willing to take professional risks based on their experience.  They are brave, open, and honest, but most of all they are humble.  They know that, as educators, they have a great responsibility to encourage all students to become the best they can be.  

Educators are in a precarious situation.  Our positions allow us the ability to build students' confidence or crush the students' dreams. We can guide students toward a love of learning or we can discourage them from walking through our doors.  We can teach students to become culturally-competent, themselves, or we can drive wedges between them.  

Ultimately, we owe it to our students to develop our cultural-responsiveness.  We need to learn how to meet the needs of our diverse learners.  And we need to learn how to be innovative while the system around us continues to be traditional.  If we are going to change the traditional outcome for our students, we must be courageous and non-traditional.  We must develop new forms of mind and collaborate to break from tradition to fix the lingering problems in our school system and to help all of our students achieve greatness in their lives and for future generations.  The change begins with us.

  

Portraits of Latino Achievement: Latino Contributions to American History and Society

What historic challenges have Latinos in the United States faced, and how have they responded to those challenges?

This question guides our biographical writing unit in 7^th grade Spanish Language Arts.  Building on concepts learned in our previous narrative writing unit, about the history of Latino immigrants to the United States and their influences on popular culture, students investigate the lives of Latino-American leaders and their historic contributions to American society.  They also reflect on their own contributions and future career goals, as Latino youth in America, who are often faced with unique challenges through which they have to persevere.  Modeled after the Smithsonian exhibit OJOS:  Our Journeys, Our Stories, Portraits of Latino Achievement, this unit is as much about building students’ understanding of how Latinos have persevered to shape American social and political history as it is about building students’ visions for how they, too, can have a positive impact in our society.

The literacy portion of the unit is anchored on biographical writing in its multiple forms.  Students gather biographical information about a wide variety of famous Latinos in the U.S. as presented in several different formats.  The traditional biographies are found on the OJOS site, the American Sabor site, and on a site called biografiasyvidas.com.  They are also presented in children’s literature, videos, interviews, poetry, and told through the music of corridos.  Students practice writing their own biographies about an influential Latino.   They also review the many ways in which information can be presented, which will later serve to help them decide how to present a subsequent social issues campaign.

The unit also relies heavily on social studies topics in the form of analyzing the Latinos’ historic struggles for civil rights in the United States and their accomplishments. 

Students investigate the struggle for workers’ rights, learning about influential Latinos such as César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, Luis Valdez, Juan Barco, and Francisco Jiménez, all of whom have roots in migrant farm work. 

They also investigate the struggle for students’ rights, learning about the challenges faced by Latino students—lowered expectations, tracking, racism, and English-only policies—and how the students organized to advocate for their learning.  These stories are told through investigations of the lives of Latinos such as Sal Castro, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez, Reyes Lopez Tijerina, and Paula Crisostomo, all of whom have connections to bilingual education activism or politics. 

Finally, students learn about the history of Latino immigration to the United States, comparing and contrasting the experiences of their family (sometimes two and three generations back) with those of other immigrant groups.  We analyze the poem “The New Colossus” (in both English and Spanish), learn about Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, and discuss how the country from which a Latino immigrant comes influences his/her experience in the U.S.  For example, how does being a Latino immigrant from Cuba, who is considered a political exile, compare with a Latino immigrant from México, who came here as a result of a guest worker program?  How does being a Latino from Puerto Rico, which is a commonwealth of the United States, compare with a Latino immigrant from the Dominican Republic?

Ultimately, the students will use this historical understanding of the diversity of the Latino experience in the United States to identify an area of research for their next quarter’s argumentative writing unit.  They will take a position related to a topic (workers’ rights, education, or immigration), research it, write an argumentative essay, and use it to create an action campaign.  This historical/biographical unit provides the perfect background knowledge for this type of analysis.

American Sabor: Latino Contributions to American Popular Culture

Finding high quality bilingual teaching materials is a challenging task.  Thanks to a partnership between the Smithsonian Museum, the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and the University of Washington, this was made a little easier for my teaching team and me as we used some of their materials to design a robust first quarter unit about Latino contributions to the American cultural landscape.  Although we delivered the instruction completely in Spanish, as part of our Spanish Language Arts program, the materials are also available in English, and, therefore, could work in any classroom.

American Sabor is an online and traveling exhibit that highlights Latino contributions to American culture through music.  It is organized into five distinct regions:  San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and New York City, each with its own cultural influences, history, and music style.  The history of migration and Latino settlement, as well as political developments in the United States, has served to give each community its own unique flavor.  Much of the exhibit resources are found online at americansabor.org, including a running jukebox, musical clips, interactive maps of the cities, background readings, artist interviews, and various classroom activities that teach students about the diversity of Latinos in the United States and the myriad of influences Latinos have had on American popular culture.

Enhancing the materials found on this website with selected readings from literary works by Latina authors, Sandra Cisneros and Alma Flor Ada (both available in English or Spanish), I used the following framework to build an integrated Spanish literacy and culture unit:  

Each week, students would study a different city, rotating through thematic stations to develop a comprehensive understanding about how Latinos have contributed to popular culture in each area. They listened to Latino-influenced music from the region and heard interviews with artists from each place.  They read and analyzed vignettes from the Cisneros and Ada books, with attention to Common Core literacy standards, and they planned drafts of their own personal narratives connected to a theme drawn from one of their books, also aligned to Common Core writing standards. 

As the final product of the unit, students developed one of their drafts into a full personal narrative that demonstrated an element of their culture as Latinos living in Madison (We called it “Madison Sabor”).  We then turned these stories into cartoneras, which brought another element of artistic expression to the literacy unit.

Throughout the rest of the year, the students were empowered with this foundational knowledge of the diversity of Latinos in the U.S. as they built a more complex understanding of the historic experience of struggle and achievement of people from various Latin American countries in the United States.  They were also able to make meaningful connections to their learning in a fun and unique way.  As an added bonus, we spent the quarter listening to a lot of great music!

The Complexities of Complexion: Race, Heritage, and Culturally Responsive Teaching

By outward appearance, I look white.  My skin tone is fair, my eyes are hazel, and my hair is dark blonde. By all accounts, I display the Norwegian-American traits from my dad's side of my family.

My mom's Mexican-American side of my family shows through in my Spanish language skills, my affinity for Mexican literature and artwork, travel throughout Mexico, and investigating all there is to learn about the history of Mexico and the complex political relationship that exists between our two countries.  It is the reason why I am a bilingual educator today.

In a nation so fixated on defining ourselves based on complexion and appearance, I have struggled my whole life to figure out where I fit in. What do you do when the complexion with which you were born does not reflect your culture or heritage? When people are quick to identify the privileges associated with being born with a light complexion, how do you convince them of the pressure associated with it? How does one explain the juxtaposition between being seen as a "white" person but not seeing oneself that way?

To me, complexion is incredibly complex.

My complexion has provided me the privilege of being praised for my bilingualism:  "You speak Spanish so well! Where did you learn it?"  But it has pressured me to explain myself to everyone I meet:  "Well, I am white, but I grew up mainly with my mom's Mexican side of the family, so I heard Spanish growing up, and that's what made me want to learn it formally."  

My complexion has provided me the privilege of observing the deep-seeded racism so evident in our culture, without being an actual recipient of it.  For example, when I was younger, I attended a friend's family gathering where someone thought it would be funny to scrawl "Mexi-" in front of the "Cans Only" sign posted over the recycle bin. Knowing they didn't see me as Mexican, I was pressured to choose between suffering in a silent rage at their ignorance or standing up and risking rejection. 

My complexion has provided me the privilege of having an educational experience where the standard lessons about history, literature, and cultural expression all involved people who looked like me. Wondering why I never learned about the brown, Spanish-speaking people who helped build this country, those who wrote beautiful literature and shaped our nation's culture, I was pressured to choose between blindly accepting the notion that only white people had academic value, or to seek out counter versions of history told from the perspectives of the oppressed.  

Reconciling the duality of seeing myself as Mexican while my complexion tells a different story has been a lifetime struggle for me.  And, perhaps, there's a reason for that.  Perhaps I should not feel the need to choose one identity over the other.  Perhaps, I need to forge for myself a new identity, an identity that is more inclusive of ALL of who I am.  And, perhaps, just perhaps, it is this identity that has already given me the the perspective that I needed to become an effective culturally-responsive educator.

My goal is to demystify the concept of identity for my students.  My belief is that all humans are cultural beings with multiple identities, some of which are racial, linguistic, gender, regional, national, religious, and etc.  Some identities are fixed while others are fluid.  Some are imposed upon us, and some can be self-selected.  Contrary to traditional belief, we do not have to choose one identity over the other; instead, our various identities serve to make us the complex and unique people we are today.

Traditionally, our schools have operated under the assumption that identity is something that belongs at home or with friends.  In the rare instances when we engage in shallow discussion of culture, there is this assumption that only people with complexions darker than my own have a culture. This falsehood strips people like me of any cultural validity and further confuses us.

Our school system, with our standardized curriculum and expectations, is designed to ignore students' identities and cultural needs. We spend billions of dollars training students to conform to the cultural expectations of those who have political and economic control over our schools instead of guiding students toward developing innovative ways of solving our modern problems and planning for a sustainable future. Multicultural, multilingual competence is ignored in favor of standardization and a "one size fits all" business model. 

When educators help students develop both cultural-competence (the intellectual understanding of what culture is and how it is expressed) and cultural-fluidity (the capacity to appreciate and navigate interactions with diverse populations) they bring us one step closer to breaking down social barriers and alleviating the tensions associated with racial and cultural conflict.  We are also fulfilling our obligation to provide a meaningful, engaging educational experience for all of our students, which will result in higher achievement and a competent new generation.  

Educators who, regardless of complexion, are able to unpack their own complex identities, and use their experiences to bridge to the experiences of others make a powerful impact on their students. Having the courage to engage students in critical thinking around multiple points of view in history builds their understanding of our current experience as co-creators of the history of the future.  Routinely incorporating the words of literary figures of all complexions into our curriculum ensures that we can connect with all of our students.  Helping students understand and see themselves reflected in our connected history, look for patterns in behavior and circumstance, and problem solve around issues of power and privilege, is the foundation for culturally-responsive teaching.

Truly culturally-responsive teaching begins with our teaching students to appreciate themselves for who they are, in all of their complex identities.  In breaking down social barriers and undoing stereotypes, we can help students get to know each other as individuals and appreciate each other's qualities and experiences. Cultural responsiveness is predicated on a resistance to standard norms and privileged status.

Through a broad lens of cultural responsiveness, we can help create a more peaceful society whereby all of our identities are valued and all people feel responsible.  By being culturally responsive educators, we will not only alleviate the identity crises that plague ourselves and our young people, but we will also help our next generation of leaders, human service workers, entrepreneurs, and parents achieve greatness beyond our own, learning to work together to solve our complex problems in an ever-changing world.

A Virtual Field Trip to Analyze the Olmec Civilization

What if the history of African people in the Americas did not begin a few hundred years ago with their enslavement? 

What if, instead, it began thousands of years prior with their empowerment as great leaders and members of highly-advanced ancient civilizations? 

What if we have more in common with each other, sharing a deeper ancient history in this part of the world, than is traditionally taught?

And how would we ever know this, much less teach our children about it, if our textbooks fail to mention it?

My teaching teammate and I encountered this challenge a few years ago as we set out to design an integrated unit about the Maya people of Mesoamerica.  As we researched this civilization, we discovered that they weren’t the first advanced people in the region.  There was actually an older civilization that existed before they did.  This civilization, the Olmec civilization, was so influential that it is known as the Mother Culture of Mesoamerica. 

We searched for resources to teach our students about the Olmec, but they were sparse.  This led us to apply for, and be awarded, a grant to travel to México so we could research the Olmec and Maya and gather primary sources we could bring back to our classroom.

 

Based on our excursion, we created a virtual field trip to Veracruz, México, where our students would encounter and analyze artifacts left by the Olmec.  The unit begins with a video of us walking through the museum of La Venta.  We make it appear that we are trudging through the subtropical forests of eastern México and encountering a gigantic stone head (a classic Olmec artifact) at the end of our path.  We ask students to think like archaeologists and engage in collaborative discussions about the features of this artifact.  They generate a list of characteristics and begin to make conjectures and record guiding questions for the rest of the unit.

The facial features of these Olmec heads are unmistakably African and Asian.  This is fascinating to students, who have traditional worldviews of what they think Mexican people look like.  We take this opportunity to discuss the diversity of people living in México today, and to observe the diversity of our own classroom.  The Olmec heads help our students understand our common ancient history, and they begin to make cross-cultural, multi-racial connections.

Once we pique students’ interest in learning more about this mysterious civilization, we engage them in cooperative learning groups where they analyze the pictures we took of several Olmec artifacts found at La Venta and other museums in the region.  Again, they make observations, generate questions, and make conjectures about what we might be able to infer about the Olmec based on their artifacts. 

We then highlight specific Olmec symbols and their meanings, using materials from the de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and teach the students how to reanalyze the artifacts with the specific purpose of looking for these symbols.  They apply their understanding of iconography by designing their own “Olmec” artifact and writing an expository paragraph to explain the meaning behind their artifact.  We display the pictures of these artifacts in the classroom as part of a mock archaeological dig called the “Olmec Art-ifact” wall.

This investigation serves as a wonderful launch to a more thorough investigation of the Mayan civilization.  Equipped with background knowledge about how to think like archaeologists, our students are able to analyze Mayan artifacts and structures.   They also use their critical thinking skills to make conjectures about the rise and fall of the Mayan city-states.  Because there is a wealth of written materials and primary sources with which to teach about the Maya people, we are able to integrate social studies, language arts, math and science into this unit.

Beginning with an experiential investigation, based on a virtual field trip to this region, students are inspired to make new connections and to deepen their understanding of thousands of years of human history.  With their blend of various racial characteristics and their location in Mesoamerica, the Olmec are a fascinating way for students of all races and ethnicities to see themselves reflected in their learning.  The Olmec also taught me that when traditional textbooks do not provide the learning experiences that students will find compelling, it is up to us to find creative ways to design them.