My Cultural Story

This week, as I continue on my path to becoming a teacher, I have had a lot to reflect on and ponder. First of all, I ask myself, what will my role as a professional be and how will I achieve this professionalism. I am confident that this class, as well as the rest of this program, will help me to have a better understanding of what role I will be playing and how it can most productively be played. The whole process this far has kept me a bit nervous about what is to come and has me a little flustered because I struggle with not having an organized trail of thoughts. With every issue that has come up in the readings and in class discussions, I remain confused and contradicted. I can almost always see the positives to the negative side and vice-versa, this has me all jumbled up. While I continue to struggle with this, I can also see that this may be beneficial in my career. In order to be a professional, I would argue that a person has to have the ability to see things in numerous ways, to be dynamic.

One of the issues that we read about this week discussed culture in the lives of the students. It has always been an interest to me how so many humans can come from such an array of dispositions and make up a community, society, country, neighborhood, etc. I think that it is important to remember that each and every person has their own culture and traditions and that they are all equally important in that child’s life. Just like the student’s that I will someday have, I also come from a particular life and have certain cultural characteristics that are equally important to me. Although it may be a bit difficult to accurately puzzle together all of my future students and create an environment where everyone feels equally accepted and important it will also be very exciting. I think that in my own experience I have learned the most about culture from firsthand accounts and experiences of those around me. I am eager to learn from my students as well as allow my students to learn from one another. I love the way Ayers puts it, “one person’s cultural common sense is another’s exotic behavior” (P. 76). I am excited to be able to teach children a lesson I was taught at a very young age which was: even though someone is different they are not better or worse.

My ideal class setting would be one in which I have students that have an array of cultures; combining these cultures will create a unique story. Together our class, made up of different cultures, will eventually make up a culture of their own. The way students will begin to interact between themselves as well as the way I, the teacher, will interact with them will be unique to my class. I have also come to understand that my classroom culture will change from year to year as my students change. With this, I will also be growing my garden of cultural experiences and understandings from year to year. I have done a number of things in my life that has forced me to look at life through a new lens and I have learned a huge amount from these experiences. I started elementary school in a classroom that was made up of half hearing impaired and deaf children and half hearing children like myself, I have lived in Australia and New Zealand, I spent two weeks of my time in Australia living with an aboriginal family where I experienced many of their customs and beliefs, and I have also taken part in a number of Lebanese rituals. This is one part of teaching that I can truly say I am excited to experience and learn from.

Another thing that I would like to discuss is a question that was brought up during class last week. We were all asked: ‘what aspects of schooling will affect me that I am not prepared for?’ This stirred up a lot in me. There are so many aspects of schooling that will affect me and, because my education has just begun, I feel like I am little prepared for any of them. I know that I will be dealing with all sorts of problems from dealing with parents to preparing for testing; I have not been officially taught how to deal with most of these situations yet but am confident this is what the program is for. Although I am confident that this program will help prepare me for my time in the classroom, I am also aware that there will always be times in my career where my best judgment will need to be used as well as relying on my colleagues for support.

I have been getting a bit caught up from time to time with the idea that I am not going to have all of the answers when I teach and that I could be responsible for ruining my student’s lives. I have begun to realize that I must remain confident and know that teaching will always be a work in progress. I have always thought of myself as a lifetime students and this is exactly what I will be. Going along with what I said before, I think that in order for me to be a professional teacher I must remain willing to work on my teaching styles, my interactions with my students, my leadership in my school and district, and most importantly myself.