Concluding Post: Fitting in to Social Norms, School, and Place in Society

           

           Most children want nothing more than to fit in with their peers, especially in school. Being different can make children an automatic target for often negative or cruel treatment from their classmates. Children can be “different” because of their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or special needs. Peers can be quite critical at any age, from elementary school up to college. Schools and teachers have a responsibility and the privilege to help guide students to be accepting and empathetic to all types of people. One way teachers can do this is to weave awareness, acceptance, and kindness into the curriculum.

            In Mona Lisa Smile, Julia Roberts plays a first year teacher who lands a job teaching art history at her first choice school, Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The year is 1953. The student body is fairly homogeneous; it is made up of all white, conservative, intelligent young ladies from wealthy families. Roberts’ character, Katherine Watson, comes from California, is unmarried, and more liberal than the student body and school board. Her students initially give her a run for her money; they have already read the entire text and memorized the names, artists, and dates of all the paintings she shows on the first day of class. They chide her for coming from a state university and imply that she is not smart enough to actually teach them anything. Miss Watson leaves her first class feeling defeated. For the following class she shows them modern paintings that show some grotesque images. This gets the students talking about what is art, what makes it good, what makes it bad, and who even approves that something is art. The students seem disturbed that their teacher changed the syllabus on them and she responds with, “There’s also no textbook telling you what to think. It’s not that easy, is it?” This is a metaphor that runs throughout the whole movie. Roberts’ character starts opening them up to thoughts and ideas out of their social norm. She starts these new thought processes through curriculum in her classroom and it eventually takes hold for her students in their personal lives.

Cultural assimilation is very important in this community and Roberts’ character starts to question that concept. This does not go unnoticed by the school board whose members are made of up the principal, other teachers, and alumni. They immediately start giving her warnings about teaching modern art and creating too personal of relationships with her students. It is not only the adults that are like this, but the students, too. Kirsten Dunst’s character writes a scathing editorial in the school newspaper about the school nurse who prescribed a student contraceptives (which was illegal to do at the time) and gets her fired. Julia Stiles’ character is a brilliant student who finds that she gets into Yale, a top law school, where only five spots are held for women. In the end, she chooses to be a house wife because that is what she is supposed to do. There are courses on etiquette; how to stand up and sit down at the dinner table, the proper way to hold your wine glass, and what to do when your husband’s boss invites other employees and their wives to your home for dinner at the last minute. During my sophomore year in high school, my family and I lived in a very small town in Pennsylvania. I was one of five minorities in the whole town and felt very out of place. My home economics teacher tried teaching us some of these same concepts and I remember feeling like I was in an alternate reality. Most of the other girls in class were into it and all I could think was, “get me outta here!” The girls in the movie are often unkind to each other. They tell a character who is on the chubby side that she will never find a boyfriend or husband because she’s too big. They ridicule another character who is experienced beyond her years in terms of her sexuality. They look down upon that same character because her parents are divorced. Roberts’ character tries to show the girls that not everybody has to fit into this perfect box that society says they should.

She opens their mind by incorporating modern ideas into art. She takes them to see a Jackson Pollock painting. The students initially think it is just scratches and paint splashes on a canvas but she tells them to stop and look at it – that is their only assignment for the day, to look and consider it. They stay for a while. She shows them contemporary art, which the students tell her are “just” advertisements. They are advertisements of women holding cleaning products lovingly to their face, women getting measured by their husbands for the appropriate ironing table height, and women “feeling free” in the right girdle. The students are shocked – some look like they have been slapped in the face. They start to realize that there is not just one path that they must follow. There are many other paths that can be explored. The movie ends with Dunst’s character, who has gotten married and tries so desperately to pretend that her marriage is okay all the while knowing that her husband is cheating on her. She files for divorce and moves into an apartment with a classmate, who her mother frequently calls “a New York kike.” Roberts’ character, though invited to come back for a second year with the stipulation that she will teach strictly the curriculum, turn in lesson plans for approval, and keep only professional relationships with her students, decides to leave Wellesley.

As we know, movies and TV that have to do with teachers can often be filled with stereotypes. Same can be said for this movie. Roberts’ character is a first year teacher who thinks that she can change the life of all her students for the better. She goes up against the system and in part accomplishes what she wanted to do. Then she leaves the school never to return again. She is almost like a myth. Many movies, like Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers show the young, white, suburban woman that goes to the inner city to “save” the poor, sad, black children. This movie shows that same woman who goes to a stuffy, snobby school to show those students that this is not what life is like for everybody. The latter part of her story does fill the “movie teacher’s” stereotype, but I do not believe the former part does.

I, too, remember being a first year teacher on my first day teaching second grade in an inner city school of Detroit. I was petrified. I had no idea what I was walking into but I really did think that I could change the lives of all my students. One important aspect of school is social mobility. This means providing students with an educational advantage for more desirable, social positions in the work place. Schools in inner cities do not provide their students with equal opportunities for social mobility than compared to suburban schools. As I walked into my classroom I saw a bullet hole in one of the windows, walls with layers of dirt and student desks and chairs decades old, and barely any materials. My students could barely read three letter words, loved yelling “shut up” at each other, could barely add numbers together, and I cannot even talk about the poor writing skills. On top of that, some were living in shelters, many being taken care of by someone other than a parent, one that had been sexually abused by a family member, and a couple kids born addicted to heroin and cocaine. I tried my best, but working without books at an appropriate level, no actual writing curriculum (I did have a math TE and enough math workbooks for each child), no materials to teach science or social studies, and no support services to meet the students’ emotional needs, I feel as though I did not teach them much. I spent most of my time teaching them things that would be considered null curriculum, which is what is not taught in schools or what is left out of the curriculum. I taught them how to talk to one another and how to resolve conflicts using their words instead of pushing and shoving, none of which shows up on any standardized test. Not having a writing curriculum actually turned out to be a blessing. I was able to teach them whatever I wanted. So we learned the foundations of writing; proper grammar, conventions, how to write a story with a beginning, middle and end, opinion writing, etc. I did better my second year there. I learned how to pillage through unused classes to find math manipulatives, books and other supplies. I started teaching using the workshop method; Daily Five for reading, writer’s workshop, and how to make math more interesting than just doing problems in a workbook. My first year experience is different from Miss Watson’s experience because of the socioeconomic status of the students and families, but the outcome we both want is the same. We want to make a positive difference in the lives of our students. Now, I am entering my seventh year of teaching (wow!), I have a more realistic goal that I strive to achieve. I want to teach each student to the best of my ability, instill a love for learning, create positive relationships with them, and mostly importantly, let them know they are loved. I know that I will not be able to reach each and every child, but strive to reach as many as I can. I create relationships with students and their parents that last longer than the nine months they are in my classroom. My first class of students in Farmington are fifth graders now and there are a few students and their parents that I still have a great relationship with. That is what I want; for a child to know that even though I may not be their teacher any more, I am still here for them if they need me. And if I can reach even a few of those students who have difficult and unfortunate home lives and help them climb that social mobility ladder, that is what I hope to accomplish.

There were many parts of the movie that I was able to relate to even though I have a different ethnicity and culture than the characters in the movie. There are cultural assimilation and social mobility factors in the Indian community as well; things that we are “supposed” to do and ways that we are supposed to live. The girls in the movie knew their job was to get an education, get married, become a house wife, bare their husband’s children, and take care of their family. That is what everyone did. Indian children grow up knowing the blue print of their life as well. We are supposed to graduate high school with top honors, go to not just any college but a respectable one, become something that makes lots of money (preferences are doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, finance, and business people), marry someone who is also in one of these fields, and have babies. Not only is that what everyone is supposed to do, but we are supposed to keep moving up in terms of financial status; keep getting the raises, promotions, and perks. I suppose I am like Roberts’ character when it comes to the path I took. I did not graduate high school with top honors, I did my undergrad at Oakland University (not that respectable, in case you were curious), became a teacher (also not that respectable), and married a white guy who got his higher education degree from MPI (the Motion Picture Institute). I did not want the life style I saw so many people from my culture having as I grew up. I did not and still do not care about the half million dollar houses that they all seem to have, multiple luxury cars parked in the driveway, and fancy, all inclusive vacations all around the world multiple times a year. Granted, not every single Indian family is like that, but most are. This was not an easy path to follow. I came across many hurdles which usually came in the form family members telling me I should not be a teacher because they do not make a lot of money, aunts and uncles, and even some cousins telling me not to marry my husband because life will be “hard” for me with all the cultural differences, not to mention what the community will say. Six years into my marriage, one child, and one child on the way (due February 1^st!), I am very happy with the choices I have made. I think nothing is more respectable than having a hand in educating the future generation, I love my husband and my “normal” sized house, my “halfsie” child (My sisters and I like to refer to him as “halfsie”. I think the politically correct term would be multiracial), soon to be children, and our non-luxury car and SUV parked in the driveway.

Differences in the classroom should be celebrated instead of ignored or brushed to the side. Think of Richard Rodriguez. He assimilated to his new culture which had everything to do with assimilating to school. He started speaking English at the request of his teachers and ended up forgetting how to speak Spanish. He spent so much time reading book after book, he began to distance himself from his family, which I would argue was unintentional. He became more confident as he was able to participate more in school. When he was younger, his home, speaking Spanish, and family time was his security. Now, being so much more assimilated to the culture of the school, none of the things that used to bring him comfort and security do anymore. As teachers, we have to be aware of the “changes” we are asking our students to make or our views that we intentionally or unintentionally portray upon our students. The nuns should not have asked Rodriguez’s parents to speak only English to their children at home. We know now the benefits of knowing more than one language and how important it is to continue practicing whatever a child’s home language may be. It is important for teachers to embrace the differences they have in their classrooms, not try to get everyone to be the same as everyone else. My seventh grade science teacher asked us one day how many of us spoke a different language. I lived in South Florida at the time and went to a very diverse school, so many hands went up. He asked what languages we all spoke and then just randomly throughout the year, as he was teaching, he would stop and say, “how do you say ____ in your language?” And all of us that spoke a different language would tell him. It had nothing to do with the curriculum but it was just this small acknowledgment and validation of the differences in his classroom, that I still remember it so many years later.

I think of the different backgrounds of students I have had in all my classes. A couple things I always do are one, make sure I pronounce a student’s name the proper way (accent and all) and two, make it a goal to learn about the culture or religion if I do not already know a lot and bring their culture and experiences into the curriculum, whether it be in reading, writing, or math. I do this as an acknowledgement and validation of their differences, just like my science teacher had done with us. My personal experiences in school have made me very aware of the differences I have in my classroom. My goal is always to make students with differences feel comfortable, welcomed, and appreciated because I know what it is like when those differences are not appreciated. These are things I want to do as a teacher, what I would want my children’s teachers to do for them, and how I feel that human beings should be in general.

References

Flinders, David J., Noddings, Nel, Thornton, Stephen J. (1986) The Null Curriculum: Its Theoretical Basis and Practical Implications. Curriculum Inquiry, 16 (1), pp. 33-42.

Labaree, David F. (1997). Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34 (1), pp. 39-81.

Newell, Mike. (2003). Mona Lisa Smile. United States: Columbia Pictures.

Rodriguez, Richard. (1982). Hunger of Memory. New York, NY: Bantom Dell.

Cycle Three: Resources

In my TE818 class, we read an article about null curriculum by Flinders, Noddings, and Thornton. It talked about the things the are not taught in schools. One of the things not taught in schools but is expected to be learned is affect; values, attitudes and emotions. This is one thing noted in The Schoolhome and it is a problem that we see in public schools as well.

http://wp.vcu.edu/hhughesdecatur/wp-content/uploads/sites/1868/2013/01/Null-curriculum.pdf

Cycle Three: The relationship between schools and homes

Once I realized The Schoolhome was about Maria Montessori and the Montessori schooling, this book became a reluctant read for me. I delayed reading it for the first couple days of the week before I got my act together and realized I needed to get over my own biases towards the Montessori schooling way. So, I started reading with the most unbiased view of the subject I could muster. One thing I learned that I did not know is that Maria Montessori opened her second school in Rome in apartment buildings that were unfinished, unsafe, and unsanitary. The poor and recently released prisoners moved into these buildings, along with their children. Not knowing what to do with children too young for school that were running around all day while their parents were at work, the authorities asked Maria Montessori for help. So, she built a school in each of the apartment buildings.

            Virginia Woolf spoke of the bridge, the gateway to society and how women were beginning to cross over it, enter the workforce, and leave their children at home in the process. She spoke of what that did to the child/children at home. She talked about what that did to the child/children at home and how Montessori’s method of education went along with those changes taking place in society. Montessori knew that the connection between home and school was a strong one, so she wanted her school to strongly resemble “home”, even for many children who did not have a safe or welcoming home. That is one of the reasons that she called her school the school home instead of the school house.

            I, too, know that there is such an important connection between home and school, one that we do not value enough in current educational fields. I do not understand what makes Maria Montessori’s schools more “homier” than public schools. I say this partly because I worked in a Montessori preschool/Kindergarten school for the first two years after graduating college. Since I do not have a Montessori teaching degree or certification, I was only able to work there as a teacher aid. There was nothing in the classrooms that seemed any “homier” to me than in public schools. All the materials were on wooden shelves, in trays, or wooden baskets. Children had the choice of sitting and working on tables and chairs or rugs. In a public school classroom, at least for lower elementary school, students are welcomed into the class with colorful posters on the walls, their names on desks, sometimes, bean bag chairs or other inviting areas for reading, etc. A teacher in a Montessori setting or public school setting wants to make their children feel welcomed, safe, and loved; just like what they should be experiencing at home.

            I worked at that the Montessori school for two years, each under a different director. The first director was, in no better words, a hippie. She let the kids do whatever they wanted to do; if they wanted to run back and forth from one room to another, she let them. If they still needed to be fed their lunch and snack, we would feed them without at least making them try on their own. When she left, I asked her if she could write me a letter of recommendation and she said I would not need one because principals would see my aura and know what a good teacher I was. The second director was very rigid and strict. The students must properly roll the rug and put it back, and if they did not, she would unroll it and have them reroll it until it was done perfectly. If they could not feed themselves, they sat at the table and cried. That was really hard for me to watch. She did not smile at the children. We were not allowed to tell the children that we “liked” what they did. We had to say, “And how do you feel about that?” Everyone worked quietly and independently. In the epilogue, Martin mentioned walking into a third grade classroom seeing 25 students working silently, reading books independently, and discussed their books with the teacher. It is great that the students were working independently so nicely, but do they always need to be working on their own? Isn’t there something to be said from working collaboratively with peers? One of the reasons I have my students sitting in tables instead of on their own, is so they can work together on classwork. It is important for students to be able to build their social skills as well as academic skills.

            She also mentions how nicely Montessori teachers incorporate a diverse curriculum even though diversity is not very much included in our currently curriculum. Students read Huckleberry Finn and Little Women, boys do not think they should have to read Little Women, but end up relating to it anyway. High school students make time to listen to Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech”. Once again, that is fantastic, but nothing different from what public school teachers do for their students, as well. Montessori schooling is put on such a high pedestal and I wonder if Maria Montessori’s original vision for what her schools would be and who they would teach has been lost throughout the years. I say this because she started her school to help children from disadvantaged areas, but think about who goes to Montessori in this day and age. It is definitely not the children that come from disadvantaged areas. For one, they do not have the money to afford Montessori school. I just yesterday enrolled my three year old into nursery school for the fall. Classes are two days a week for two hours each day. I looked into the cost of the Montessori program offered by the district and that is $395/month!! That is more than three times the amount I am paying for nursery school. How many people can actually afford that? Certainly not the families of students I used to teach in inner city Detroit. I wonder what Maria Montessori would think of the way her schools are run now.

Cycle Two: Schooling, Cultural Assimilation, and Social Mobility

          Reading Hunger for Memory brought back so many feelings and memories from my own childhood. I remember feeling as though I was going to school in a completely different place than I was coming home to, embarrassment over my parents’ accents when speaking English in public, and my family’s views of public and private life. I also thought I knew exactly where I stood on affirmative action and my reasons behind my stance but this book has questioned that for me. This book has made me question many thoughts and ideas I once held with such concrete belief.

            From the first couple pages of this book, I found myself saying, “Yup, yea, I remember that feeling” to so many of the things Rodriguez mentions of his childhood. “We were the people with the noisy dog. We were the people who raised pigeons and chickens. We were the foreigners on the block.” (1982, p. 11) My family didn’t have a dog or raise chickens but we were the only ones who hung our laundry on lines in the backyard to dry. Even our undergarments were hung on the line for neighbors to see. I was in middle school and mortified. When I asked my mom and grandma why we had to do this they would respond that that is how they dried their clothes in India and why did I have to be so embarrassed of my culture. Our house was the one that smelled like spices all the way down the driveway. “Why does your house smell like that?” my friends would ask. I would mumble an answer and change the subject. I would get embarrassed when my parents would play Hindi music too loudly. Why can’t we listen to American music I would ask, in which I would get the response, “why are you embarrassed by our culture?”

            My mom has always spoken English well, with a slight Indian accent. My dad has a stronger accent and still sometimes struggles with the pronunciation of certain English words. It doesn’t bother me even for a second now, but I didn’t always feel that way. “It was more troubling to hear my parents speak in public…-it was unsettling to hear my parents struggle with English…In adulthood, I am embarrassed by childhood fears.” (1982, p. 11) I am ashamed now by my actions as a child. I am so proud of my parents and all the have accomplished coming to this country without family, friends, insight into American culture, food, or language. My dad’s first job in country was as a dishwasher in a restaurant making $3 an hour. Then he moved on to a factory job where he worked for years until he got two of his fingers chopped off by a faulty machine. (Thankfully, the doctors were able to take the skin from his forearm and reattach both fingers.) It makes me sick to think that I was embarrassed by my parents accents and the fact that we were different from everyone else, but when you are a teenager, all you want to do so desperately is be part of the crowd, not stick out of it.

            I once heard a Chinese-American comedian say that she felt as though as went to school in America and came home to China. I could not agree more. I felt the same way, except I was coming home to India. My grandmother came to live with us when I was seven years old. That is when started learning Gujarati, a North Indian language. So, unlike Rodriguez, I learned to speak English first. I was never an ELL student. My grandmother was appalled that I could not speak the language of my family so when she came to live with us, it was only Gujarati in the house was I came home after school. Why didn’t my parents teach me their language? Same reason that Rodriguez’s parents decided they would start talking English in the house when the nuns asked them to, “What would they not do for their child’s well-being?” (1982, p. 20). Education came first. They wanted me to do well in school so they taught me the language that I would need to use there. They wanted me to get a good education and have opportunities that they did not have. Because of my grandma, I became fluent in Gujarati and am now teaching it to my son.

            All while reading this book, I kept thinking what did Rodriguez’s parents and siblings think when they read his book? He is giving away so many secrets of his family; shelling out so many intimate details of feeling divided from his parents and feeling like education separated him from his culture. His parents must have been hurt, confused and, probably angry. One thing I think many ethnic cultures have in common is you do not tell your private family life to “outsiders”. “No matter how friendly they are in public, no matter how firm their smiles, my parents never forget when they are in public. My mother must use a high-pitched voice when she addresses people who are not relatives. It is a tone of voice I have all my life heard her use away from the house.” (1982, p. 191). I could have written these words. All my life I have heard my parents and grandmother tell me that our private affairs stay private. All the disagreements, fights, yelling, sibling bickering; none of it leaves the household. I am never supposed to talk about it with my friends or anyone else. My mom used to come home from work and tell us about the troubles her co-workers teenagers would get into, who got suspended from school, who got pregnant from her gas station working boyfriend, etc. “Why would you want to tell people that” she would ask my dad? Why would you tell strangers about the bad things happening in your family’s lives? My mom has been working at the same place, with the same people for the past 17 years and she still only tells them certain things. My heart actually hurt a little when Rodriguez’s mother asked him to write about something else other than their family, “please”, because I understand the thinking behind that request.

            I have always been a proponent of affirmative action. My reason behind it was that it is not that easy for a child from a socially disadvantaged area to do well in school. I think back to my students in Detroit. Even in second grade, they were battling parents with drug abuse problems, one or more parents being incarcerated, violence in their homes and neighborhoods, issues of having enough food to eat on a daily basis and so much more. For them to make it all the way through grade school and graduated from college is an amazing feat. Kids in the suburbs do not have those issues, for the most part (there are always exceptions). But even though students from socially disadvantaged areas graduate, they still have no chance when compared to a student from a suburban school that graduates high school with a higher GPA, AP classes, and membership and leadership roles in school committees. They need someone to give them a break. But then Rodriguez brought to light what affirmative action is really missing. “The strategy of affirmative action, finally, did not take seriously the educational dilemma of disadvantaged students. They need good early schooling!” (1982, p. 162). Affirmative action was allowing students into colleges that they were not prepared for! Because of that, they were struggling in their classes, dropping out, or even worse, having mental breakdowns. The biggest problem is not that colleges and universities do not have enough diversity on campus or on staff but that our educational system is not preparing all students equally for colleges and universities. Reading that and coming to that realization was like a light bulb turning on in my head. You can accept as many “minorities” into your colleges but it is not going to help if they are not prepared for the curriculum.

            This book brought back so many feelings and emotions that I had not thought about in a long time. It is comforting to know that there are other people that went through some of the same issues with identity and culture as I did. It brings to light that our educational system still has such a long way to go in making education an equal opportunity for all students. I feel proud that Richard Rodriguez was able to become so successful in his life when he entered school only knowing 50 English words, but I feel sad that in doing so, he lost some of his culture in the process.