Putting A Label On The Skill - An Early Morning Ramble

I attended a professional development workshop yesterday that was hosted at the ROE and presented Mr. Alfred Ramirez, and now it's 5 a.m. on a Saturday, and I can't sleep because I have too many thoughts running through my brain.  I'm not sure if recording these thoughts now will get me back to sleep if I'm able to drain my brain into this digital message, but it's okay if I'm a little extra tired today.

Mr. Ramirez presented the first part of a three-part workshop which I can best describe as helping people better appreciate and promote diversity.  Yesterday, what hit me hardest was a label that was new for me - cultural competency.  Ramirez defined cultural competency to mean "the ability to navigate and relate effectively in a society of cultural variation."

I have to admit here that I decided to attend this particular workshop because I'm entering the end of my teaching career, and I really don't want to participate in another English or SAT prep workshop at this particular time, and I cringe when I'm confronted with what I affectionately call the "rednecks" and their limited view of other cultures and races.  In fact, I humbly admit that when I hear about some mass shooting somewhere in the world, I literally think to myself that that particular person somewhere sat in a high school and completed coursework with teachers.  I wonder how I would feel if a mass shooting involved one of my former students, and I had felt signs even then with that student of her/his racism and didn't do enough about it.

This label of cultural competency, though, is something I've been thinking about for a long time, and it's something I've been working on while I didn't exactly have a name for it.  In fact, I do want my students to possess cultural competency; I do want them to be able to navigate and relate effectively in a society that may include cultural variation if their post-secondary training options take them that direction.

And what's important...it's okay if their post-secondary options don't take them to cultural variation.  If their life takes them in a direction that doesn't include cultural variety, that's okay.  This is something that also arose in yesterday's workshop; we shouldn't feel guilty or awkward if our community or our workplace for us doesn't necessarily include cultural variety.  The important aspect is that if our community or workplace develops variety, then we should have the skills and comfort to "navigate" and "relate". 

(As a side note I would also add that even if our home, family, community, and workplace don't have cultural variation, we should be open to and seek out opportunities to keep our cultural competency "skilled" and ready for use.)

I think I got sidetracked in this blog, so let me return....

I want my students to have cultural competency; I want them to be able to navigate and relate in a society of cultural variation, so they are prepared if and when variety develops in their lives.

AND THE MAGIC QUESTION IS....how do I do that?  I'm a white male with very little diversity experience.  I teach in a school district with virtually no cultural diversity.  (We were reminded yesterday that a lot of diversity exists everywhere, even if little or no cultural diversity exists.)  I live in a community with virtually no cultural diversity.  

Another sidetrack....I have often wondered how our world might be better off if rather than four years of required English, we instead had three years of required English and one year of a required high school course that included content on good parenting.  Why not have a course on cultural competency?  In fact, I'm even okay with a semester of good parenting and a semester of cultural competency.  Wouldn't our world be a better place if we helped students learn good parenting skills and cultural competency skills?  Maybe we would have fewer mass shootings if we focused on these things and not increasing the number of guns needed.

So for the next few weeks, I'm going to concentrate on trying to find ways to continue increasing the cultural competency of students.  I already try to push multicultural books.  I can also continue to do the following

- journal topics

- passages I use for SAT style reading practice

- prompts I use for SAT style essay practice

- continue indigenous people literature and slave literature units

And now the big one and perhaps most challenging - bring non-white guests into the classroom.  And perhaps the "topic" is .... "Help my culturally incompetent students become just a little more competent by sharing yourself - your story and your concerns, anxiety, and excitement for our world today."  

That's something that Mr. Ramirez started out with yesterday.  It took over two hours for everyone to introduce themselves, but one of the questions he had everyone write down to share with the group was "What concerns, anxiety or excitement do you have?"  The reason this question was included was to show us that despite any and all differences we might have, we all share some common concerns, anxiety, and excitement.  And when we are able to better recognize our similarities, we then can better "navigate" and "relate" to each other.

Can I find folks that would be willing to share themselves five times in a school day?  Would they be interested and willing to share their stories and concerns, anxiety, and excitement to help us - students and me - increase our cultural competency skills?

Honestly and perhaps selfishly that's one area of disappointment I had yesterday - most of the attendants at the conference were white middle-aged folks, just like me and there were NO other teachers from rural school districts.  (That really depressed me.)  One weird realization, though, was that a "concern" from all of the other attendants was a difficulty in getting more diversity in the teaching staffs at the various school districts.  They expressed concern that while their student populations had more diversity than their teaching staffs, and that they wished they could increase diversity in the teaching staffs.

I'm looking forward to meeting again with Mr. Ramirez in a few weeks.

WOTA...Just What the Doctor Ordered

A few years back, a parent of a student suggested I might enjoy attending a WOTA meeting - a group of area folks with an interest in writing.  Writers On The Avenue meets in Muscatine a couple of times a month; they have a website; and they are a group that offers a variety of events for writers.  FINALLY, I was able to attend a meeting last night.  It just seemed like other monthly meetings always had some type of conflict, usually I was officiating or umpiring somewhere.

With the awkwardness of kid making his way to a new school, I sheepishly found my way to Room 17 via some help by the gentleman at the help desk of the Musser Library.  It made perfect sense that he would half to walk me to the basement of the building past stacks of books to get me to Room 17, and there I saw two men and two women casually talking.  My latest email informed me that a business meeting took place at 5:30 p.m., but then the meeting of the group that welcomed visitors then started at 6:00 p.m.

While I read from my book outside the room, I quickly determined that there wasn't much "business" being discussed, so I gently knocked on the door and asked if visitors were now welcome.  The four welcomed me and suggested I could join them, and pretty soon three other men entered the group.

There were some informational items and introductions, and then everyone shared (everyone except me) something that they had recently written.  I later found out that a group of words was generated at each meeting, and those words were then the launching point for a piece of writing to craft and share at the next meeting.

The experience was awesome.  In my teaching now, I pretty much have to battle students to write, and because my focus is on the SAT, creative writing is pretty much non-existent in my coursework.  But here at my fingertips were adults that were not only passionate about writing but also demonstrating a love for words and the power words could offer.

I'm not sure if I will ever go back, but only because I don't know the next time my schedule will allow me to return.  I did, though, get a chance to experience WRITERS, and my heart and soul bounced a little when I left having been around folks that had courage to submit their efforts to others and had a desire to share and appreciate other works. 

My mind took me forward to the possibility of exploring my own writing interests after I retire or perhaps looking into an opportunity to teach in college as an adjunct instructor.  The evening, in the short time of a little over an hour, was inspirational...just the treatment for this old teacher growing sometimes weary of the daily battle in NE10.

I'm Feeling It Now

I always told myself and everyone else, I would teach until I died in my chair in the classroom.  Then this past summer I started to seriously think about retirement.  Then I went to a retirement meeting and really started thinking about it.  And now, I'm feeling it.

I hear officials and umpires tell me that they never want to retire when they really need to.  They never really want someone to tell them that it's time to retire.  I completely understand that, and I agree.  Lately, I've been thinking about the same thing with teaching.  On the other hand, I haven't just been thinking it; I've been feeling it.

Maybe it's me just getting old, but it seems to me that students are getting more arrogant.  They exude this cockiness that appears to state that I'm too old for them to really be a benefit to them.  I'm sure I did the same thing as a teenage student with teachers I had that were nearing the end of their career.  I'm not suggesting that I was better at that age.  Or maybe they have always been this way, and I'm just sensing it more.  I'd like to believe that because I'm so experienced that students should really listen to what I'm telling them - not because I'm smarter - because I just have been through it.

So in the ever nearer distance, I'm feeling retirement.  I think I want to be available for my parents, for my grandchildren, and I really don't want to go out needing to retire.  I want to retire before that time, when I still have something of value left to give but don't overdo it.

We Are Missing THE BIG PICTURE

The students I'm working with, overall, have either lost or never developed two big ticket items - an appreciation for the reading process and appreciation for the writing process.  And developing appreciation for those things now as 11th-grade students is very challenging.  In our efforts to educate our kids, I think too many times we teachers focus on "our stuff" and forget about the "big stuff".  Maybe we don't think there is time to just read or just write, or maybe we never ourselves developed an appreciation for reading and/or writing.

I've said for my entire career, that I wonder how much I could improve performance scores if all we did in class was read and write.  And as I've aged, that's pretty much what I find myself doing with my lesson plans - focusing my efforts on students consistently reading and writing and trying my best to foster an interest in those two big ticket things.

It's a battle I've waged my entire career, and my energy level seems to drop each and every year.  I'm trying...I'm really trying.