Sunday, February 14, 2010
19 February 2009: Kaifeng
I think today was my favorite so far. Well that's hard to say, but it was great. We went to buy glasses--RMB 300 for 2 pairs. I like mine but the prescription isn't quite right. No surprise there. But then we ate at Richard's house and went to the judges mansion, or whatever. It was the parents, 2 aunts, an uncle, and us 2 young ones. I think they loved me. We had a lot of fun. I gave all of them my US coins. They were entranced. Dinner was some soup with various mushrooms. It was quiet. And I fell. My shins hurt. I'm tired. Learned a word. Si ba'. Or something. Means yeah? or really?/right?
18 February 2009: Kaifeng
山 shan. mountain.
Watching CCTV9, a news feature called Dialogue is on discussing the Chinese president's 5-nation African tour. It's pretty much just veiled yet specific criticism of the US. For example: "What do you think about Steven Spielberg's boycotting the Beijing Olympic Ceremonies in response to China's involvement with the Sudanese government?" "First of all, if there was any loss, it's his. Second, people tend to focus on specific examples. They must see the general principle that China maintains--non-interference in other countries' domestic affairs. We wouldn't go in unilaterally." Other example: "How does this visit contradict the Western criticism about Chinese involvement with human rights and humanitarian aid?" "Well China has never participated in slavery of the African nations or in racial discrimination for political purposes..." And "How does Pres. Hu's visit contradict the Western criticism that China is only involved in countries with rich national resources?" "Well 4 of the 5 countries are not known for their natural resources." It surprised me how much the program served as an apologist for China's foreign policy decision and subtle yet specific criticism of Western (read: US) behavior.
Anyway, I'm in Kaifeng staying at Wang He's uncle's empty house. Everyone is taking such great care of me. Kaifeng is an ancient city. Some great photos will come of today. We went to the plaza last night with all the snacks Richard told me about so long ago. I got hit (kind of, the back wheel rubbed my leg) by a rickshaw, which I think is funny. So last night was a lively environment.
(later that day...)
Had so much fun touring a park here in Kaifeng. I got a Chinese name. It's Yang Hui (Yang: foreign/fashion and Hui: clever/lovely) and the boys are excited about it. I hit my stride with chopsticks. Gao Xinhua said he's learned a lot from me about Americans, which makes me nervous :)
We ate these dumplings/buns that look like flowers when in the pan, then you pick them up and they look like lanterns. You bite and suck the juice out then eat it. Fun.
I also got my picture taken with some traditional costume. I was embarrassed at first but then loved it. A girl wanted a photo with me.
Watching CCTV9, a news feature called Dialogue is on discussing the Chinese president's 5-nation African tour. It's pretty much just veiled yet specific criticism of the US. For example: "What do you think about Steven Spielberg's boycotting the Beijing Olympic Ceremonies in response to China's involvement with the Sudanese government?" "First of all, if there was any loss, it's his. Second, people tend to focus on specific examples. They must see the general principle that China maintains--non-interference in other countries' domestic affairs. We wouldn't go in unilaterally." Other example: "How does this visit contradict the Western criticism about Chinese involvement with human rights and humanitarian aid?" "Well China has never participated in slavery of the African nations or in racial discrimination for political purposes..." And "How does Pres. Hu's visit contradict the Western criticism that China is only involved in countries with rich national resources?" "Well 4 of the 5 countries are not known for their natural resources." It surprised me how much the program served as an apologist for China's foreign policy decision and subtle yet specific criticism of Western (read: US) behavior.
Anyway, I'm in Kaifeng staying at Wang He's uncle's empty house. Everyone is taking such great care of me. Kaifeng is an ancient city. Some great photos will come of today. We went to the plaza last night with all the snacks Richard told me about so long ago. I got hit (kind of, the back wheel rubbed my leg) by a rickshaw, which I think is funny. So last night was a lively environment.
(later that day...)
Had so much fun touring a park here in Kaifeng. I got a Chinese name. It's Yang Hui (Yang: foreign/fashion and Hui: clever/lovely) and the boys are excited about it. I hit my stride with chopsticks. Gao Xinhua said he's learned a lot from me about Americans, which makes me nervous :)
We ate these dumplings/buns that look like flowers when in the pan, then you pick them up and they look like lanterns. You bite and suck the juice out then eat it. Fun.
I also got my picture taken with some traditional costume. I was embarrassed at first but then loved it. A girl wanted a photo with me.
17 February 2009: Zhengzhou
I am feeling much better about myself today after blow drying my hair and using my straightener (I kept from Australia--I'm so resourceful.)
Last night after Shaolin Si we went to a hot pot restaurant. It was HUGE--three floors, apparently 100 tables but I suspect there may have been more. They put some water in a tray then this fire in a copper thing and a cone on top. Somewhere there is a bowl surrounding the fire that has water in it. My friends ordered very thinly shaved meats (lamb, beef), vegetables (spinach, that mystery vegetable that is white with holes in it [drawing of lotus root], mushroom something that to me looked like red lettuce crossed with seaweed, white mushrooms that look like sprouts, tofu that to me looked like brain, and noodles. The idea is to pick up the food with chopsticks, swirl it around until it cooks, and pull it back out and eat it. Usually they placed the food in the bowl of sesame sauce. Oh I forgot--I think we had meatballs made of something like spam. Sweet flavor. I liked it. It was such a fun meal. I had trouble holding on to the stuff I cooked. My friends asked for a fork for me, and it wasn't easy to come up with one. I didn't use it except for the slippery noodles. At the end the water is a soup which actually tasted pretty good.
K on the way out we all had a hard time leaving together so I spent some time on each stair landing. Let me tell you, I caused QUITE A STIR. I don't exaggerate when I say everyone that noticed me stared. I just smiled at them as sweetly as I could. One waitress smiled back.
The TV is on. The channels actually remind me of Italian television,which doesn't surprise me because both are state owned.
Something which does surprise me though is I haven't seen evidence of price fixing, except I saw a store yesterday that said "______ Monopolized Store." I just know that price fixing has been a feature of Communist systems. I have a lot to learn but it seems there is a blend of capitalism and communism. Richard told me last night unemployment is something like 30% and for recent university graduates it's even higher--like 50%. I'm glad he can be in Australia.
I learned some characters and numbers yesterday. In the building with 500 monks because they are numbered. 一 二 三 四 that's 1-4. I don't know 5. 6 looks like a running man. There's some busy character that comes first to let you know it's a number, then if I haven't remembered incorrectly [abstraction of busy # character] 二百一十三 means 213. 百 means hundred and 十 means ten. I really think I could learn this language especially since I seem to associate characters with meanings and sounds. Well I was feeling confident like that last night until the computer's auto-Chinese speller showed me there can be multiple characters for given sounds.
Distance is a heartless tyrant.
开封 [Kaifeng]
The boys took me on a scary Ferris Wheel. Oh dear. It was in the Zhengzhou public park. While walking in this park we came across two men (one old, one young) playing table tennis. Liu Jie asked if we could borrow their paddles and we hit a few serves. :)
We left Jackie and Amber (Wang Li Juen...I think, Li = victory and Juen = beauty) in Zhengzhou. Jackie has an English (ILS?) exam on Thursday so he stayed. This event spawned the tyrannical distance complaint. They didn't fill me on too well on the day's plans so it was unexpected. It was mildly like leaving Australia again. I hate goodbyes. But maybe now there won't be as much doting :) (I asked about the monopolized store. It's the mobile phone company, state owned.)
Last night after Shaolin Si we went to a hot pot restaurant. It was HUGE--three floors, apparently 100 tables but I suspect there may have been more. They put some water in a tray then this fire in a copper thing and a cone on top. Somewhere there is a bowl surrounding the fire that has water in it. My friends ordered very thinly shaved meats (lamb, beef), vegetables (spinach, that mystery vegetable that is white with holes in it [drawing of lotus root], mushroom something that to me looked like red lettuce crossed with seaweed, white mushrooms that look like sprouts, tofu that to me looked like brain, and noodles. The idea is to pick up the food with chopsticks, swirl it around until it cooks, and pull it back out and eat it. Usually they placed the food in the bowl of sesame sauce. Oh I forgot--I think we had meatballs made of something like spam. Sweet flavor. I liked it. It was such a fun meal. I had trouble holding on to the stuff I cooked. My friends asked for a fork for me, and it wasn't easy to come up with one. I didn't use it except for the slippery noodles. At the end the water is a soup which actually tasted pretty good.
K on the way out we all had a hard time leaving together so I spent some time on each stair landing. Let me tell you, I caused QUITE A STIR. I don't exaggerate when I say everyone that noticed me stared. I just smiled at them as sweetly as I could. One waitress smiled back.
The TV is on. The channels actually remind me of Italian television,which doesn't surprise me because both are state owned.
Something which does surprise me though is I haven't seen evidence of price fixing, except I saw a store yesterday that said "______ Monopolized Store." I just know that price fixing has been a feature of Communist systems. I have a lot to learn but it seems there is a blend of capitalism and communism. Richard told me last night unemployment is something like 30% and for recent university graduates it's even higher--like 50%. I'm glad he can be in Australia.
I learned some characters and numbers yesterday. In the building with 500 monks because they are numbered. 一 二 三 四 that's 1-4. I don't know 5. 6 looks like a running man. There's some busy character that comes first to let you know it's a number, then if I haven't remembered incorrectly [abstraction of busy # character] 二百一十三 means 213. 百 means hundred and 十 means ten. I really think I could learn this language especially since I seem to associate characters with meanings and sounds. Well I was feeling confident like that last night until the computer's auto-Chinese speller showed me there can be multiple characters for given sounds.
Distance is a heartless tyrant.
开封 [Kaifeng]
The boys took me on a scary Ferris Wheel. Oh dear. It was in the Zhengzhou public park. While walking in this park we came across two men (one old, one young) playing table tennis. Liu Jie asked if we could borrow their paddles and we hit a few serves. :)
We left Jackie and Amber (Wang Li Juen...I think, Li = victory and Juen = beauty) in Zhengzhou. Jackie has an English (ILS?) exam on Thursday so he stayed. This event spawned the tyrannical distance complaint. They didn't fill me on too well on the day's plans so it was unexpected. It was mildly like leaving Australia again. I hate goodbyes. But maybe now there won't be as much doting :) (I asked about the monopolized store. It's the mobile phone company, state owned.)
16 February 2009: Shaolin temple, Dengfeng
16 February 2009
Uncle's name is Gao Xinhua.
Last night as I went to sleep hypothetical conversations in Chinese were running through my head. I think I could learn this language.
RAIN SNOW FOG OF DAY
CROOKE ROAD SLOW DOWN
--poetic road sign
Donkey vehicle.
I just asked Liu Jie if he brought his orange clothes so he can teach the monks kong fu. Wang He's response: "teach fish to swim"
shao lin temple 少林寺 Shao Lin Si
坚持计划生育基本国策
"stick to the basis State policy for family planning" --roadside billboard
Uncle's name is Gao Xinhua.
Last night as I went to sleep hypothetical conversations in Chinese were running through my head. I think I could learn this language.
RAIN SNOW FOG OF DAY
CROOKE ROAD SLOW DOWN
--poetic road sign
Donkey vehicle.
I just asked Liu Jie if he brought his orange clothes so he can teach the monks kong fu. Wang He's response: "teach fish to swim"
shao lin temple 少林寺 Shao Lin Si
坚持计划生育基本国策
"stick to the basis State policy for family planning" --roadside billboard
15 February 2009: Shanghai and Zhengzhou
At the Pudong branch. We arrived quite early. Met Br. Lewis.
I am SO happy to be in China. I want to take some conversational Chinese classes. I think babies have more fun learning Chinese than learning English. I find myself always wanting to imitate the speech I hear. It's irresistible.
Zhao Ting is Xiaomei's roommate. She is so sweet. I want to package her in a Chinese takeout box and bring her home to America with me. Last night she played some hymns on her Kawai piano and I sang I know that my Redeemer lives, a song Sister Wang always wanted to sing my first transfer, and truth reflects upon our senses, one of her favorites. I love that I could sing those hymns in a Communist country without missionaries.
I took a most interesting shower. They don't use the bathtub in this apartment. They just shower on the floor. There's a drain on the floor. I think I left my shower shoes...
On the way to church (taxi - subway - taxi), we passed an old man sitting on a bench with his pet rabbit on the ground next to him. We passed a couple of bikes with the guy pedaling and the girl on the back side saddling. I thought it was cute. Apparently it's illegal.
The RS president reminds me of D. Grant.
Brother Lewis suggested accurately that Sister L. [my mission president's wife] is one of the world's greatest missionaries. [My mission president and his family used to live in Shanghai and attended church at the same branch.]
So excited to see my converts in a few hours. My sheaves.
ZHENGZHOU
I am feeling laden with sheaves. I arrived in Zhengzhou to Richard, Jackie, Amber (Jackie's fiancee/wife), and Richard's uncle (husband of father's sister), though so far he has no name. We went to eat at some little restaurant. I had some trouble with my chopsticks. So funny. So Jackie served me food every once in a while. As we walked out (we had a private room to avoid smoke and staring), a teenage waiter boy was poised with his camera phone open and pointed directly at me. Premeditated paparazzi behavior. It was all I could do to keep from laughing but I lost composure when I walked out.
Oh, for dinner we had some kind of vegetable that apparently grows in the mud. The cross section looks like this: [ drawing ] okay that was a poor representation but it resembled Swiss cheese and reminded me a little of water chestnut. Also, some kind of preserved pork, spicy tofu, baby Chinese cabbage, and soup with noodles like 1 inch wide and in some cases a couple of feet long.
Caption: Lotus root
I wanted to make a note that Jessie from the airplane scolded me for not using more expensive beauty products. She asked me if I use Clinique. She was disappointed when I said I use the stuff that costs $3. :)
So at church Xiaomei introduced me to Brett E. from Bountiful, who served in Hong Kong then learned Mandarin at the U. I also met a Chinese Australian from Perth. I was so excited to hear his accent. His name is Kaolin or something.
OH. As we got off the subway, Silent Night in English was playing on the speakers. Weird: It's February and this is not a Christian country.
Tomorrow we visit the Shaolin temple. I am so excited to spend time with these people. I am so happy to be here.
People at church today talked about the L.'s (I went to their old branch) and how wonderful they are and how thy miss them. It really makes me want to be excellent and develop good habits and be selfless so I can have an excellent family. Elder, oops President, Eyring's most recent First Presidency message said that many people he's interacted with report that the Mormon family they knew were the finest people they ever knew. I want to live so others can say that about my family and be attracted to the gospel. I have a lot of practicing to do. I think living in a foreign country as a family is great preparation for being those fine people.
I am SO happy to be in China. I want to take some conversational Chinese classes. I think babies have more fun learning Chinese than learning English. I find myself always wanting to imitate the speech I hear. It's irresistible.
Zhao Ting is Xiaomei's roommate. She is so sweet. I want to package her in a Chinese takeout box and bring her home to America with me. Last night she played some hymns on her Kawai piano and I sang I know that my Redeemer lives, a song Sister Wang always wanted to sing my first transfer, and truth reflects upon our senses, one of her favorites. I love that I could sing those hymns in a Communist country without missionaries.
I took a most interesting shower. They don't use the bathtub in this apartment. They just shower on the floor. There's a drain on the floor. I think I left my shower shoes...
On the way to church (taxi - subway - taxi), we passed an old man sitting on a bench with his pet rabbit on the ground next to him. We passed a couple of bikes with the guy pedaling and the girl on the back side saddling. I thought it was cute. Apparently it's illegal.
The RS president reminds me of D. Grant.
Brother Lewis suggested accurately that Sister L. [my mission president's wife] is one of the world's greatest missionaries. [My mission president and his family used to live in Shanghai and attended church at the same branch.]
So excited to see my converts in a few hours. My sheaves.
ZHENGZHOU
I am feeling laden with sheaves. I arrived in Zhengzhou to Richard, Jackie, Amber (Jackie's fiancee/wife), and Richard's uncle (husband of father's sister), though so far he has no name. We went to eat at some little restaurant. I had some trouble with my chopsticks. So funny. So Jackie served me food every once in a while. As we walked out (we had a private room to avoid smoke and staring), a teenage waiter boy was poised with his camera phone open and pointed directly at me. Premeditated paparazzi behavior. It was all I could do to keep from laughing but I lost composure when I walked out.
Oh, for dinner we had some kind of vegetable that apparently grows in the mud. The cross section looks like this: [ drawing ] okay that was a poor representation but it resembled Swiss cheese and reminded me a little of water chestnut. Also, some kind of preserved pork, spicy tofu, baby Chinese cabbage, and soup with noodles like 1 inch wide and in some cases a couple of feet long.
Caption: Lotus rootI wanted to make a note that Jessie from the airplane scolded me for not using more expensive beauty products. She asked me if I use Clinique. She was disappointed when I said I use the stuff that costs $3. :)
So at church Xiaomei introduced me to Brett E. from Bountiful, who served in Hong Kong then learned Mandarin at the U. I also met a Chinese Australian from Perth. I was so excited to hear his accent. His name is Kaolin or something.
OH. As we got off the subway, Silent Night in English was playing on the speakers. Weird: It's February and this is not a Christian country.
Tomorrow we visit the Shaolin temple. I am so excited to spend time with these people. I am so happy to be here.
People at church today talked about the L.'s (I went to their old branch) and how wonderful they are and how thy miss them. It really makes me want to be excellent and develop good habits and be selfless so I can have an excellent family. Elder, oops President, Eyring's most recent First Presidency message said that many people he's interacted with report that the Mormon family they knew were the finest people they ever knew. I want to live so others can say that about my family and be attracted to the gospel. I have a lot of practicing to do. I think living in a foreign country as a family is great preparation for being those fine people.
14 February 2009: Shanghai
14 Feb - cold night in Shanghai
[note from 2010 Savanna: my plane landed and Wang Xiaomei was at the airport to meet me. I did not expect our reaction upon seeing each other. We stood where we met, hugging and crying among all the other people, who greeted their loved ones with underplayed emotion. I am sure we were a strange sight. I did not want to be separated from her so we walked arm in arm to buy tickets to the Maglev train (the fastest train in the world). While in the taxi, we updated each other on our mutual acquaintances while my first impressions of China presented themselves through the window. That cold night Zhao Ting, Xiaomei, and I slept in a large, (very hard) bed and tried to stay warm. We took a photo--where is that picture?]
[note from 2010 Savanna: my plane landed and Wang Xiaomei was at the airport to meet me. I did not expect our reaction upon seeing each other. We stood where we met, hugging and crying among all the other people, who greeted their loved ones with underplayed emotion. I am sure we were a strange sight. I did not want to be separated from her so we walked arm in arm to buy tickets to the Maglev train (the fastest train in the world). While in the taxi, we updated each other on our mutual acquaintances while my first impressions of China presented themselves through the window. That cold night Zhao Ting, Xiaomei, and I slept in a large, (very hard) bed and tried to stay warm. We took a photo--where is that picture?]
13 February 2009: Flight
I landed in China one year ago today. Wang Xiaomei was my valentine. The posts that follow are from the journal I kept while traveling. These are my unprocessed thoughts as they were 365 days ago.
Northwest flight 25 Detroit - Tokyo Narita - Shanghai Hong Qiao
13 February 2009
"I wonder why God created the world to be so largely uninhabited." -- my thoughts as we flew over Alaska with its frozen rivers and landscape of snow-frosted mountains. It's too cloudy to see the ground right now. I'll be upset if this is my view of the Bering Strait. I'm so excited about looking out the window to see Russia.
My favorite thing about this flight is that it's light all the way to Japan. I left Boston at 5:56 am Friday and arrive in Tokyo at 4:40 pm Saturday. That's technically like 35 consecutive daylight hours, though I'm not actually living through all 35 of them. That I'm not prepared to calculate.
I sat by a lady from Boston to Detroit who is going to Savannah. I found that an interesting coincidence for her.
Just now I met a friendly Chinese girl while we were both oogling out the exit window at the landscape. Her name is Jessie. Her husband is a business student at Michigan.
I'm going to try to keep a good travel journal, something I've never done.
Northwest flight 25 Detroit - Tokyo Narita - Shanghai Hong Qiao
13 February 2009
"I wonder why God created the world to be so largely uninhabited." -- my thoughts as we flew over Alaska with its frozen rivers and landscape of snow-frosted mountains. It's too cloudy to see the ground right now. I'll be upset if this is my view of the Bering Strait. I'm so excited about looking out the window to see Russia.
My favorite thing about this flight is that it's light all the way to Japan. I left Boston at 5:56 am Friday and arrive in Tokyo at 4:40 pm Saturday. That's technically like 35 consecutive daylight hours, though I'm not actually living through all 35 of them. That I'm not prepared to calculate.
I sat by a lady from Boston to Detroit who is going to Savannah. I found that an interesting coincidence for her.
Just now I met a friendly Chinese girl while we were both oogling out the exit window at the landscape. Her name is Jessie. Her husband is a business student at Michigan.
I'm going to try to keep a good travel journal, something I've never done.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Back to Bostonia?
It may seem premature, but I'm thinking about what I want to do next. So far, this (of all specifically academic or career pursuits) is the only thing that has gotten me excited. It is revolutionary and integrates my interests in education and government with practical management skills. It would be a good transition from my Education and Social Change degree and I could do the 3rd-year residency with TFA. I just don't know that I am the kind of high-powered producer they need (I realized lately that I am art and precision, not output and efficiency) and I am not certain that a high-powered career is what I want.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
maybe this is what i want.
exchanged glances, inside jokes
late-night talks of love and hope
plan the future, see the past
making our together last
spreadsheet, budget, morning news
scrambled eggs and orange juice
ride to school and then ballet
get the dishes put away
sprinklers, swimsuits, lemonade
take a nap once we have played
tigers, zebras at the zoo
picnic, playground, sand in shoes
porch swing underneath the moon
end of summer, come too soon
telling stories, calming cries
thunderstorms and fireflies
pumpkins, peacoats, fallen leaves
orange and gold and red on trees
tiny batman down the street
fairy princess, trick or treat
waffles, bacon, jam on toast
prepare the lamb for sunday roast
all dressed up for sabbath day
learn to serve, learn to pray
exchanged glances, inside jokes
late-night talks of love and hope
plan the future, see the past
making our together last
late-night talks of love and hope
plan the future, see the past
making our together last
spreadsheet, budget, morning news
scrambled eggs and orange juice
ride to school and then ballet
get the dishes put away
sprinklers, swimsuits, lemonade
take a nap once we have played
tigers, zebras at the zoo
picnic, playground, sand in shoes
porch swing underneath the moon
end of summer, come too soon
telling stories, calming cries
thunderstorms and fireflies
pumpkins, peacoats, fallen leaves
orange and gold and red on trees
tiny batman down the street
fairy princess, trick or treat
waffles, bacon, jam on toast
prepare the lamb for sunday roast
all dressed up for sabbath day
learn to serve, learn to pray
exchanged glances, inside jokes
late-night talks of love and hope
plan the future, see the past
making our together last
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
My identity web
Hi. I had to write a paper about my identity for my Understanding Culture in the Classroom grad school class. You can read it if you want. Go ahead and believe most of it. ;)
By the way, when you're in grad school and working way more than full time, you just have to get it done. Is this edited? No. Also sorry about the paragraphs. They disappeared.
Introduction
In my several months as a public school teacher, I have found that teaching is an incredibly personal undertaking. Inspiring curiosity, causing real learning, and procuring results require great reserves of character and commitment. In an attempt to examine how my experiences affect my job as a teacher, I have isolated the six most relevant aspects of my identity. Some of these slices bleed into and color each other, creating a unique web of strengths and challenges that I must confront in order to be effective.
My race, white, represents five percent of my identity; my nationality, American, is significantly higher at twenty-two percent; my socioeconomic status, middle class, contributes eighteen percent. My education level provides fifteen percent of my identity; my gender, female, adds ten percent, and my religion at thirty percent completes my identity web. An explanation of each one and how it affects my work as a professional follows.
Race: White. Others perceive it more than I do.
I assigned a value of five percent to the race portion of my identity because I am of course aware of being white but historically I have only occasionally thought about how it affects my identity. It seems peculiar to assign such a low weight to someone whose ancestry is 100 percent Northern European, but for most of my life, my race has not been a useful tool for defining myself in the context of the people around me. My elementary and high schools had a present, but minor, representation of African-American and Hispanic students. We all got along well, so the white students defined themselves against each other rather than against students of other races. Individualized characteristics dominated our labels: he is a straight-A student; he is a track star. She is Irish, she is an artist. After high school, I attended a religious university, where I shared a faith with the other students that united us above everything else.
Race as an aspect of my identity became slightly more pertinent as I pursued international experiences after graduation. I lived and worked in Italy for half a year and in Australia for a year and a half. In Italy, the color of my skin made it obvious that I was not a native. In Australia, I worked with immigrants of Asian origin: people from China, the Philippines, Thailand, India. The people I met respected me and were interested in what made us different. They also endeavored to find what was common between us. I found success in adapting well to living among people of other races.
Now that I find myself an absolute minority in my new Miamian community, my racial identity has suddenly gained a huge amount of relevance, especially at my school. My sixth- and seventh-grade student population is about half African-American and half Latino. The racial composition of the faculty is about the same, with a handful of white teachers. One of my earliest impressions of the racial differences my students saw in me was when one of my homeroom students repeated back to me a few words I had said. I heard how my whiteness rubbed against them as she mimicked the cadence of my voice and pronunciation of my words. Hearing her and later students imitate my language made me feel like a specimen.
Evidence of some of my students feeling racially different from me has arisen when my African-American students have accused me of racism when they have thought I was siding with my Latino students. My African-American students call my Latino students white. I am not sure whether the African-American students believe I am of the same race as my Latino students, but I am sure that my Latino students do not believe that we are of the same race.
It has been a deep struggle for me to find that being a minority with an authority role in my classroom is much different from adapting to living among people of other cultures. I need to realize that while I do not see myself as my students’ white teacher, my students see me as just that. There is one other first-year teacher that is of the same race as many of the students. She has done phenomenally well with classroom management and building relationships with her students. I attribute the difference in our experiences in part to her being racially similar to them. Realizing this, I had to work to convince myself that my students can benefit from having a teacher who is very different from them, that I can have a legitimate constructive role in their lives.
I have also had some struggle adapting to customs that people of races other than mine have. There have been other teachers and staff at the school who have perceived me as unfriendly because I did not practice some of the local cultural norms, such as offering food to all people in a room or stopping to speak to all people. I have sometimes appeared overly businesslike, using behavior that I thought was professional but others thought was discourteous. Being occasionally reprimanded whether by words or by attitude toward me by my colleagues has made it easier to understand the expectations of my students.
Nationality: American. The source of my ideals.
I gave my race only a five percent share of my identity, but my nationality as an American receives twenty-two percent of the overall pie. I have always been proud to be a descendant of the religious freedom-seeking Pilgrims who helped establish American values. I hold dear such longstanding American values such as freedom of religion, social mobility, equality of opportunity, civic participation, and a solid work ethic. I place a high importance on the individual’s responsibility to contribute to a successful community. Much of what I do and the way I see the world and my perception of my moral duties comes from this perspective.
These values are precisely what led me to choose to be a teacher in a high-poverty community. American beliefs have found practical expression in me as a commitment to working for opportunity for all where it does not exist. It is offensive to this deeply American set of ideals that a person could be willing to work to raise the plight of his or her family but cannot locate the opportunities that will allow for an increase in quality of life. I recoil at the thought of people being mired in poverty, unable to climb the social mobility ladder. My students because of the economic situation of the community where they live simply do not have access to the quality of education and, almost as importantly, high expectations that they need in order to improve their quality of life. Equality of opportunity is more often an ideal than a reality, so I chose to do what I can to bring opportunity to students whose lives I see as more difficult than mine. Early Americans united to alleviate the suffering of, for example, a farmer who lost his barn. Today I join with my neighbors hoping to build opportunity where I believe there has been neglect and a loss of hope.
This set of beliefs from my nationality leads me to want to teach these values in my classroom. For example, on the first day of instruction this year I showed my students a list of the ten highest-paying jobs in the United States and compared the list to the ten lowest-paying jobs in the United States. I asked them to identify what salary they preferred: that of the anesthesiologist, whose income is at least $100,000, or that of the dishwasher, which was between $10,000 and $20,000. I wanted them to connect doing well in my classroom to being able to change their socioeconomic status. I wanted them to get a sense of their own social mobility.
I also try daily to teach them how the choices they make as individuals affect entire communities so that they can get a sense of the power they have for improving their communities or for depriving their communities. I have had difficulty, though, in trying to gauge how to do this without detracting from what pride they should have in being from the neighborhood where they live.
Socioeconomic status: middle class.
The related slices of race and nationality combine to make up just over one-fourth of my identity web. My socioeconomic status represents another eighteen percent of how I perceive my identity. This is another category where what I believe about myself, what others have assumed about me, and what is actually true do not neatly coincide. It is further complicated by my perception of my education level, which category will be considered in a later paragraph.
Much of my childhood was spent with my family being what I believe if measured by per capita income would technically be lower middle class, but during the past ten years has seen a shift to solid middle class. My elementary school was a Title I school. My family lived frugally by necessity and lived in neighborhoods my parents preferred not to live in. What people believed about me did not match these circumstances, however. New friends I made in middle school, and sometimes even in college, often made comments about how they thought that I was rich but changed their minds when they saw the family car or came to my house. Something about my mannerisms or appearance suggested that we had money. As years have passed and my family has grown older (I am the oldest of six children), our middle class status has stabilized.
I believe that having the experience of being lower middle class and feeling the push toward becoming solidly middle class has reinforced my value of social mobility. My perspective leads me to want my students to overcome their economic challenges and essentially escape their communities. I am not sure, again, that this is the right thing to want for them. I have led discussions on occasion about helping people less fortunate than themselves, and I am not sure that my students believe that they are in poverty as much as I believe they are. I see myself as having more access to success than they do because I have had a great education. I feel secure in my future. I have had the freedom to choose what and where I want to study and I want the same thing for them. I have not directly told them that I came with the intention of helping them escape the oppression of poverty, not knowing whether that would be encouraging and productive or hideously arrogant.
There is another, more frightening, aspect to the divide between my socioeconomic status and my students: I simply do not understand where they are coming from. I often become frustrated when they come to my class unprepared with a pen or a pencil and need to give them yet another item that I bought with my salary. It has required extended conversations with other teachers to realize that my students often lack food, medical care, and parents. I also become frustrated when they waste pens, crumple paper, and break pencils, wondering why people who have so little choose to squander what they have.
Education level: What complicates my perception of my socioeconomic status
Though my family’s socioeconomic status may have been lower middle class if measured by dollars per person, my perception of myself has always been higher because of my commitment to education. I assigned an importance of fifteen percent to this category. I always considered myself highly educated before I even went to college. My long-term plan when I was young was to go to the many required years of medical school, which evolved into getting a PhD in something interesting once I realized a medical career may not be best for my potential future family. I always felt like Harvard and Princeton were within my reach and I aligned my activities, thought processes, and interests with my idea of what a well educated person should be.
Since education has been so important to me, it is important to me that my students value what they are learning today as a path through the rest of middle school, the basis for success in high school, and the essential key to accessing college. One of my strengths as a teacher is my passion that everyone deserves an education, but it also leads to a great weakness. I feel intense frustration when my students do not have the same commitment to learning and academic success that I do. There is an opportunity here for me to learn to instruct my students’ desires so that they may want an education. Thankfully, other teachers have perceived my commitment to student achievement.
Gender: female, and I’m teaching because I want to.
I assigned ten percent of my identity web to my gender. As a highly educated female who values independence and adventure in my personal life, I am sometimes self-conscious of telling people that I am a teacher. Teaching seems like the fallback career for a woman: it is soft, easily interrupted by maternity leave, easily resumed after having children. When people ask me what I do, I often start by telling them about the mission of Teach for America before getting to the part that I am “just” a teacher. I always emphasize that I teach middle school, not elementary, and that I teach science. It is important to me to express that I am teaching because I believe in this mission, not because I am a woman who could not do something more ambitious.
My attitude does not persist within my school community. I feel valid and there is a good balance of male and female teachers. I do sometimes suspect that male teachers have an easier time with classroom management, which has been my greatest struggle, because of their physical size and volume of voice. I do believe that students can benefit from both female and male attributes that I may be able to reach some students better because of who I am.
Religion: the most salient slice of my identity
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which pervades most of what I think, feel, and do. Religion receives a thirty percent portion of my identity web. Mine is a minority Christian religion. In some ways it is a culture in itself that imposes layers on other segments of my identity. I have found fulfillment in it and have chosen to live by its standards. I defined myself in large part by my religion, which has often been misperceived, and so have had solid practice in staying confident in myself despite what others may think.
Weathering all of the comments that middle school students make about me has been easy because of my experience being somewhat different from others who may match me in the other part of my identity web. My students are starting to figure me out somewhat. I have told them to not wait until I curse at them before they choose to do the right thing because I do not think that is right. They have responded by asking me whether I am Jewish. My religion is another reason that I chose to do this job; I grew up with a commitment to serve others and help the less fortunate.
Conclusion
As I consider my identity web, I see a person who shares almost nothing with her students except for a small slice of it—my gender—that I share with about half of the people that I teach. This implies that if I am to truly make a difference this community that I have joined, I need to devote much of my energy to either creating or emphasizing qualities that can unite us. Somewhat conversely, I also need to reinforce my confidence in myself and what uniqueness I can offer to a student population who continues to have a lot to learn about the world. I have not been able to connect with them the way that I have wanted to, in part because of the differences between us. I will not be able to engage them in who I am and what I want for them if I remain reluctant to play on the constructive aspects of my personality and if I do not discover how to access theirs.
By the way, when you're in grad school and working way more than full time, you just have to get it done. Is this edited? No. Also sorry about the paragraphs. They disappeared.
Introduction
In my several months as a public school teacher, I have found that teaching is an incredibly personal undertaking. Inspiring curiosity, causing real learning, and procuring results require great reserves of character and commitment. In an attempt to examine how my experiences affect my job as a teacher, I have isolated the six most relevant aspects of my identity. Some of these slices bleed into and color each other, creating a unique web of strengths and challenges that I must confront in order to be effective.
My race, white, represents five percent of my identity; my nationality, American, is significantly higher at twenty-two percent; my socioeconomic status, middle class, contributes eighteen percent. My education level provides fifteen percent of my identity; my gender, female, adds ten percent, and my religion at thirty percent completes my identity web. An explanation of each one and how it affects my work as a professional follows.
Race: White. Others perceive it more than I do.
I assigned a value of five percent to the race portion of my identity because I am of course aware of being white but historically I have only occasionally thought about how it affects my identity. It seems peculiar to assign such a low weight to someone whose ancestry is 100 percent Northern European, but for most of my life, my race has not been a useful tool for defining myself in the context of the people around me. My elementary and high schools had a present, but minor, representation of African-American and Hispanic students. We all got along well, so the white students defined themselves against each other rather than against students of other races. Individualized characteristics dominated our labels: he is a straight-A student; he is a track star. She is Irish, she is an artist. After high school, I attended a religious university, where I shared a faith with the other students that united us above everything else.
Race as an aspect of my identity became slightly more pertinent as I pursued international experiences after graduation. I lived and worked in Italy for half a year and in Australia for a year and a half. In Italy, the color of my skin made it obvious that I was not a native. In Australia, I worked with immigrants of Asian origin: people from China, the Philippines, Thailand, India. The people I met respected me and were interested in what made us different. They also endeavored to find what was common between us. I found success in adapting well to living among people of other races.
Now that I find myself an absolute minority in my new Miamian community, my racial identity has suddenly gained a huge amount of relevance, especially at my school. My sixth- and seventh-grade student population is about half African-American and half Latino. The racial composition of the faculty is about the same, with a handful of white teachers. One of my earliest impressions of the racial differences my students saw in me was when one of my homeroom students repeated back to me a few words I had said. I heard how my whiteness rubbed against them as she mimicked the cadence of my voice and pronunciation of my words. Hearing her and later students imitate my language made me feel like a specimen.
Evidence of some of my students feeling racially different from me has arisen when my African-American students have accused me of racism when they have thought I was siding with my Latino students. My African-American students call my Latino students white. I am not sure whether the African-American students believe I am of the same race as my Latino students, but I am sure that my Latino students do not believe that we are of the same race.
It has been a deep struggle for me to find that being a minority with an authority role in my classroom is much different from adapting to living among people of other cultures. I need to realize that while I do not see myself as my students’ white teacher, my students see me as just that. There is one other first-year teacher that is of the same race as many of the students. She has done phenomenally well with classroom management and building relationships with her students. I attribute the difference in our experiences in part to her being racially similar to them. Realizing this, I had to work to convince myself that my students can benefit from having a teacher who is very different from them, that I can have a legitimate constructive role in their lives.
I have also had some struggle adapting to customs that people of races other than mine have. There have been other teachers and staff at the school who have perceived me as unfriendly because I did not practice some of the local cultural norms, such as offering food to all people in a room or stopping to speak to all people. I have sometimes appeared overly businesslike, using behavior that I thought was professional but others thought was discourteous. Being occasionally reprimanded whether by words or by attitude toward me by my colleagues has made it easier to understand the expectations of my students.
Nationality: American. The source of my ideals.
I gave my race only a five percent share of my identity, but my nationality as an American receives twenty-two percent of the overall pie. I have always been proud to be a descendant of the religious freedom-seeking Pilgrims who helped establish American values. I hold dear such longstanding American values such as freedom of religion, social mobility, equality of opportunity, civic participation, and a solid work ethic. I place a high importance on the individual’s responsibility to contribute to a successful community. Much of what I do and the way I see the world and my perception of my moral duties comes from this perspective.
These values are precisely what led me to choose to be a teacher in a high-poverty community. American beliefs have found practical expression in me as a commitment to working for opportunity for all where it does not exist. It is offensive to this deeply American set of ideals that a person could be willing to work to raise the plight of his or her family but cannot locate the opportunities that will allow for an increase in quality of life. I recoil at the thought of people being mired in poverty, unable to climb the social mobility ladder. My students because of the economic situation of the community where they live simply do not have access to the quality of education and, almost as importantly, high expectations that they need in order to improve their quality of life. Equality of opportunity is more often an ideal than a reality, so I chose to do what I can to bring opportunity to students whose lives I see as more difficult than mine. Early Americans united to alleviate the suffering of, for example, a farmer who lost his barn. Today I join with my neighbors hoping to build opportunity where I believe there has been neglect and a loss of hope.
This set of beliefs from my nationality leads me to want to teach these values in my classroom. For example, on the first day of instruction this year I showed my students a list of the ten highest-paying jobs in the United States and compared the list to the ten lowest-paying jobs in the United States. I asked them to identify what salary they preferred: that of the anesthesiologist, whose income is at least $100,000, or that of the dishwasher, which was between $10,000 and $20,000. I wanted them to connect doing well in my classroom to being able to change their socioeconomic status. I wanted them to get a sense of their own social mobility.
I also try daily to teach them how the choices they make as individuals affect entire communities so that they can get a sense of the power they have for improving their communities or for depriving their communities. I have had difficulty, though, in trying to gauge how to do this without detracting from what pride they should have in being from the neighborhood where they live.
Socioeconomic status: middle class.
The related slices of race and nationality combine to make up just over one-fourth of my identity web. My socioeconomic status represents another eighteen percent of how I perceive my identity. This is another category where what I believe about myself, what others have assumed about me, and what is actually true do not neatly coincide. It is further complicated by my perception of my education level, which category will be considered in a later paragraph.
Much of my childhood was spent with my family being what I believe if measured by per capita income would technically be lower middle class, but during the past ten years has seen a shift to solid middle class. My elementary school was a Title I school. My family lived frugally by necessity and lived in neighborhoods my parents preferred not to live in. What people believed about me did not match these circumstances, however. New friends I made in middle school, and sometimes even in college, often made comments about how they thought that I was rich but changed their minds when they saw the family car or came to my house. Something about my mannerisms or appearance suggested that we had money. As years have passed and my family has grown older (I am the oldest of six children), our middle class status has stabilized.
I believe that having the experience of being lower middle class and feeling the push toward becoming solidly middle class has reinforced my value of social mobility. My perspective leads me to want my students to overcome their economic challenges and essentially escape their communities. I am not sure, again, that this is the right thing to want for them. I have led discussions on occasion about helping people less fortunate than themselves, and I am not sure that my students believe that they are in poverty as much as I believe they are. I see myself as having more access to success than they do because I have had a great education. I feel secure in my future. I have had the freedom to choose what and where I want to study and I want the same thing for them. I have not directly told them that I came with the intention of helping them escape the oppression of poverty, not knowing whether that would be encouraging and productive or hideously arrogant.
There is another, more frightening, aspect to the divide between my socioeconomic status and my students: I simply do not understand where they are coming from. I often become frustrated when they come to my class unprepared with a pen or a pencil and need to give them yet another item that I bought with my salary. It has required extended conversations with other teachers to realize that my students often lack food, medical care, and parents. I also become frustrated when they waste pens, crumple paper, and break pencils, wondering why people who have so little choose to squander what they have.
Education level: What complicates my perception of my socioeconomic status
Though my family’s socioeconomic status may have been lower middle class if measured by dollars per person, my perception of myself has always been higher because of my commitment to education. I assigned an importance of fifteen percent to this category. I always considered myself highly educated before I even went to college. My long-term plan when I was young was to go to the many required years of medical school, which evolved into getting a PhD in something interesting once I realized a medical career may not be best for my potential future family. I always felt like Harvard and Princeton were within my reach and I aligned my activities, thought processes, and interests with my idea of what a well educated person should be.
Since education has been so important to me, it is important to me that my students value what they are learning today as a path through the rest of middle school, the basis for success in high school, and the essential key to accessing college. One of my strengths as a teacher is my passion that everyone deserves an education, but it also leads to a great weakness. I feel intense frustration when my students do not have the same commitment to learning and academic success that I do. There is an opportunity here for me to learn to instruct my students’ desires so that they may want an education. Thankfully, other teachers have perceived my commitment to student achievement.
Gender: female, and I’m teaching because I want to.
I assigned ten percent of my identity web to my gender. As a highly educated female who values independence and adventure in my personal life, I am sometimes self-conscious of telling people that I am a teacher. Teaching seems like the fallback career for a woman: it is soft, easily interrupted by maternity leave, easily resumed after having children. When people ask me what I do, I often start by telling them about the mission of Teach for America before getting to the part that I am “just” a teacher. I always emphasize that I teach middle school, not elementary, and that I teach science. It is important to me to express that I am teaching because I believe in this mission, not because I am a woman who could not do something more ambitious.
My attitude does not persist within my school community. I feel valid and there is a good balance of male and female teachers. I do sometimes suspect that male teachers have an easier time with classroom management, which has been my greatest struggle, because of their physical size and volume of voice. I do believe that students can benefit from both female and male attributes that I may be able to reach some students better because of who I am.
Religion: the most salient slice of my identity
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which pervades most of what I think, feel, and do. Religion receives a thirty percent portion of my identity web. Mine is a minority Christian religion. In some ways it is a culture in itself that imposes layers on other segments of my identity. I have found fulfillment in it and have chosen to live by its standards. I defined myself in large part by my religion, which has often been misperceived, and so have had solid practice in staying confident in myself despite what others may think.
Weathering all of the comments that middle school students make about me has been easy because of my experience being somewhat different from others who may match me in the other part of my identity web. My students are starting to figure me out somewhat. I have told them to not wait until I curse at them before they choose to do the right thing because I do not think that is right. They have responded by asking me whether I am Jewish. My religion is another reason that I chose to do this job; I grew up with a commitment to serve others and help the less fortunate.
Conclusion
As I consider my identity web, I see a person who shares almost nothing with her students except for a small slice of it—my gender—that I share with about half of the people that I teach. This implies that if I am to truly make a difference this community that I have joined, I need to devote much of my energy to either creating or emphasizing qualities that can unite us. Somewhat conversely, I also need to reinforce my confidence in myself and what uniqueness I can offer to a student population who continues to have a lot to learn about the world. I have not been able to connect with them the way that I have wanted to, in part because of the differences between us. I will not be able to engage them in who I am and what I want for them if I remain reluctant to play on the constructive aspects of my personality and if I do not discover how to access theirs.
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