Kathryn Christensen

July 26, 2015

TE 822

Cultural Interactions in my Classroom

The concept of culture is such a complex idea that to define it, with all of its intricacies, is
arguably an impossible task. That is not to say that I will not try, but rather it leaves the door
open with a welcome mat in place for any disagreement on how I define it. Part of what makes
defining culture so challenging is that it is a combination of external and internal forces, visible
and invisible, constantly at work within and around us. The external portion is what we can see,
both about ourselves and others. It is ones race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender and the
various ways we express these aspects of ourselves through our dress, food, accent and behavior.
Then there is the internal aspects of culture, what we do not see about others and sometimes what
we do not even see about ourselves. In essence, culture is the lens through which we see
everything and since we see everything through this lens of culture it influences how we interpret
things which then, in turn, influences our actions.
This definition goes beyond what some writers define as culture. Diane Ravitch prefers a
more straightforward definition to culture or what H. Richard Milner (2010) would refer to as
the more traditional categories (p. 5) as she lists of world regions found in modern
classrooms and juxtaposes it with the phrase this cultural diversity in the next sentence thereby
implying that her definition of diversity is of the external and racial variety (Ravitch, 1990, p.
15). For me, I tend to agree with Milner, that there are forces at work beyond this more
traditional definition. Milner points out that these categories are complicated by individual

circumstances, yet the individual circumstances Milner focuses are on individual students
home life and the opportunities this life provides for the students academic progress (Milner,
2010, p. 5-6). This still does not completely connect to the definition I created. The one who
comes the closes, and the one that influenced me the most, would is Fredrick Eriksons (2010)
definition in his article Culture in Society and in Educational Practices: culture consists of
the patterning of the practices of doing being human in our routine actions, in our
interpretations of meanings in those actions and in the beliefs that underline our meaning
interpretations (p. 35). It is in Eriksons definition that we acknowledge the role that culture
plays in how we interpret the world. In other words, what Erikson is describing here is the role
of this internal culture.
As teachers, this internal culture in regards to ourselves, is an important thing to focus on.
It is just as important that we realize our students have multiple dimensions to themselves just as
we do. We need to respect that. We have to realize that as children and adolescents that are
discovering themselves the culture that they self-identify at is going to play a large role. As
teachers, we need to respect that.
If it was not for the fact that I met his mom the same day I met him I would have
identified Sean as 100% African American. Upon reflection I know that this is due to that fact
that he himself identified as black, yet because I met his mom I knew he was half Indian. At my
school to be Indian is to be the majority. I have had a few students that were half white and half
Indian, but half African American and Indian was a novelty. In talking with the principal the
mom had it known that Seans dad lived down South with his new family. Sean lived there for a
few months with his half sibling, but for whatever reason it did not work out. And so, Sean was

back with his mom. Within ten minutes of Sean joining my class it became apparent that he was
working hard to make sure it did not work out with mom either.
Growing up, I always went to racially diverse schools. My first two years of teaching
were with the Navajo Indian Reservation and at the time I had Sean as a student I was in my
sixth year of teaching at another racially diverse school. Through my own experiences I have
become quite adept at communicating to people from various culture groups, being able to
recognize and make small adjustments to word choice, tone and body language so that my
message is communicated in the way I intend. I have also learned that to assume one approach
opposed to another based on ethnicity alone is never a good idea, so I usually start with my
default mode which is calm with a penchant for tricky word play. Upon reflection I realize that
this is because it is the culture of my family where conflict is ignored or decided by whomever
made the cleverest joke in the situation. Fredrick Erikson (2010) would point out that this is one
of my subsets of culture that influences my behavior (p. 37). Even so, it is not always the best
place to go for default mode and I could see that it had the potential for causing Seans behavior
to get worse. My next route was to pull him aside and to speak to him about how he needed to
work hard now so that he would have a successful future, yet this approach just made things
worse. I am not surprised when this approach has minimal to no effect on a student, but for it to
actually make a situation worse was surprising.
Over the weeks I witnessed a few interactions between Sean and his mom. Seans mom
would nag him about how he needed to work hard now so he would have a successful future. It
slowly dawned on me that the more I acted like his Indian mother the more Sean would rebel
against me. I knew that a new approach was needed, but it was near the holidays, I got deathly
sick and out of weakness I just went back into default mode. It was not until the second week

back from holiday break that I remember being irrationally mad at Sean.

I knew that I

immediately had to try a different approach because I refused to have my day ruined by one
student. So at the end of class I called him back to my desk and I adjusted my word choice, tone
and body language to appeal to his African American side the side of himself that he identified
with. I do not care that you are ticked off at your mother, I am not your mother and so do not
take it out on me, with my hand waving in the air for emphasis as I began. I also made sure that
during this conversation I was sitting and he was standing, and that while I had attitude in my
voice the tone was never loud as I called him out. The amazing thing is, this worked. Not to
say Sean never ticked me off again, but from then on when he did I would just look at him and
go Why you ticking me off? and he would do a half smile, look down, shrug and cease his
behavior.
Every author on multi-culturalism in schools states the importance of relationships with
students. There is no formula for how you develop these relationships, except for one thing: you
need to know your student. With Sean it came after months of observation and the realization
that his racial self-identity was important to him and confusing to him. This was drilled into my
head even more when I witnessed an interaction between his mom and him where she was
criticizing him for wanting to be a professional basketball player stating that he is not going to
be like those black kids. His own mother rejected the part of him he felt most strongly about
and it was not until he believed that I also identified him, and valued him, as African-American
that he was ready to learn in my class. Even if this value initially came in the form of yelling at
him.
Before I begin this next story I have to admit something that is quite embarrassing: I am a
Social Studies teacher and I do not watch the news. It causes me to feel negative emotions that I

cannot help by telling myself that it is fiction or getting directly involved to fix. Therefore, the
news that I receive is regulated to Twitter, where I make sure to follow several reputable news
agencies and Buzzfeed.
It was my second semester teaching my Model UN course for 7 th and 8th grade students.
The topic of the course was Human Rights. My second semester had 17 students, which was
fairly evenly divided with half being African American and the other half Indian and two white
students for good measure. With my African American students I had several very vocal
females, two of which that had previously attended school in urban areas and were new to our
upper-middle class suburb. With these girls, I had varying degrees of relationship, from strong to
newly develop. None of the relationships were what I considered negative.
One of the first assignments I gave was for students to find an image that connected to
human rights and present it to the class. In my previous class this was an assignment that went
over quite well with a bunch of issues presented from the water shutoff protests that had recently
occurred in Detroit to the battles of legalized same-sex marriage, all handled with impressive
maturity. For this class the issue for each of these became Ferguson, Missouri. As the students
presented I could sense that it was being presented as a challenge, almost as if they were wanting
a fight over this divisive issue. The interesting part is that they were not targeting me, the white
teacher and source of power, but they were challenging the other students. As these girls
presented, I watched my Indian students who resorted to what they had been taught is the polite
thing to do: sit and be quiet. You could almost see their confusion as to why there was so much
anger. As the teacher, and one who prides herself on being strong in issues of multi-culturalism I
did not know how to respond. I wanted the girls to speak their truth and I had to respect their
reality. I also knew that their presentation of the issue was biased. Yet I was not personally

informed enough to know how to discuss it. And so, I let the girls present. The class clapped.
We moved on. And for the rest of the trimester the class never seemed to be truly comfortable
talking about the issues of human rights in a meaningful way: for my African American students
would dominate and my Indian students would stay quiet for fear of offending.
I have spent the majority of my life in culturally diverse environments. I spent two years
on an Indian Reservation. It is very rare that I am self-conscious about being white and I rarely
feel white guilt even when living on the Indian Reservation where I was faced daily with the
lingering horrors of the reservation system. Guilt is not a productive emotion, especially in a
cultural context. In profiling an African American teacher in a predominately white-suburban
setting, Milner (2010) made it a point to include that this teacher actively worked to avoid
instilling white guilt into her students (p. 90). Yet, when faced with these girls I was overly
aware of my whiteness and the privilege that is assumed to correspond. I was allowing my
external culture of race to become my self-identification, not my inner culture developed by
years of multi-cultural experiences. Upon reflection, I know that I could have overcome this by
becoming more informed about the events of Ferguson, Missouri. I should have relied on my
skills and background in multi-culturalism instead of listening to my fears. I should have been
more open with my students in allowing these discussions.
Culture is a complex issue that is hard for adults to fully comprehend, much less children.
This is because culture is a mixture of forces, both internal and external that work together to
influence how we interpret the world. What matters is what culture we self-identify with. This
is a fluid process, with the stories above I self-identified with various aspects of my own culture.
Students often give more importance to their self-identification than adults do and as teachers we

need to recognize that. We need to acknowledge their self-identification, while at the same time
not allowing it to diminish or change how we culturally identify ourselves.
Reference List:
Erikson, F. (2010). Culture in Society and in Educational Practices.
Milner IV, H.R. (2010). Start where you are, but dont stay there: Understanding diversity,
opportunity gaps, and teaching in todays classrooms. Harvard Education Press:
Cambridge, MA.
Ravitch, D. (1990). Diversity and democracy: Multicultural education in America. American
Educator, Spring, 16-48.