Life is like tofu

I was about to erase this blog. But for some reason I believe that I have to keep it alive.
The last time I wrote something here, it was a very different time: my professors had allowed me to write a dissertation on a topic that was more interesting to me, and I felt that I was very healthy. Ha, ha, ha! Two months later, they told me I had breast cancer. Therefore, I didn't continue with my dissertation project and comprehensive exams, etc., etc.  Well, I'm back. I passed all the exams and I'm a PhD candidate. Now, I have to work as a Spanish instructor, write a dissertation, and keep up with my family.
Life is like tofu: it picks up any flavor we add to it, but inside is still tofu.

Calendar, calendar!

What I learned this weekend: I need to have a calendar!

I'm doing dissertation research. It's crazy! This means that I need to come up with my own curriculum/calendar of readings, writing, even my hobbies need to have a space on that calendar.  I learned this this weekend. I have to make a one-week calendar at a time, stick to it, then figure out the next week, etc.

Transforming Rita and Educating Students

We watched the second part of “Educating Rita” in class.  I had watched the movie at home this week. I watched the movie in my computer and used Netflix. I also used headphones. All of these circumstances made me appreciate the movie in some ways. First, the movie as just another good British film with Michael Cain; second, as class material, and third as a cultural product of the early 1980s. The title, “Educating Rita,” already screams “school.” This is the reason why I didn't want to think that I was watching a movie for a future discussion in adult education. I enjoyed the story, the acting, and the photography. However, the synthesizer as almost the only source of music was very difficult to forget. The synth contextualizes the movie as an 80s flick. Thanks God for Julie Walters and Michael Caine. Otherwise, I would have stopped the movie after the first 15 minutes!

But watching the movie in class probed that movies need to be seen in large screens and with a group of people. Sometimes we need other people to compare our reactions and emotions. Watching a film in group or community is similar to transformative learning: you need a point of reference to reassure that you have indeed learned and transformed yourself. Our laughs and laments need to make be heard by the community and the community needs to respond to us, either with an echo or a whisper. We all laughed in some points, and expressed compassion for the characters in others. At the end, we were transformed by the movie: we all now have the same experience, we all had to relate the story to concepts learned and discussed in class. Yes, we all know the movie is fiction, but it is also similar to storytelling in a community.

Although we are a community—because we take the same class, read the same articles before coming to class, and have similar goals after taking this class—we are also different. I believe that something is good or bad when people of different backgrounds agree that something is good or bad. It seems that several of us agreed that the music in this movie was annoying in some scenes, which makes me think that we are all eager to learn: we did not complain about the music until the movie was over. We were like Rita. She didn't stop until she wrote good essay and became an expert in literary criticism. We didn't give up watching the movie until we saw the credits.

This is not a synthesizer from the 1980s, but it illustrates the idea of one keyboard playing most of the soundtrack. 

Brain Storming

[I'm not sure what the problem is or what caused it, my fingers, my brain, or my age. I was trying to type the title of this entry and it took me five tries to be able to spell “Storming” correctly. I wrote “stroming” instead each time. Perhaps that is what brain storming is really about, trial and error. The difference is that during a brain storming session, we say something and our peers may help us whenever we get stuck.]

One of the best sections of the class on Thursday, October 14, was the brain storming session. The Kolb test was relevant, but I believe that I personally benefited most from exchanging ideas with my classmates on the possible subtopics for our papers. In my opinion, the exchange of ideas for a paper usually happens before or after class. Just by listening to my classmates, I learned that I need to narrow my own topic, and that I need to deal with methods, models, and -isms of teaching, instead of policies and their celebrities. I usually take a blank piece of paper and write down an outline and some words, before I proceed to search for information, then I write the paper. In other words,

idea + blank paper + outline + research + writing + editing = paper

But this time, the formula looks different:

have an idea + search for information + brain storm + research + outline + writing + editing + review = paper

Although the process seems longer, I believe that from the second week of October to the last week of November, the final paper can be done.

==

After Thought

I went with my family to Target in Williamsburg, and we saw a lot of white paint on the parking lot. To me, it looks like a brain. Now, I see brains everywhere! Here is a photo of the paint.

A splash of white paint on asphalt at the Williamsburg Target's parking lot.

Class at The Library

Scene 1 - students enter the library at 4:00 p.m.

Scene 2 - they learn that there is a problem with the VCU website and perhaps with the library servers too.

Scene 3 - the library web site is down.

Scene 4 - the librarian made a wonderful job explaining everything without the help of visual element, except for the text she wrote on the board and a handout.

Scene 5 - class dismissed.

Debating the Debatable: Andragogy

Class of 30 September 2010

In this class we had to debate andragogy and its assumptions—that adults learn in a different way than young, that adult learning is self-directing, that adults learn because they have previous experience, et cetera.

Our team had to argue against andragogy. This was a very intense exercise, because we had to prepare statements and questions in a few minutes, and then exchange them with another team in a debate format. My question is, what would happened if we had more time for this type of exercise? Would the debate be more interesting, more heated? Would it result on a debate similar to the ones in the British parliament? I'm not sure, but even with a little bit of time that our group had to prepare, we managed to agree on something and challenge the other team's point of view. Our main questions were:

1. At what time do we become adults?
2. Isn't the Montessori method similar to andragogy? Both assume that students can learn in a self-directing environment, for example.
3. Doesn't andragogy look very similar to pedagogy? To a certain extend, anything that we can say about adult learning, we can say about children. Therefore, it's not peda or andragoy, it's just “gogy.”

What I liked during this exercise is that I didn't want to talk—yes, me, I, who is always expressing her mind, either in a serious or not so serious way. I only wanted to observe my classmates, because we were very close to each other, everybody had great ideas and examples, and all of us were right. The part that bothered me was that since I didn't say too much during the debate, I was chosen to deliver the closing remarks. I am not the best public speaker. Yes, I talk too much in class, but I'm too chicken to carry such a responsibly! I'm not an English native speaker and this was what I call “a language crisis moment,” which usually make go blank and my grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and confidence go to the floor in a second. Well, maybe my team chose me when they realized I hadn't say that much during the debate. Or perhaps I talk too much in class, that everybody has the impression that I will have something to say at any given moment.

After notes

These are three links on andragogy, which make think that a debate was a good way to talk about it. Andragogy seems to be synonymous of “debate”.

Links:

a. We were in the right direction, or at least we are not the only ones who thought about the age.  This is a short response from the Adult Education Quaterly.

b. The “Andragogy Homepage for Adult Education Specialists” mentions that the term “andragogy” is changing. I like the graph on the scheme of adult learning.

photo: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/fileadmin/andragogik/08/andragogik/andragogy/lifewide.jpg

c. It seems that in Nigeria they are debating—it's a “warfare,” according to the author—the practice of andragogy:

“For example, persons who had training in areas other than andragogy, but who find themselves in Departments of Adult Education, tend to develop complexes which may be termed unbeneficial to andragogy. This is because, such persons in all their manners and attitude, project not andragogy but the discipline in which they had their  initial training even while in a Department of Adult Education. Indeed, you have a feeling that these persons are somewhat ashamed to be associated with andragogy. This state of things is naturally unprofitable to adult education.” (http://biao-ayinde.org/andragogy.htm)

WW3: Micro-aggression in My World

The theorist Homi Bhabha gave a lecture at the University of Richmond two years ago. He began by saying that when he went to Germany and saw the reminiscence of the Nazi era, he felt so emotional that he cried. Then, he proceeded to analyze his reaction to a past that according to stereotypes did not belong to him, because he was not German or Jewish. However, he felt part of the tragedy occurred in Germany, because he learned about it in books, movies, audio, and by visiting the former concentration camps. Paulo Freire would say that Bhabha was acting like a conscious man, since Bhabha had learned about the horrors of antisemitism by reading about when he was young, visiting the place as an adult, and by sharing with other people his experience and theories. In my opinion, Bhabha's philosophical post colonialist analysis on his trip to Germany was a logical continuation of Freire's conscientização. Information and knowledge on injustice, no matter where it happened, became part of Bhabha's conscience.

 

Bhabha also spoke about the anxiety that comes from living in a place where apparently we do not belong, and how art and literature can help us lower that anxiety. The article, “Racial Microaggressions and the Asian American Experience” by Sue et al, provided also a link to understanding how minorities suffer anxiety in their daily life. As Sue et al explain, those microagressions do not need to be the great rejection or discriminatory scene to hurt an individual's feelings.

 

I am not sure if I suffer anxiety because of microagressions, or due to the fact that I am a graduate student, and do not have the best financial situation. Also, I grew up in Mexico, where the forms of micragression described on the essay are part of jokes and the everyday life. Political correctness does not exist. Some of my friends who belong to a minority, or my minority group, pay more attention than I do. According to one of those friends, I need to be constantly thinking about discrimination in order to see how other people discriminate me. I have always believed that “to hate” is the same as “to love,” because when we hate something, we waste a lot of time, effort, heart, and brains in the act of. If I dedicate my life to the activity of looking for discrimination moments, then it is a waste of time, effort, heart, and brains, and I choose not hate anything or anybody—except for typewriters.

 

The lens that we use depends on where and how we grew up, and what education we received. In my case, I do not feel that microagressions keep me awake at night. Instinctively, I have done what Bhabha has suggested in his books and his talk, I have focused more on a creative process. I think more about taking photos, creating web pages, or writing than what people think or may think about me. The other problem is that I have always tried to think from the other's perspective. What would I think of me if I were somebody else? In other words, I am always conscious of the other person's perspective. Also, since I am a language and culture teacher, any microagression in my classes becomes a teachable moment. Perhaps, this is the reason why I never get mad at my students for saying for example, that Gael García Bernal is not a Hispanic actor because he looks too white, or when they ask me why I do not like the Mexican-American singer Selina. Some microagressions are born out of misunderstandings and lack of reflection, more than lack of education. Even well-educated, adult individuals express me their surprise when I tell them that I do not eat tacos from Taco-Bell, or that I do not recommend any of the Mexican restaurants in the Richmond area.

The only time I experience a microagression is when people ask me, “when did you come to America?” Sometimes I explain that I am an American, and that “America” does not means “The United States of America.” Like most citizens Latin American citizens will say, “I'm from America, because America is the name of the continent.” Once in a while I answer that half of my ancestors are native Americans, and then I don't explain anything else. But most of the time, I ignore the question because I believe that the aggressor would never understand that is wrong to name a country after a continent, and then appropriate that name. All the issues of colonialism, post colonialism, conscientização, and microagressions get summarized in this one question.

Belenky et al of Women's Ways of Knowing (1986) would say that my pet peeve with the noun “America,” and its application to the whole continent—not only to the United States of America—puts me into the category of “separate knowers.” I admit it, I am more of a logic, word, and conceptual person. My microagressions, then, differ from those described by Sue on the study of Asian-Americans and from those suffered by Hispanics, African-Americans and other minorities. I have been always aware of this situation, because if it doesn't affect me, it may affect however the students in my classes, and in particular the adult students. The microagressions that adult learners in my Spanish classes might feel the most come from the materials and topic presented on the books, which are mostly focused on students 22 and younger. Also, the use of technology may trigger more uncomfortable situations than teenager/young adultmaterials. As an expert or advanced user of some technologies, like wikis, microblogging, among others, I have to observe and listen to my adult students

constantly, because I do not want them to feel bad in my class.

Conscientização, microagressions, cultural anxiety, separate or connected knowledge... even if I experience them or not constantly, or if I pay attention to them, I need to be aware of what happens around me and what happens in the classroom. Now the question becomes, “How will I feel in the following weeks now that I am conscious of microagressions?”