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?”

On Inequality and Freire

Class of 23 September 2010

The activity outside the classroom was a very revealing one for me. Even if the statements on race and class were from twenty-some years ago, most of them are still valid. In my case, some of the statements did not apply to me, either because I grew up in Mexico, or because I would not have any problems applying for a job as a Spanish teacher. I believe that most Mexicans in Richmond would suffer racial and class problems. It's not that I'm rich and blond, it's that I belong to three census classifications that allow me to have more choices when thinking about race, for example. I'm native American because I'm part Mayo (not Maya; Mayos are from Nortwestern Mexico, didn't have an advanced cilization like the Mayas, and are supposed to be taller! Ha, ha!). Even if I don't like it, I'm Hispanic—a term that I do not like, since it sounds like the word “hispanico,” which in Spanish means “from or related to Spain,” and I'm from Mexico. Since I'm half European (Spanish, and a pinch of Greek), I can claim myself as “white.”

During the activity, this situation made advance more than other classmates and it made me feel uncomfortable. But at the same time, I realized that I usually don't think too much about race. Most of the time, I pay attention to academic, handicap and economic status.

Freire

I have read a few articles by Freire, some of them in English, one in Spanish and one or two in Portuguese. In class, I mentioned that I was taught how to write using the Freire method. Of course, it didn't have the conscientization/conscientizaçãon part, but it was the same. In the first grade—I didn't attend kindergarten, the reason I'm so shy and antisocial--, the teacher made us filled up pages and pages of syllables: consonants plus vowels, like

b ba be bi bo bu

c ca ce ci co cu

d da de di do du

Spanish and Portuguese are easy that way. Unlike English, one syllable or group of letters has one sound and no more.

I have always seen Freire as the guy who took the European linguists idea of communication (Jakobson and Saussure) and expanded it. The speaker tells the listener a message made out of code in a certain context.

speaker → message → listener

teacher → knowledge → student

But for Freire, the speaker/teacher must allow the listener/student to make it a two-way dialogue. In the same way, Europeans came to the Americas and the rest of the world, and imposed their message on the native cultures, the anthropologists, teachers and other researchers were imposing a European-only, Portuguese-only points of view on the Brazilian tribes. All that knowledge that the non-European and literate had was discarded, lost.

I like Freire. He's still a good source when we talk about colonialism and post-colonialism.

Learning About Learning

[About The Class of Thursday Sept. 16]

I'm writing this reflection on a Monday, four days after the class. It's like pressing the “play” button instead of just chronicling an immediate past. This is new. And it means that I need to be careful and type or write down the list of topics for the blog either in class or immediately after I arrive home.

PLAY:

Before class started, everybody was curious about the number of pages the other students had written. I'm not sure if I was the only one who said “13.” I probably was. NOTE TO SELF, COMENT WITHOUT PAUSING THE TAPE: But, why did I write too much about learning? And about myself?

PAUSE: “I talk too much, but I should write more,” this is what I always tell myself. But then, just like when I was a teenager, the simple idea that people will learn about me from a diary scares me. This is the reason why I have written short stories and tried to write poems, so that I stay away from journaling. The assignment of writing our learning biography scared me at first, because I didn't know how to start it. Then the fear of saying too much or too little was there, like an unavoidable Monday. When I had the idea of how to organize my biography, the writing became easier. I have to admit that my mood and focus on my surroundings changed several times while I was writing the biography.

PLAY: When we started to talk about the process of writing our biography as a group, I was relieved. I wasn't the only one who had a little trouble starting or finishing. I write and talk a lot about other people and subjects, but I talk too little and write less about myself. But this time, I wrote a lot about me and I'm not the best topic. COMMENT TO SELF: Besides, there no articles and Wikipedia entry yet that can serve as starting points on the learning life of Lulú De Panbehchi. COMMENT TO A CLASSMATE: "I just hope that the 13 pages I turned in will not invite more problems when using them as a source for other activities or papers that this course for sure will ask for in the very near future."

PLAY: The video clips were helpful and also helped me to understand that adult education and literary criticism are two similar fields of study. PAUSE: the -isms, again. I have to be careful, otherwise I will suffer “ismsitis.” PLAY: We can study any book or learning biography with different lenses at the same time, but some lenses will be better suited than others. I have read both Pygmalion and A Doll House, but I have never seen the movie versions of those two plays. It was a great way to make the theories easier to compare.

PLAY: When we read the two biographies in class and discussed them with a partner, I realized that maybe I had written a good amount of pages about me. The information about the two prisoners was enough to provides with a clear idea of who they are, their learning problems and learning context. PAUSE: If I write a paper based on what I wrote, it will be difficult to me not to include what I didn't write, which now makes me worry about the amount of information, not just the length of the paper. CONTINUE: I like the fact that we were able to discuss as a group the learning issues of two real people that the professor knew. This way, I was able to compare my understanding with that of my partner in this activity, what other students thought, plus what we as a class somehow concluded. I say “somehow” because by the time I got home I had more ideas and questions regarding these two individuals. If we revisit these mini biographies at the end of this month, and then at the end of the semester, I'm pretty sure there will be even more to say about them. PAUSE: This tells me that since learning is constant, the learning of my own biography of learning may change from this week to the next one. But this is fine. STOP: Learning never ends, therefore learning about learning doesn't end either.

Blogging

There are many definitions of blogging, and many opinions on the matter as well.  Common Craft is a company that makes short videos to explain something.  I have seen their videos in several websites.  Here is the link to their video on blogging.

http://www.commoncraft.com/blogs

-Isms in Adult Learning

-About the class from 9 Sept. 2010

As the cognitivism theory would say, we tend to learn something new by relating it to something that we already know.  In this case, I relate behaviorism, cognitivism, humanism, etc.  to the multiplication tables.  We have to memorize names, characteristics, and keywords and then apply them to a particular way of learning or learning situation. But some of the characteristics and key words may show up in more than one -ism, just like 5 x 2 shows up on the 2 and 5 multiplication tables.  Yesterday, we had a class activity that was similar to having students memorize the multiplication tables and then asking them to apply them to everyday problems.  Instead of, “If Trader Joes sells one papaya for $2.00 and Jimmy buys 5 papayas, how much did he spend on papayas?” we had to work in groups of 4 or 3 and use magazine cut outs, crayons and huge sticky notes--actually, a post-it poster-- to illustrate one -ism.

The activity sequence had several periods: a short discussion on the -ism, a search for images, words and illustrations that would show an aspect of our topic, design and actualization of the poster, and then presentation and discussion with the rest of the class. But in my opinion, the activity had something else going on:

• humanism = in the discussion period everybody was thinking on reaching a high point, a self-actualization point with the poster
• individualism or subjectivism = because everybody chose the images that he or she thought illustrated the subject better
• behaviorism = each time I found a photo or illustration, I showed it to my group and if everybody said, “yes, that’s a good photo” (or a similar reaction), then I put it on the “yes” pile.  If they said, “well...,” then that photo went no where.
• dadaism = because the materials made no sense, they were like Duchamp’s found objects
• cognitivism = we had to make sense of all the different photos, words, and even colors that we had chosen.  To organize them, we followed patterns like: acts and consequences, before and after, contrasts, etc. In our group we put together a “marriage” sequence, a schema that comes from narrative.
• postmodernism = we knew that what we put on the poster was not scientific and was open to discussion; and that some of the symbols, photos and words were ironic.  For example, our group put Dr. Phil at the center of the poster, not because we believe he is the theorist or practitioner to follow, but because to the vast majority of this country Dr. Phil is the only person that will talk to them about changing a behavior and how to change it.

There were perhaps other -isms going on.  Therefore I can certainly say that this activity had a lot of value.

During recess, I had the opportunity to talk to one of my classmates who is a nurse.  We spoke of the difference in nursing of pain and suffering.  In hospitals, pain is measured in numbers from 1 to 10.  If the pain is not tolerable for you, you can rate your pain as “10,” for example.  To me, a Mexican woman who is used to take pills only when the pain is killing me, pain is only measured in metaphors.  But as my classmate explained, at the hospital the 1-10 scale works better because pain is subjective. She added that suffering is more difficult to rate than pain.  Pain is a medical concern, a reality that can be cured with pills.  Pain is similar to learning facts or behaviors, while suffering is probably the lens with which you examine your pain--or learning.

For the second half of the class, we gathered in small groups again to talk about our learning biographies.  One of my classmates had a very strong opinion about the idea that “if you are a silent woman, then you don’t think” form the book Women’s Ways of Knowing.  This was a great discussion because I realized that some books provoke controversies even in different contexts and decades of their original publications.  I believe that women who are abused and stay quit, do so because: a) this the only context they know, b) the know the consequences of talking to others or the police about their problems and somehow silence equals self-preservation, or c) because they have some form of autism or mental problem.

I enjoyed the class and how so many different ideas and experiences helped me understand better some of the -isms we read about.

Demographics and Barriers

Assessment of the demographics where I work

This is the 15th year that I teach college Spanish in the United States. I started teaching at VCU in 1999. Currently, my classes are for students in the 100, 200, and 400 levels, but I have also taught 300 level classes. The population that I serve are college students, which do not comprise an homogenous group, much less when we talk about popular, living languages like Spanish or French. My classes usually have mostly 18-21 year-old students; perhaps half of them work and the other half dedicates its time to study only. I can divide my students in three categories:

1. Students who had studied some Spanish before college, therefore they feel more confident that they can either learn or that they will never learn but they will try this time. This is probably 60 to 70 percent of the students.

2. Students who never took Spanish before college and they feel that they need to study more and that they need to catch up. This is about 20 percent of the students.

3. Probably 1 in 10 students come to Spanish without ever having taken a formal foreign language class before. These students are very nervous and they usually drop the class, because they feel overwhelmed with the amount of vocabulary they need to learn.

Every class also has one or two older adults—let's say of 25+ years of age—who are taking the class because they came back to finish their degree or because they work at VCU and it is easier for them to take a free class. This is the most restricted group, even more than the students who have never taken a foreign language before.

Unfortunately, the type of text book and curriculum used in our classes were not made for older students, who have different needs and experience with the language. Most older adults who have decided to study Spanish, do it because they have friends who are native speakers, they have lived among native speakers, or because they just like the language. Their motivation is different from those of regular students, who for the most part take Spanish because they have to take a language.

Barriers:
• The textbooks are written and organized for younger learners, maybe from 17 to 22.  The topics covered in every textbook are the same, and older students can only relate to three or four of those topics.
• Technology is used more and more in foreign languages. Older students sometimes have more troubles with how to access the book online materials than with the conjugation of verbs.
• Languages are social, and students need to interact. Older and young students need to get used to each other in order to have conversations in the target language.
• The pace of college classes is always faster than high school classes, and much more faster than informal classes taught at churches, clubs, even this university.
• Older students tend to have different goals. While young students focus more on the ability to write and listen, older learners tend to focus on oral communication.
• The type of language covered by textbooks can be classified as standard, but older adults are looking also for the regional language that their friends speak.

You have men

In this class, the idea is to write a learning biography.  Actually, a learning autobiography.  I have chosen to write something more like a memoir, since I will choose only a few points from my life instead of following a time line.

During the class discussion on learning biographies, I mentioned that I had thought the men in my life and how most of the most important formal education I have received has come from men.  I mad a list of men and a list of some of the topics that are important.  Then I connected both lists.

When the professor asked if we had a better idea of how to put together the biography, one of my classmates said, "...well, she has a time line, she has men..."   I was the one who had "men" as a way to structure my assignment.

"She has men" has been stuck in my mind for almost a week now.  It makes me smile.  It's silly, but at the same time is true: there have been a lot of men involved in my education.  But why?  Maybe because of gender inequality, or because of the laws of randomness.  This doesn't mean that I will not talk about women in my biography; in fact, there are two women who are probably most important than any men in my learning biography, my mother and myself.  However, it's much funnier to say, "The Men in My Life: What I Have Learned from Them," than "The Men and Women in My Life: My Learning Biography."  The first title sounds more provocative, because I'm a middle-aged, married woman and prospective readers may think that I had or have a long list of affair with all kinds of men.  In the business school, this is called "marketing."

Yes, I have several men in my life: my father and brothers, my husband and son, my uncle the musician, my two favorite teachers, and my boss the priest.  Nine guys.  In contrast, the women that I can mention are too many, but in short I can  list my mother, my older sister, my maternal grandmother, and my best friend from college.

Yes, I have men.  And women.  Lots of them.  But I also have a short, sketchy, scratchy memory.  So I will probably call it, "The Men in My Life: My Learning Memoir."

26 August - Ice breaker - Icebreaker

The icebreaker activity was a very useful for a first class in which everybody wants to learn more about how other adults learn.  The idea was to say 3 facts about yourself, but one of them had to be false.  I believe that a lot of the information that I shared was a reflection of what I always think about--my identity.   Knowing about myself also says a lot of what I usually try to learn more about.

My three facts were:

1. I'm from Mexico.
2. I have a son.
3. I eat tacos everyday.

The first two are true. It is very apparent that I'm from Mexico and people may think that I eat tacos everyday.  That's why I chose to say that I eat tacos every day of the week. Stereotypes!   It was easy for my classmates to guess that I don't eat tacos.  It's almost impossible for a person to perform the same activity or to eat the same food--except for Elvis--365 days a year.  But something that defines you is there, like being Mexican, a mother, a spouse, or a perennial student/learner.  However, I'm also from new places and new theories. Aside from Mexico, I'm from Virginia, from Williamsburg, from Richmond, from the highway--where I spend a lot of time--, from digital media, from postmodernism, from postcolonialism, from...

My identity is associated with several places and activities, but eating tacos is not one of those activities.  I eat burritos, sandwiches, pizza, stir-fries, sushi, etc. I not only like to eat the food, I also like to learn how it's made and why it's made that way.  I eat food from different countries in one week.  If "you are what you eat" is true, then I'm from more places.

Having a teenager son means that I have to keep up with certain vocabulary and pop culture references.  That keeps me learning too.  From SpongeBob to Futurama and XBox to Scott Pilgrim, mom has to understand her little boy.

This activity also made me think about one of my concerns: I want to be a citizen of the world, not only a citizen of Mexico and the United States.  I want to be from everywhere, eat several types of food, and learn--or at least have an idea of--what my son is learning.

ADULT EDUCATION

I'm taking two classes at Virginia Commonwealth University (in Richmond) that deal with Adult Education.  I want to learn more about dealing with real problems, no with OMG!'s and people who only speak when they are on the phone.