Culture Reflections

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly how culture will shape my identity as a teacher. Personally, I feel my family culture has influenced every aspect of my character. If I talk about everything, this blog post will turn into a term paper. Strictly from an educator's perspective, one thing immediately came to mind: patience.

Schools are becoming more and more diverse, and students who don't speak English particularly well are becoming more common. I've heard tales of frustration from ALL of my cousins who moved from Lebanon to the US and attended school: how annoyed their teachers are at their inability to speak or write well, the lack of effort put in to catching them up, the unreasonable immediate expectations. Depending on what country a student comes from, the changes could be VERY significant (in Lebanon, they write right to left). Math, my subject area, is of particular note, because many people may believe that math is "universal." Most math teachers, or aspiring math teachers, have heard arguments along the lines of "2+2=4 everywhere." There have even been cases where foreign students are put directly into regular math classes because of the notion of the universality of math. But as the standards for math change, the requirements to succeed also change. Math is becoming more logic-based, and requires linguistic and problem-solving skills on top of numeric skills to fully excel. I've had cousins come to the States and get completely baffled by word problems, while their teachers become irritated at the lack of comprehension. I hope to not be one of those educators.

As for culture's impact on learning in general, it really impacts everything. It can affect how interested a student is in a certain class. Perhaps students with Lebanese heritage aren't particularly interested in the Franco-Prussian war. One of the reasons that our group initially wanted to look at Culturally Responsive Curriculum as a research topic (a topic we have since abandoned) was because many school curricula could alienate students if the predominantly Euro-centric male point of view is what is focused on.

Culture can also impact how a student values education. My mother had 7 older sisters, none of whom went to college. Most of them grew up and attended school in Lebanon, and at that time, women in Lebanon were expected to be housewives. Two of my aunts were married before the age of 16, because it was believed that a woman's responsibility was to raise a family as early as possible. College was not really in the equation. When my Aunt Najla brought my mother to the US, my mother attended Clifton High School. Because she still associated herself with her Lebanese culture, she didn't think much of college, and therefore didn't value high school as seriously as her teachers would have hoped.