Cultural Autobiography
Growing up in my community and school district I was not introduced to a
very diverse setting. In Anderson Township, the Forest Hills School District is
located in Southeast Cincinnati, Ohio in a very suburban area. The majority of the
elementary school I attended was white, and that trend continued through middle
school and high school as well. Because of the schools I went to I was never really
exposed to other cultures and ideas, there was never a lot of coverage on diverse
cultural topics. I am very grateful for the community I grew up in but at the same
time I think the lack of exposure and talk about other cultures left me very naive to a
lot of the issues with race, culture, socioeconomic status, sexual identity, etc. that are
present in the classroom and in society until later in high school and when I came to
Miami.
My best friend, Cody, in first grade was Jewish, he was also the person who
told me Santa wasn't real at the age of 7. I remember going home after being told
Santa wasn't real and crying to my mom because I didn't understand why my friend
would say that. This was probably the first time I had started to question and ask
about another religion and realizing that not everyone was the same as me. One of
our other close friends in the class was new to the district but had grown up in Ohio.
Her name was Robin and she was Chinese. At lunch Cody, Robin, and I would sit
together and Cody and I would ask Robin how to say different words in Chinese and
laugh when we said the word completely wrong. All of us were clearly from different
home lives and cultural backgrounds but at our young age this didn't really mean
anything to us. We (mainly me actually) would ask each other different questions
about Hanukah, Chinese words, and anything else random that would pop into our
heads about our differences. When your little you don't have a filter and if you grew
up like me you didn't have any preconceived ideas about any race, religion, culture,
etc. It wasn't something my parents avoided it just wasn't something that explored.
As the years went on, Robin moved away the year after and Cody moved to
Columbus the summer before 5th grade. I had other friends but they all fell into the
pattern of the rest of my school district and were all white. With that, my curiosity of
other people's backgrounds and cultures faded because the main worry of middle
school is yourself and trying to fit in. Middle school where I came from was probably
the scariest place to be different. With all the cliques and the labels that were put on
people, all I tried to do was blend in so I took very little notice in anyone or anything
outside of my group of friends.
When I was in 8th grade my mom decided she wanted to change her career
path and went back to school to get her teaching license. Her first year teaching she
got a job in the Norwood City School district. Norwood is only about 20 minutes
away from my neighborhood but I never knew how much more diverse it was when
it came to race, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. It took awhile for my mom to
adjust to not only a new job but also a new setting. Some of the kids she had in class
came from homes without heat, parents with low income, abusive homes, nonEnglish speaking parents, etc. which all contributed to their behavior and
performance in school. Even though I was in my "all about me" phase as a preteen
hearing these situations and stories that some of her students were dealing with
really opened my eyes. I never really had stop to think how lucky I was because in
my naive state I had just assumed that everyone grew up in a home similar to mine;
two working parents, a secure home, and a bed of my own to sleep in. I knew there
were people in need near my area where I grew up because I had done canned food
drives at school, Adopt-a-Child at church with my family, and donated clothes before
but hearing about it from my mom and hearing her experiences with these students
made it so much more real.
In high school, I decided to go into school with my mom every once in awhile
because I already knew I wanted to be a teacher and thought it would be interesting
to experience a classroom not as a student and I also might have been bribed with
getting Steak n Shake after. During my visits I realized that even though most of the
students seemed to really like my mom as a teacher, some of them seemed to care
very little about school. There was many students who didn't have their homework
done, had lost it, or just completely left their backpack at home.
Watching my mom teach has left a great impression on me. I might be a little
biased because she is my mom but I think anyone who can have her as a role model
should consider themselves lucky because she not only cares about her students
academic performance but their over all wellbeing. She invites her students to come
in her classroom and eat lunch with her during the week, hasn't missed one of the
annual 3rd grade Christmas concerts, and doesn't give up on her students or the
parents when only 1 out of the 6 scheduled people come for parent-teacher
meetings. "Teachers who foster cultural competence understand that they must
work back and forth between the lives of their students and the life of school"
(Landson-Billings, 2006).
The Norwood City School district did have a strong sense of community
though, both in my mom's classroom but throughout the whole school. My mom has
been in the Norwood City School district for 10 years and had her fair share of
difficult students. My mom has never talked bad about a student; she only ever has
voiced her concern for them with their performance in the class or home life. When
we talked about deficit and dynamic thinking I thought about my mom because she
has been such a great example to me on how to treat your students and really, truly
wanting them to succeed.
My sophomore year of high school I decided to join the cross-country team.
To this day I'm still not positive on why I decided to join because I hate running but
the team was welcoming and really felt like a family. This team is also where I met
Robert; he was a foreign exchange student from Argentina and new to the school.
For him making friends was not a problem, he had a personality that filled a whole
room and nonstop energy. He and I ran together because we both had established
we were on the team for fun and he wanted to meet more people. By the end of his
first quarter at my high school I'm pretty sure he knew more people than I did when
I had gone to school with most of them for 10+ years. My interest for other people's
cultures picked back up and we talked a lot about the differences between where he
was from and where he was now. I remember one afternoon on one of our longer
runs, us bringing up the back of the pack, he told me about the classes he was taking.
He didn't like any of them besides his Spanish class. But then he went on to tell me
that was because a lot of his other classes were hard and he couldn't keep up.
Teachers should construct pedagogical practices in ways that are culturally relevant,
racially affirming, and socially meaningful for their students (Howard, 2003). Robert
spoke English but had a heavy accent but I could see where he was coming from
because he came in the middle of quarter. Many of the teachers didn't try to stop to
help him catch up or even check and see if he understood what was going on in the
class.
I haven't been exposed to the most diverse settings but the way I have been
raised, watching my mom, and the experiences I have had have shaped who I am
and helped me get a better idea for who I want to be as a person and future teacher.
I want to be someone who is involved in her students’ lives in and out of the
classroom. I want to give my students the respect they deserve and get rid of the
feeling of superiority in the classroom, in doing so creating a mutual respect
between everyone in the classroom. I want to create a safe and comfortable
classroom for my students in hopes to encourage participation and break down
walls. I want to celebrate my students’ differences whether it is race, gender,
sexuality, religion, etc. I want to be a lot of things as a future teacher and I know it
will be hard to do these things I mentioned sometimes but I want to help my
students; not only with their homework but also in the long run as they grow and
become contributing members of society.