What I found so impressive about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk about a single story, is how in every instance of her finding out the truth about a certain culture and the single story she was familiar with was getting close to the culture--that is, what it takes to debunk a single story is in essence, proximity. I find it totally fascinating that in our own lives and brains, we create a schema for other cultures and people groups. However, in order for us to actually understand a culture holistically, we must get close to that group. Teachers probably have the most access to a wide range of cultures at any given time, and by all accounts, it is essentially our job to understand these cultures and make them relevant to the students in our care. It is my job as a teacher to take the stereotype of a particular people group, and “complete the story” so that it is not a single story that defines the group, but rather a multiplicity of stories that make up a people group.
BUT...When there is already so much to do--prepare children for tests, help them read fluently and regard math and science as relatable and relevant--how then do we weave cultural relevance into our praxis? How do we decide what is most important to address in the classroom? Is it more important to be a culturally relevant and responsive teacher or to teach the skills and information accurately and positively so that children learn? These articles we read would argue that it is most important to do both simultaneously and consciously. I would argue that this is the struggle for most teachers everywhere. Even if I know that I should be teaching and reflecting a person that is aware of an array of diversity in our culture, I’m not quite sure how I go about doing this. Even though I must admit these articles are not only disheartening and somewhat unattainable, there is a tinge of hope proposed in, “teachers need to believe that schools can be sites for social transformation even as they recognize that schools have typically served to maintain social inequities. They need to have faith in the ongoing project to fashion a democracy, acknowledging that there will be failures as well as successes along the way” (Villegas and Lucas, 2002, p. 24).
“Schooling is living, not preparation for living” (Haberman, 1991, p. 292).
In a classroom of mostly white, affluent, middle-class, American born children, I wonder what it looks like to expose and create awareness of diversity and tribulation among different people groups. I recently experienced my own hesitancy to discuss examples of oppression and trial in our own history when exposing my students to the story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in my Pre-K class. My students were very interested in MLK and what happened to him. I wondered how to give them a sense of what happened and what his life meant for children (and people) in all of America. After reading a very watered down version of MLK’s life, I was met with “how did he die?”, “why did he die?”, and “what did he say that made people mad?”. I found it hard to relate to my 4 and 5 year old students how paramount the Civil Rights movement was for our country. This leads me to believe that I’m ashamed in some way of my own background and culture.
In some ways, operating as a constructivist in regards to teaching social and cultural awareness would be an appropriate direction to go as a teacher in the environment of my classroom. I love the constructivist’s view of knowledge acquisition and retention. It reminds me of Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, when he speaks of the empty container method of teaching and how “good teachers” can fill their student’s containers most. This method not only disregards the student’s own prior knowledge, but also disregards the student as a person. Frank Smith, in The Book of Learning and Forgetting constantly talks about learning as a natural process and that it should not be hard work, however, in the educational climate we live in--we make it work. I even catch myself at school saying, “what are you working on?” or “you need to get back to work” even when my sweet little 4 and 5 year olds are playing in centers. I’m not sure where I get this idea that what they are doing should be work. It think it’s more about challenge and rigor, but I somehow translate that into work. I don’t want my students’ first school experience to be confused with “hard work” and “no play”. I find it difficult sometimes to think about my role in my students’ education and how the way I am teaching and relating to them could determine how they view their educational experience. I want to feel confident in how I teach them about other nondominant cultures and make sure that the story I tell them doesn’t turn into a single story about a particular culture.
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