“There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.” -Michel Foucault
In August and September of 2004, I was feeling very depressed and I knew something had to change in my life. I had spent much of the past year spending weekends with my mom who had tried to commit suicide in November 2003 after my dad died from cancer a year earlier. Having been thrust back into the same conservative environment and attending the same Southern Baptist church in which I grew up was proving to be extremely stressful for me because I no longer felt that I fit in. I was finally able to get away in June and July of that year, going on trips to China and across the U.S. While I didn’t realize it at the time, spending those two months away from anything and everything that was familiar to me turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me because it gave me lots of time to think about what I wanted to happen in my life.
In September 2004, I finally came out as gay to my first close friend. In the months that followed, I continued on this path of self-revelation to those I was close to. Over the winter break that year, I tasted the first alcoholic beverage of my life. In January 2005, I went on my first date with a guy. Needless to say, I felt that things were changing quickly in my life and I was happy that I felt I was beginning to gain some control.
One guy I went out with in January 2005 introduced me to something called the Landmark Forum. This is a personal development workshop that he said had changed his life because of the way it made him feel empowered about being the person he wanted to be. (Check out www.landmarkeducation.com if you’d like to know more.) One thing he said that really struck home with me was when he said the workshop taught you to really question the “filters” you’ve accumulated during your life (such as your upbringing, values, etc.) through which you make judgments about experiences and what is possible in your life. He said that in some instances, these filters may no longer serve a useful purpose to you and you need to actively examine these filters, keeping the ones that still make sense and discarding the ones that are no longer useful to you.
Not long after having this conversation about the Landmark Forum, I had a dream one night. In this dream, I was leaving my classroom in the afternoon and I was trying to lock the door with my key. I could feel my sunglasses slipping off, but, because my arms were full, I couldn’t catch them. After I locked the door, I bent down to pick them up. It was then that I noticed the entire ground was covered with sunglasses. I tried to be very careful so as not to step on any sunglasses, but, despite my best efforts, I was stepping on them left and right, breaking them under my feet.
Now I’m not usually one for dream analysis, but I was certain that this dream was significant. The sunglasses were the “filters” through which I had been seeing the world and I had already begun the process of getting rid of these filters that I no longer deemed useful – being taught that homosexuality was wrong, all alcohol is bad, etc. Because these filters were no longer covering my eyes, I could see things more clearly . . . AND people could look into my eyes to get a glimpse of my soul, my thoughts, and reflections. People could see the “real” me through my eyes, not just their own reflections as would be the case if I were wearing sunglasses.
I chose Foucault’s quote listed at the top of this post because I felt that just as the experiences listed above had caused me to think and see differently than I had before in a personal regard, the readings in this course have caused me to think and see differently in a professional way. Just as I tried to fit in for all those years, knowing that I was trying to be someone I was not, I began to think more deeply about the children in my own classroom who may differ from me in some way (socioeconomic status, race, language difference, learning style, etc.) and how I am sure they have tried to fit in as well by doing the best that they can to use what they know in my classroom setting. What has remained virtually unconsidered, until now, is how stressful it may have been for some of these children to bridge the disconnect between their own worlds and the world of school as I, the teacher, presented it. Thinking of this has led me to reflect on some of my own practices and how perhaps I can make the journey not so stressful during the time these students are under my guidance.
One of the notions presented in the readings that I thought extensively about was the one concerning “code switching” in Delpit’s article. While realizing that I can do this quite easily depending on the environment in which I find myself (school, the art gallery where I also work, my hometown, a night out with friends, etc.), I also realized that my students at the age of four and five have not had nearly the experience I have had in this area. Because their main form of discourse has been what they have heard modeled at home, it is only logical that they would attempt to use the same “code” at school. This has always been something I have struggled with, as mentioned in the blogs, because I have wanted to write down the students’ dictations in standard English, although, to the children, this does not necessarily sound like what they said. While I still feel I have a responsibility to assist in the students’ use of standard English, I now understand the importance of validating the “code” they use as a legitimate form of communicative discourse.
Secondly, in Henry’s article “‘Speaking Up’ and ‘Speaking Out’” and even in “Hustle and Flow” by Staples, I was particularly interested in how these researchers employed the use of groups to get the students talking with one another about the curriculum and/or issues that were important to them. Personally, I have never enjoyed working in groups and I generally will not say a lot, preferring to listen and keep my ideas and opinions to myself. (Believe me, I have shared a LOT more through this online class via writing than I ever would have in discussions as part of an actual class meeting.) I realize that I have projected my dislike for groups and group discussions into how I run my classroom because I very rarely ask my students to participate in such groups. When I started teaching pre-kindergarten, one of the “hot” ideas was using A-B buddies to have the students discuss things with a partner. I tried the idea a few times, but I think I gave up on it because it didn’t fit in with my own personal preferences for instruction. My excuse, however, was that it was just too difficult to do with four-year-olds. I still maintain that it is difficult, but, upon reflection, I know that I did not provide the practice needed to establish this. What I need to keep in mind for the upcoming school year is that some students need to discuss their ideas with others in a more immediate manner in order to make sense of their thoughts and solidify their own sense of understanding. As Nadia said in Henry’s article, “‘It’s good to work in group….because you get more understanding than if you work by yourself’” (p. 247). Just because this doesn’t fit in with my own preferences for learning does not mean that it doesn’t fit in with my students’ preferences.
Thirdly, as I alluded to in my blog about Chapters 3 and 4 in Reading Lives, I know now that I must make more of a conscious effort to recognize the importance of the activities in which my boys engage, just as I do with my girls. I mentioned in that particular blog entry that I identified more with what Hicks said about Laurie and the literacy learning of girls because what she described was more similar to what I remember. While I do think that being in a pre-kindergarten classroom with all the active learning and movement that goes on has perhaps negated the discomfort I sometimes feel with how the boys display their knowledge of and involvement with literary topics, I now realize how important this is for many of them in maintaining interest in the discourse used at school because it more closely mirrors the home discourse. When I see the little signs of resistance or reluctance, instead of seeing them possibly as behavioral issues, I could see them as opportunities to reflect on what I could do to engage the student further. On a positive note, I do think the opportunity I have to do home visits at the beginning of the school year helps me to be more in-tune with some of the interests my students have. Upon reflection, I think that I could perhaps put information I gather during the home visits to better use in planning activities when those moments of resistance or reluctance appear.
Lastly, I feel somewhat certain that some people in our online class may have been slightly unsettled by my constant references to how I feel my experiences as a gay individual have related to our readings. After all, this class was called “Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research.” The title did not mention sexual orientation. I would argue, however, that, just as Jake relied on three-dimensional tasks to help him make sense of what he was learning, I had to rely on what made sense to me in order to process what others from various distinct groups felt when interacting with a literary world. As has been the case with all the individuals we have read about this semester, interactions within a literary world deeply affect one’s perception of self. As Hicks states in Reading Lives, “Textual shapings of an always-already social world – media images, stories, film, comic books, talk – create fictions that become realities for individuated subjects” (p. 30). As educators, we should all work to have our students – and, indeed, ourselves – critically examine what we see, hear, and read in order to learn from one another and see that what is called “reality” by some in school may, in fact, have no semblance of reality to what those in our midst go through each and every day. To paraphrase Foucault from the introductory quote, it is necessary for us to question our ways of thinking and perceiving and to challenge our “filters” that we have developed that tell us what reality must be. If we are truly honest, each of us has our own reality and we must take that into account, especially as we work with the young ones put under our care.
Clyde Rice