Week 6: Michelle Prinzo

Are you culturally competent? How do you know?
According to the Vaughn text, cultural competence is,"the ability to apply knowledge of your own and others' cultures. What you do before and after, are as important as what you do during, an intercultural interaction" (105).  So am I culturally competent? If I had to grade myself I would give myself a "B-". But, I am still learning. I think I have a strong understanding what goes into an intercultural interaction and how to evaluate my interaction and make changes. The actual interaction is still often very tricky. I feel that I have drastically improved my cultural competence in the past few years. I would attribute this mostly to being lucky enough to interact with people from so many different cultures and backgrounds and my coursework in Communication. I came from an area that was fairly homogeneous culturally. The majority of my interactions were with people who looked, talked, and came from similar backgrounds to me. I knew that every person was different, and everyone had a diverse background that could be shared, but there were enough apparent similarities between us that interactions and communication came easily.

Late night fun with Krysten and her sisters

Towards the end of high school, I became really close to my now best friend and her family. Krysten's mom is a Mexican immigrant and works in the city of Akron as a translator. While Krysten had an upbringing very similar to my own, many of her mom's relatives and the families she worked with were at her house. The more time I was over there, the more people from different cultures I interacted with. The more intercultural interactions I had, the better I got at it. These interactions provided me with a foundation to come to UC--a school and a city in which I have had the opportunity to interact with so many different and wonderful people.

How should you interact with someone of a different culture?

The artwork my students made to share with Relay For Life participants

I personally think that you should interact with someone of a different culture the same way you interact with someone of the same culture--by treating them as an individual. Listen to them, learn about their background, observe their habits, and share with them. I really think that is what many of the strategies in our texts have tried to convey. The more you interact with an individual, the more you can understand about them, and the better your interactions will be.

The picture above represents this understanding for me. In the picture the banner that is along the windows was created by my students (first graders at Fairview-Clifton German Language School). In my classroom I taught 20 individuals. Each student has his or her own background, but together we created a classroom culture. The banner has the word "hope" translated into 8 languages (I know you can't see it, you will just have to trust me)---the eight different languages children in my classroom speak in addition to English. Additionally, the banner has pictures of the Relay For Life symbol and our theme: "One world, one hope, one cure". This represents a part of my identity and culture that I shared with my students. My students loved to learn what it meant to be a college student, and many of them exhibited a very mature understanding of what cancer is and how it has affected my lives and the lives of many other people both inside and outside of the classroom. Most importantly, this banner is a piece of collaborative work--it shows how all of us interacted with one another. The longer we spent together, the more we learned about each others backgrounds, heritage, tendencies, and habits and the more effectively we were able to communicate.