Week 5, Cultural Practices--Allison Miller

Me and Lizbeth's sister, Susannah

According to Vaughn, “School reflects what the culture believes is important to learn” (p. 166).  Education at a multicultural school like Amis, which is made up primarily of immigrant children and children of immigrants, I feel like it would be very difficult to be an effective educator for all of the different types of children you are teaching; just spending a few days a week after school at Amis, I’ve met children from all over the world—Mexico, Africa, Asia, etc.  So many features must be considered:  how the student body is organized, the culture’s sociolinguistic practices, cognitive/learning styles of students, motivation, teaching style (Vaughn, p. 168). While there are three types of multicultural learning which McLeod identifies, I believe that Amis utilizes (or, since I have not had the opportunity to sit in a classroom and witness, should utilize) intercultural schooling.  This would prevent the children from being “encapsulated in their own culture or forced into assimilation” (p. 172).  I’ve really enjoyed reading Igoa’s personal accounts of how she managed The Center, teaching students who came from all over the world.  She uses her personal experience as an immigrant child in order to relate to her students and to understand their experiences.

Since I wasn’t sure exactly how Easter is celebrated in the majority of Mexico, I googled it and found that they do not tend to celebrate with chocolate eggs and jelly beans like Americans.  Interestingly, this is not the case for Lizbeth’s family.  When I asked her about her Easter, she claimed she found ten chocolate eggs and saves the chocolate so she can enjoy it long after Easter is over.  In terms of the strategies of acculturation (Vaughn, p. 98) this particular instance seems to fall under integration.  While maintaining their original culture, Lizbeth’s family is also interacting with the dominant culture and interweaving it into their own.

Since Lizbeth’s family does not speak English at home, I can only assume that many of their cultural traditions still revolve around their own Mexican culture.  Lizbeth’s family travels back to Mexico over the summer (when she and her siblings are not in school), where I’m sure they have different cultural practices and traditions than most Americans.  I’m sure it has to be difficult for Lizbeth who lives, in a sense, two different lives.  At school, where she is around many different children of all races and ethnicities, she speaks English and acts a certain way; at home, she is around her unilingual, Spanish-speaking family who hardly (if at all) understands English, and may have to act entirely differently to conform to this culture.

A few of the girls in my sorority

On the first day I met Lizbeth, we were talking about our favorite foods, and she told me that in Mexico she really likes celery, but American celery is not as sweet, and therefore it is not her favorite food now that she lives in America. I thought that this was really interesting, and depicts the difference in cultural foods of the two countries.  While Mexico may focus more on fruits and vegetables (I’m only assuming this as Lizbeth said that she and her family’s diet is mostly comprised of them), in America processed and fast foods are the main focus (in order to keep up with the fast, hectic lifestyles that many American families lead), so fruits and veggies may seem to be left in the dust, maybe being less well-cared for in stores. 

It also must be difficult for children to understand the importance and meaning of body language at Amis, since it varies from culture to culture.  Again, at home, the students may have specific body language that they are expected to use, but when they come to school the rules probably change, just as with Lizbeth’s language.  Simple gestures such as smiling, eye contact, and spatial distance vary from culture to culture (Vaughn, p. 164-5), therefore misinterpretations are bound to occur.

           Personally, my own culture consists of many things.  I am a female, a college student, and a member of Kappa Delta Sorority.  I attend school Monday through Friday, take off in the summer, and have a winter break and a spring break during the year.  I relate to the 107 other women in my sorority in a variety of ways, and maintain in close contact with them (I even live in the house this year!).  I am Lutheran, and go to Church as often as I can,  never missing a holiday service.  I celebrate holidays such as Easter and Christmas.  I am a daughter and a sister, going home to visit my family every couple of weeks.  I want to be a nurse, and my education is very important to me.  I also feel it is vital to make connections with people that are different from me in order to better understand humankind and why we act the way we do.

 

Week 5- Cultural Practices; Maureen Rooney

     Personally, I see AMIS as a school that teaches immigrant children from many different areas of the world. Therefore, even though I have not sat in on a class, I believe that the students personal interactions with each other would be very interesting to observe. 

      AMIS is a place that uses the technique of “treating all students equally and incorporating them into the same classroom” even with people who are different than them (Vaughn, 168). Even though all of the students are immigrants or “children of immigrants”, they come from different backgrounds and lifestyles. They are all unique. It is for this reason that I believe watching them learn in a school setting would be very interesting. Some students may be shy and intimidated by the teacher so they would not ask questions but instead they would listen silently. While others, I feel, would be more personal and forward, asking questions and raising their hand in class. 

      Viviana is from Mexico. She has been very straight-forward and close with me from the first day I met her. Viviana constantly asks me questions and participates in conversation. I have assumed that this is partly a result from her culture. Even though she does not live in Mexico anymore, her parents most likely interact in the same manner as they did in their home country. As a result, Viviana has most likely acquired many of their demeanors.

 

          I believe that I have picked up many characteristics that are apart of my culture too. My parents, which have a great influence on me, are extremely outgoing and direct. Likewise, I like to ask questions and hear a straight answer. In grade school, the teachers would always count on me to answer questions and participate when no one else would. I believe that I follow the “preocedural knowledge” mindset because I usually think “knowledge [is] gleaned from using reason verses feeling (Vaughn 171). 

Outside of the classroom, I enjoy meeting new people. Typically, I always introduce myself with a hug; I enjoy the personal interaction. I feel that others may think this action as too forward. However, in my family, hugging and showing our emotions is normal and expected. Also, while my family can be proper at times, we also can be informal at times. We like to joke and tease each other. As stated, “informal cultures there is [a] greater likelihood of spontaneous humour and joking” which correlates with my family (Vaughn 163). I have also been told that I like to talk a lot and many members in my family do too. At times we “talk at the same time, elaborating and adding onto another’s incomplete statement […] and don’t have much silence” in our conversations (Vaughn 163). I believe I also acquired this trait from my parents because they also like to often communicate with others. My personal interactions in and outside of school can result the type of culture and environment that I was raised in. 

Week 4: Psychosocial Experience of Immigration

During my first meeting with Sara, she was very timid and spoke softly, hardly even allowing me to hear the Mexican accent that worked its way into her speech.  We played the famous word game, Hangman, as an icebreaker to engage in an activity so as to avoid awkward and inefficient small talk, but still Sara seemed distant and uncomfortable.

Vaughn mentions in "Psychology and Culture" the importance of language mastery in the acculturation process.  She notes that language and culture have a reciprocal relationship and that one must understand language to understand its culture and vice versa.  This concept has presented itself both in and outside my meetings with Sara.

So on that first day, after playing about a half hour of Hangman, Sara was talking a bit more but still at a very low volume.  I figured this to be related solely to the intimidation of meeting a stranger.  At the end of our meeting, I gave Sara my cell phone number and told her she was welcome to contact me whenever she wanted, and I would respond as long as I was not in class or at work.  Sara texted me an hour after I left the school.

We had a short but pleasant texting conversation and she continued to text me almost every day that week after returning home from school.  Turns out Sara is not as shy as I had interpreted.

At meeting number two, I expected Sara to be a different person, enthusiastic to see me and comfortable sharing stories about her week.  This was not the case.  She continued to mumble her words and asked me to spell word after word for her as she wrote responses for math problems on her latest homework assignment.

I relate this experience with the aforementioned concept of language in culture from Vaughn's book.  In a conversation such as texting, Sara is comfortable with her english because she has time to formulate a response and her hispanic accent does not present itself.  However, as soon as she is forced to speak face-to-face, she reverts back to speaking softly and asking for verification on spellings before even attempting to spell the words herself.

This is a new concept for me as I was raised in an area with very few ESL peers and I myself had learned English as my first language.  I grew up loving the language and eager to share my speech and writing with others.  Obviously, AMIS, being a school directed toward immigrant children, is a completely different environment than that, and offers its students the opportunity of sharing their native language with others of similar backgrounds while still immersing them in American culture and schooling.

Week 5- Cultural Practices- Dominique Lawson

When looking at the lives of immigrant children there is a clear difference in their educational experience and the way they communicate.Acculturation is described as the changes experienced as a result of being in contact with other cultures (Vaughn, 95). While this is thought to only occur when visiting another country, it actually happens in every day life. In education, students come into contact with many other students of different race, religion, family practices, and other traits that define culture. Here at the University of Cincinnati I may run into many different cultures in the course of one day. So far, I have only interacted with a few people of other cultures, however, those experiences can be connected with the readings.
"Different intercultural frameworks contribute to challenging intercultural interactions with different norms and values. These frameworks include pre-established schemas and scripts that may contribute to distress in interactions" (101). About a month ago, a fire alarm went off in our dorm. We were forced to evacuate the building. This was the first day back from spring break so many people were still unpacking or just arriving in the midst of the chaos. I went to a friend's dorm to wait out the madness with my roommates. As we were waiting in the lobby of her dorm watching all of the students outside of my dorm a man knocked on the door to be let in. With him was a foreign exchange student. She could not speak much English and was trying to find out where her room was and what she needed for her classes the next day. I tried to communicate with her by using gestures and pointing at things, speaking slowly, and trying to be as clear in my verbal cues so that she could understand if I was asking a question or making a statement. We eventually got her situated but it took a lot of work as there were many communication barriers in effect. Overall there was minimal distress in the communication. We laughed a lot even though it was hard to understand one another, and the goal was met in minimal time. Communication is not only talking. It includes nonverbal cues such as gestures and facial expressions, which vary cross-culturally and are hard to decipher at times. 
One of the biggest challenges that immigrants face in acculturation is the change in education. In many other cultures education is much more strict. The time frame from which children attend school is also different in many cases, sometimes it starts much earlier and lasts throughout the day, other times it is later in the day, and in some cases there is a large break in between the hours that children attend school (Igoa). It is hard to make these changes from what was practiced before to what needs to be done now. Many children find it stressful because they not only have to change the style from which they went to school, but they also have to learn a new language and immerse in the culture of the country they attend school in. In Hong Kong, for instance, the student body is made up of about 99 percent Asians (Igoa, 88) while in the US there are many ethnic groups such as African Americans, Whites, Asians, and Hispanics. This immersion into a culturally diverse environment can sometimes cause a culture shock. Although there are negative changes in the education there are also positive changes where the students find the work to be easier once they get the hang of it and get higher rankings as students. One of the best ways to make the educational experience easier for a new immigrant students is to pair them with another student of their race to help them understand and help them blend with the culture better. The best suggested form of acculturation is integration, where there is an interest in both maintaining the original culture while showing interest in and engaging in daily interactions with other groups. Pairing a student with one of the same race and culture helps them to retain the original culture and engage in conversation in it from time to time while still learning the ways of the new country in the educational system with the other children in the same classroom and school as the other cultures.
I am African American, Christian, a woman, a sister, a Godmother, and a daughter. My skin color is brown which in some way connects me to Africa yet I reside in America and am cultured as such. I practice my faith through going to church and reading the Bible. I pray and I sing. I act in femininity through caring, nurturing, loving, and providing. I am connected to other members of my family through blood and through my culture I love them and communicate with them as such. I am a Godmother, I protect my Goddaughter, I provide for her when her mother cannot, I treat her as my own without all of the responsibilities of actually being a mother and should her mother pass, I will take her as my own.

Psychosocial Experience

For one week I knew how it might feel to be an immigrant. Before I went to Haiti, I had never left the country and had only flown once before. I was at the complete mercy of my trip leaders, neither of whom I knew. I know a little bit of French but no Creole. From the time I exited the airport, I was bombarded with cultural differences. No matter what our situation was back home, everyone in the group was on equal footing. We had no idea where we were going or how we were going to get there. None of us had ever been to Haiti before. We stayed at a compound that housed a trade school. We were the only white people there and sometimes it felt like we were on display. The school started before we normally woke up so it wasn't uncommon to wake up and see  people staring in the windows at us. We got pointed at, laughed at and definitely made fun of. The difference was these people didn't know any better. Most of the people we met had never seen white people before. They were amazed by the fact that we had sunburns and would poke our skin and watch it turn pale and then red over and over again. We chose to go to Haiti and had prepared ourselves for the differences. We knew that in one week we would be leaving and going back to the United States where we would always have hot water and electricity, we could eat whenever we wanted and there was air conditioning. Immigrants don't have this option.

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I'm not sure how his status as a child of immigrants has affected Mouhamadou. He told me they speak English at home and he seems very bright. Last week he didn't have any homework so again we just drew and talked. He has has a brother. He said he was 20 but put all ten fingers up as he said it. He is still pretty shy and I have to ask very direct questions to get answers from him. I don't know when his parents came to the United States or what the situation is but from my interactions with Mouhamadou I would say they have assimilated fairly well. His favorite TV show is Monday Night Raw, that is a very American thing to watch. Another thing I think is interesting is that it airs on USA a cable network. This and the fact that he always has nice clothes on makes me think his family may not face some of the economic issues that a lot of immigrant families face. He has grown up in the United States and doesn't know any other lifestyle. While he is still affected by racism and prejudice he didn't have to go through the process of coming to a new country and has grown up learning English.