More on friends

I didn't mean to enter this story here under diversity, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it says something about the treatment of a group of employees who are a diverse mix of Caucasian, Caribbean, African American, and Hispanic. Or is it just how garage culture works? I saw Jesus today, so he and Charles are the only two remaining from the "old crew."

Entry from Zebra Shoes:

While Gregory's virtual friends are popping out of the TV screen and becoming real live pass-you-on-the-street friends, I have lost a whole group of neighborhood friends. For 13 years I have been greeted at the local garage by a group of nine men.

I know their names because they have them on their shirts, but more importantly every December I angst over whether to give tips to each individual named in the holiday card or whether to give one amount of money to go in a pool for all nine. I always feel that I can never give enough to tell them how much I appreciate their attention to my presence in the neighborhood. They bring out my car as they see me emerge from school at the end of the day; they tell me when my gas is low and when my registration and inspection are due. They wish me a good vacation and remark when I've worked too many late nights.

A few weeks ago all but one familiar face was gone, replaced by a crew of new faces. I thought the managers were on vacation. I figured the garage had brought in new people for training. Finally, I asked Charles where everyone was and he said, "Transferred." That's all he said as he went to get my car.

My friends are all gone and I don't even know their last names. They are my first-name friends and I miss them. I wonder if they miss each other or it they're all together somewhere. Why is it better business to break up a good work team and neighborhood relationships? The only friend I have left in the neighborhood is the UPS man, Brian. He calls me by name even when he sees me blocks away on the edge of his route.

The other day I told Charles I was leaving the neighborhood, too. He said, "Will they replace you?" "Yes, " I replied. "With someone as good?"  I looked around the garage and I know the comment wasn't about me.

Mixed race

Is a child of one race who is adopted by parents of another race a mixed race child? Does that child look out at the parents who embrace her and see herself in their apparent race? Is it different from the child who is perceived by others to be of mixed race?

I have always thought about these things, but now, I must think about them and these are questions that are making my brain tired every day.

Identity

Weeks ago I started talking to the head of our English department about an assembly he was helping a student to plan. She had come back from the Student Leadership Conference in December, the counter-part to the adult People of Color Conference, urgent to confront issues of inequity that became clear to her as a result of her participation in the conference. She had an urgent personal story to tell and had concluded that the inequities she observed in a community away from home, were actually very present in her home community as well. She wanted to take action.

Over several weeks I became more involved in the planning of the assembly. At the same time I was thinking about Beverly Tatum's idea that one of three crucial steps to take in a school that strives to be more inclusive is to focus some effort on affirming identity. I suggested that we center the assembly on identity formation. We decided to ask a group of students and adults to tell a personal story that they would consider a "defining moment" in their lives.

In thinking about diversity at Horace Mann, we decided that one place to start was to ask members of our community to reflect on their development of a sense of self. Specifically, we asked them:

• If identity is shaped by social context, what are the defining moments that have had a lasting impact on the formation of your identity?
•  Can you recall a moment in time, an experience or an interaction with another person that caused you to consider how others perceive you or how you perceive others?

(excerpt from opening remarks at assembly)

We had 12 stories in all - the experience of moving from a situation of being in the majority to being in the minority of a group (and vice versa), the experience of being made more aware of one's difference when someone else points it out to you, a raised awareness to your own personal lens that affects the way you see the world around you, observing the stark reality of inequities in your own culture and gaining as understanding of your "attachment" to both the perceived and real positive and negative aspects of your cultural identity. All compelling; all about 3 minutes long. 

We let the stories tell the cumulative story on stage, using a microphone and music stand to define the spot where each person stood to tell their story. The staging turned out to be one of the most important decisions we made - having everyone sitting on stage in an arc with the speaking spot about mid-point of the arc. The people we chose were also key - popular, well-known, well-liked teachers, easily recognized, but maybe not so well-known staff, students who had passionate messages and had given serious thought to the issues that confronted them.

I hadn't given much thought to anything that might surface about the stories that would distinguish adults from students. It was difficult to get the students to tell their own story rather than the societal one. They all had some element of the institutions and people surrounding their story as reason for the story's existence, but also the resolution of the issue. They were asked, as they revealed their ideas, to talk more about personal experience. What happened to you? The adult stories were fully formed, but had taken on the life of a story - the ability to continue to evolve with every telling. The student's stories were raw, still unfolding, and perhaps needing the structure of the external context to have legitimacy. They were becoming personal stories.

In one of my last conversations with the English teacher before the assembly we talked about listening as a skill and a tool. The first time I was made aware of a pedagogy of listening was during a lecture by an Italian professor who often speaks and writes about the schools in Reggio Emilia. Carlina Rinaldi said that the meaning of what a person has to say is only revealed in the listening. You, the listener, give my words, the speaker, meaning. Your response to my words informs how I communicate what I want to say.

The teacher commented that we are a school filled with great speakers. Maybe listening is the thing we need to work on.  This was the lead-in to our stories:

Today you will hear a series of personal stories. Each participant has chosen to share something of themselves to demonstrate how they have come to understand this process of identity formation. The act of sharing stories is the opportunity for self-reflection, but it is also the opportunity to reach out to make a connection with others. We hope you will listen actively and find a meaningful connection between what you hear today and your own experiences.

Yesterday, I attended the local diversity conference. The opening remarks included an exercise called, "Yes, and...." It was a tool for more constructive listening in building a meaningful dialogue. She described how young children know how to develop play. They become very skilled at adding to their play mates' ideas,  often working together to construct complex and exciting possibilities. "We can build a boat." "Yes, and then we are on the ocean." "Yes, and then a storm comes."

Adults, she said, are more inclined to use a "Yes, but...." response to challenge the speaker, perhaps only listening for the opening to tell what they think or to simply agree or disagree.  Listening. It may be the missing tool in our diversity initiative toolbox.

Furthering sterotypes

From Jere Longman, NY Times, February 26, 2010:
"What the audience of 11,771 at Pacific Coliseum had witnessed was an unprecedented combination of technical difficulty and willowy sophistication as Kim became the first South Korean skater to win an Olympic gold medal. She held up under enormous pressure to succeed as an athlete, a cultural icon and a vanquisher of competitors from Japan, which occupied the Korean peninsula for 35 years through the end of World War II." 


From Alan Abrahamson, www.nbcolympics.com, February 26, 2010:

"Her free-skate score, 150.06, obliterated the old world record -- hers -- by roughly 17 points. "It was almost a man's score," Kim said with a laugh.

Indeed, her final overall score, 228.56, was about 10 points better than what Jeremy Abbott, the two-time U.S. national champion, managed here -- and would have put her ninth in the men's Olympic competition.

The men are allowed to do one more jump in their free skates than the ladies -- which makes what Kim did all the more impressive." 


From Juliet Macur, NY Times, February 26, 2010:

"After months of playing it cool, saying the pressure to win the Olympic gold medal had not weighed on her, Kim Yu-na of South Korea finally let her emotion show on Thursday." 


"Vanquisher of competitors from Japan", "almost a man's score", "finally let her emotion show"? What's there to say?

Do They want diversity?

Note to self: some cultures and some households do not wear street shoes indoors. Make sure you wear clean and no-hole socks or stockings in case you have to take off your shoes. Luckily, I did.

Yesterday's dinner was in a home that did not wear shoes indoors. The last time I was at a school parent gathering where this was the case, it was a family choice, not a cultural practice. I remember how much conversation surrounded this request to remove ones shoes and also how disarming it seemed to the group. Women, usually raised up by heels, were suddenly eye to eye with other women; suddenly noticeably shorter than some men. Some people were uncomfortably undressed in their bare feet. Last night, in stocking feet, bare feet or slippers provided by the host, everyone seemed to take it in stride without a comment.

We settled in for the "presentation" part of the evening, a formal introduction of the school personnel in the room and expressions of appreciation to all who had helped with the evening. The respect for the process was palpable in the silence that embraced the speaker. Everyone sat with a view of the speakers and listened as each spoke in turn. It was such a familiar scene from my childhood when my parents would gather with friends brought together by a common group membership for an evening that often included some kind of formal discussion or presentation by members of the group.

During the question and answer portion, one parent asked the question, "Do They want the diversity we bring to the group? How do They feel about having us in the school?" It was a question raised by an Asian parent who described his Asian peers as a homogeneous group, but as a minority group that brings diversity to an institution that has purposely increased its racial and ethnic diversity in recent years. Now, with a student population identified as made up of 30% students of color (non-Caucasian), this parent raises a question that reveals his personal lens and reminds us that diversity may be a good thing if it gives you access, but not necessarily if it reduces Their access. There was a bit of uncertainty in his voice that may also have been asking, "Do we belong here?"

Homogeneity is an interesting thing. The face of a group may give it the appearance of homogeneity - same race, same color hair, same dress - but once you get inside the group the homogeneity loses a bit of its sheen and shows a texture that lives below the surface. Dig a little and small differences begin to distinguish individuals in the group. Dig deep enough and you discover the diversity within the group.

If we can get to that more permeable, more fluid texture below the surface, can we shift the conversation from Us and Them or Majority and Minority to something that better represents the complexity of the question at hand?

Affirming identity

I read Greg Mortenson 's children's version of Three Cups of Tea to a group of 4 year olds last week. It was their 100th read aloud book and the reading had evolved into a highly anticipated event. They were listening to every word.

The book first describes Mortenson as a mountain climber who goes to Pakistan to climb K2. He become ill and is nursed back to health by people in the village of Korphe who find him. They learn later that he is a nurse and refer to him as Dr. Greg. Grateful for their care, Dr. Greg makes a promise to help build schools for the children of Korphe. At one point, after hearing both references to the same man, a child asks, "Can you be two things at the same time, a mountain climber and a nurse?" I take a moment to think of the appropriate response, but another child says, "Yes. See my babysitter is a babysitter and an actress," and another child says, "I'm a kid and I'm an animal expert!" 

I had recently been told by a teacher in our high school that his concern is how students foster a sense that you belong or you don't based on the way they define themselves and their sense of group. This pressure to be more like the group or to risk exclusion pressures many students to feel they have to make hard choices about how they define themselves. The community can, in effect, shut down the possibility that a person can be identified by more than one "thing" by expecting a person to choose among the possibilities to better fit into the group or to work toward a more one-dimensional identity. Kenji Yoshino raises the same question in his book, Covering. As a student and a young man, he struggled with how to be a gay male and an Asian American male and a lawyer when each identifier was not always compatible in the daily life of the others. 

I just viewed Mai's America  on YouTube. It's the story of an exchange student's experience living in the American South (Mississippi and Louisiana) and searching for her identify as her environment pushes her to see herself from new perspectives. At every turn Mai is forced to think about her identity as she tries to build new relationships far from her home and family. It reveals the great human desire to fit in or belong and the hard work of identity development.

When a four year old says with confidence that someone she knows can be two things there is great hope. She, in her moment of human development, knows that one part of forming an identity is how you see yourself reflected back through other's eyes. She is doing that all the time as she listens, sees, and watches to understand what others are telling her about who she is. Her babysitter is lucky to have her as a babysittee.

Cross-professional thinking

Last week I watched Treeless Mountain , the story of two little girls in Korea. I started out thinking it was just a slow-moving movie about a mother and her children, but as practically every frame gave a glimpse into the hearts and minds of these two little girls I realized that it was a story about relationships, loss, attachment and nurturing care. It was a perfect example of Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory of "one adult who gives unconditional love" for every child.

In my search for movies about culture I seem to keep coming across movies about children. One of my favorites is Mongolian Ping Pong  about a gang of young boys who find a ping pong ball and spend the movie trying to figure out what it is and who it belongs to. Eve and the Firehorse is another wonderful movie starring two sisters.

I had imagined that I might have to give up my focus on early childhood to commit full-time to diversity iniitatives. This coming together of child development and understanding of culture is reassuring. I am reading Beverly Tatum's book, Can We Talk About Race?, and she describes "the ABC's of creating inclusive learning environments." A=affirming identity, B=building community, C=cultivating leadership. Sue Bredekamp & Carol Copple, in Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs, describe three areas of information teachers need to pursue developmentally appropriate practice. (1) knowledge of child development and learning, (2) knowing the strengths, interests and needs of each individual child in the group, (3) knowledge of the social and cultural contexts in which children live. I think I have come to a cross-road.