Growing Through Our Past Into the Future : Journeys of Educators on the Path to Cultural Competence

Growing Through Our Past Into the Future: Journeys of Educators on the Path to Cultural Competence Editor: Marla H. Zimmerman, MA, LCSW, LMFT

Dedication: This book is dedicated to seven very special people that have enriched my life and opened my eyes in countless ways; My Parents, Roslyn and Arthur; who have always believed in me so that I may believe in others My Life Partner, Becky; together we dance the music of multiculturalism, in decades past and decades to come Gloria Smith, my high school creative writing teacher, a wise and creative human being that encouraged the light in my mind and my soul Elaine Needell, M.D., my early role model; a kind, dedicated and caring healer with a crystal ball filled with hope Joseph P. King, M.D., my friend and colleague who I dearly miss; a mentor and genius in the practice of psychiatry; who walked the path of inclusion with every patient he saw and every person he met Lillian Barcio, friend and mentor who is dearly missed; a lifelong learner and journalist whose unconditional positive regard planted a seed many years ago whose blossom is this book

ii ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected]) ISBN 0-9776899-0-5

Foreword:

Higher education has a responsibility to transform the lives of individual citizens and communities through our teaching, learning, research, and civic engagement. Developing “the human potential” is fundamental to our efforts in education and is a basic notion in this work: Growing Through Our Past Into the Future: Journeys of Educators on the Path to Cultural Competence. This volume is most refreshing in that the authors understand they are both student and teacher having something to give and to gain as they pursue their own journey of competency and culture. American higher education is currently educating more citizens than ever in the history of higher education. We are also operating in a more culturally diverse climate. Consequently, it is profoundly important to consider culture and how our understanding and incorporating culture into our work is fundamental to good work. Anyone interested in truly changing lives and in changing their own life should read this text. You may find that you do not agree entirely with the ideas presented in the readings; however you will be impressed by the commitment of the authors to the social good. As Howard Garner (2001) notes in his seminal work: Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet, good work is “work of expert quality that benefits the broader society” (Gardner, Csikszentmihaly, and Damon, 2001, p. ix). These writings reflect a commitment to excellence and to the greater common good. Faculty, staff, students, and alumni comprise any academic community. When an academic community is in the largest metropolitan setting in the state, the state’s capital and the state’s center of business, industry, and civic life; it is most incumbent upon the community to promote an environment that “respects and celebrates diversity, that appreciates individual differences, and that builds on collective talents and experiences for the benefit of the larger societal good” (IUPUI Vision For Diversity). This text provides a candid, compassionate and compelling read for anyone interested in the challenges and triumphs of working at the intersections of human identity and human development in an educational setting. The ideas expressed confirm Richard Light’s notion that as educators we should “make a thoughtful, evidence-based, purposeful effort to get in each students way” (Light, 2001, p.209). The evidence of our efforts can be the understanding of our changing demographics in our community and on our campuses. The evidence can also be our lived experiences. Our purpose is to do good work, especially work that has meaning for our students. Human identity, culture, diversity, cultural competency are all different roads to

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the same end – creating meaningfully experiences for our students that will result in changed lives, college graduation, and a greater understanding of the human condition. This text is most timely in that for many years, my own campus which is also the campus for some of the authors, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) has worked conscientiously toward a vision of a more diversity centered campus. This text exemplifies the best of our work as educators. According to the IUPUI Vision for Diversity, diversity means three things at IUPUI: “(1) diversity is an educational and social asset to be reflected in our learning and work objectives; (2) the persons who comprise our academic community reflect both the current diversity of our service region as well as the evolving demographics of a state and city that aspire to participate fully in a global society; and (3) IUPUI’s social and physical environment will enable all of its members to succeed to the fullest extent of their potential” (IUPUI Vision For Diversity). Growing Through Our Past Into the Future: Journeys of Educators on the Path to Cultural Competence contributes to the important on-going dialogue which is the only way that we can meet our greatest responsibility – that of educator. Karen M. Whitney Vice Chancellor For Student Life & Diversity Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

References Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis Vision For Diversity. (2002). Retrieved 9/18/05 from www.diversity.iupui.edu Gardner, H., Csikszentmihaly, M., & Damon, W. (2001). Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet. New York: Basic Books. Light, Richard J. (2001). Making The Most of College. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

Acknowledgements:

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Life is a circle and we are all connected; nothing takes place in a vacuum and our interdependence is vital. These are not only aspects of and reasons for our journeys toward cultural competence; they are the foundation for my thanks to many others for the success of this project. First, it is with the greatest of esteem that I acknowledge each one of the authors in this book; my colleagues, who have shared their personal and scholarly experiences in exquisite ways so that other educators might feel “connection” on their paths toward cultural competence; gain greater insight to working with students in a multicultural world; learn and “pay it forward” by sharing their experiences both personal and professional with other colleagues; and create campuses and classrooms for students and one another that mirror each and everyone one of us and welcome us home. Secondly, I am deeply grateful to the Lumina Foundation for support of this project/book, as well as for their leadership and dedication to “helping people achieve their potential by expanding access and success in education.” I am truly honored by this association with the Lumina Foundation. I did not realize that I had been “given” two guardian angels as guides on this endeavor. Anastasia Morrone has been the best Director of The Center for Teaching and Learning anyone could ask for. Anastasia, I have appreciated your openness, understanding, encouragement, willingness to work things out and innovative thinking. You’re the tops! Natasha Flowers, the Director of the Office for Multicultural and Professional Development, has become a friend as we shared the cofacilitation of the Lumina Faculty Learning Community on Multicultural Course Transformation. She was a very early “true believer” in this project. She provided support and guidance every step of the way and even proofed articles. Natasha, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” A special thanks to Nancy VanNote Chism, the Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, for her commitment to and support of the Lumina Faculty Learning Community for Multicultural Course Transformation. Your strong support of the Lumina FLC and all possible outcomes has been integral in the birth of this book. I would like to thank my colleague and friend, Helen McKuras for assistance in proofing the articles in this book. As always, your insights, command of language, time and effort are greatly appreciated.

The final technical and artistic stages of any project are of critical importance and so it has been with this book. Many thanks go to Asha Patel graphic artist, Sally Neal for the ISBN, Sharmin McGown for the final edits and Jon Eynon, webmaster. Sharon Hamilton, Associate Dean of the Faculties at IUPUI and Director of the Indiana University Faculty Colloquium for Excellence in Teaching, I consider a writing mentor. She felt that this book/project had merit and encouraged me to “go with it,” when it was a concept in its early gestational phase. Thank you for encouraging me to be “bold”! This Project would not have been accomplished without my life partner, Becky; her faith in me, companionship, never ending love, encouragement and support. You are my dearest friend and most loving critic. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Marla Zimmerman, MA, LCSW, LMFT Copyright 8/2005

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©HOPE

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Hope; A word unbounded, And yet with form and depth . . . and gravity. Summoning the future, laying the foundation of possibilities, supplanting fear. Hope A faint echo coursing through the veins, permeating the viscera, vibrating within the psyche. So tangible it makes hearts beat stronger, people live longer, sun rise, again. So ethereal it seems grasped only by faith, in prayer, by mindful outlook, centrally in one’s spirit. Hope; offering strength, resolve, courage, support, A new day . . . tomorrow. Hope; Vanishes . . . for those depressed, dejected or disenfranchised, and yet . . . can spring eternal, even with the slightest flickering it can illuminate the soul, create a brighter world. Hope; integral and essential, like manna from heaven offering sustenance. Continued . . .

Hope; must be nurtured, within ourselves and others, we must plant the seeds of hope and “keep hope alive.” Hope; must transcend, become manifest, tangible, indisputable, so every seed of hope, brings forth a flower. Marla Zimmerman, MA, LCSW, LMFT Copyright 8/2005

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Table Of Contents:

Marla Zimmerman



Pages Introduction.........................................1-3

Part One: Lumina Fellows Faculty Learning Community on Multicultural Course Transformation Terrence Daley Archana Dube’ Natasha Flowers Beverly Linde & Deborah Demeester Janet Meyer Marla Zimmerman



Pages Homeward Bound ................................5-7 Introducing Multiculturalism in Teaching and Content ....................8-11 Schizophrenia’s Cure for Diversity Work: How My Mother’s Life Transforms My Notion of Inclusiveness ....................12-14 From Cultural Awareness to Cultural Competence in Nursing .....15-19 “An Innocent Abroad” .......................20-22 Fresh Air ...........................................23-26

Part Two: Heart & Soul

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Writings more deeply rooted in autobiography Elizabeth M. Goering What to Do “When in Rome.” My Journey to Revised Understanding of Intercultural Communication Competence Jay R. Howard Social Class, Age, and Religion: Turning Marginality into Empathy for Students Paul Kriese From Ghetto to Ghetto: Growing Through The Past into the Future Michael C. Morrone A Path of Inclusion Robert L. Osgood Meeting the Other: Autism, Emotional Disability and Learning to Teach Mary Jo Pride The Open Door: For Persons With Disabilities Ragheda “Anne” Rabie A Multicultural Advisor

Vandana Rao Jennifer Thorington Springer William Sweigart Michelle Verduzco

Pages Colin’s Vision ...................................51-64 Reflections on Diversity Practices: Surviving Student Resistance In The Classroom ............55-59 Sexual Orientation as One Component of Multiculturalism ......60-64 Born Again Mexican ........................65-69

Part Three: Heart & Head Writings rooted in a personal and more formal presentation Pages Charles R. Barman A Meaningful Model for Diverse Learners ...............................71-77 Jacqueline Blackwell Sharing Personal Perspective: Connecting Baby Boomers and Millennials ................................78-82 Carol Hostetter Up the Down Staircase: Learning to Experience “Otherhood” .....................................83-87 Deborah Biss Keller Teaching as Transformation: An Evolving Art ...............................88-90 John A. Woodcock Multicultural Learning from Mis-takes .................................91-93

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Introduction: This book is about multiculturalism and the many paths toward cultural competence. The book itself is a study in multiculturalism with regard to the human diversity of the authors, as well as diversity of discipline and thought, writing styles, chosen topics, perspectives, sharing, and voice, etc. The very meaning and purpose of this project/ book, is mirrored in its creation, nature and composition. The world is changing and the demographics are changing. In the near future populations that have been referred to as “minorities” or “under-represented” will be half or more of the entire population. Such terms will be obsolete. Our schools, campuses, and retention and graduation rates must reflect these changes; must reflect the desire and struggle by all people to learn, do well, make a decent living and contribute to society. Our schools and campuses must truly become “multicultural” by becoming truly inclusive. This is not only because it is the fair and just thing to do; it is of economic and political necessity for all people to be as fully prepared as possible, to contribute talents and skills and wisdom and to take on the reins of 21st century demands, challenges and opportunities as a collaborative effort. On the whole, people are basically decent and well meaning with a sincere desire to behave appropriately, respond in the “politically correct” way, be respectful. The challenge then becomes; how does one cross the divide and learn about themselves enough, become educated and enlightened enough to embrace and celebrate difference. How does the transformation take place wherein one human being becomes a safe haven for all fellow human beings, and in this way a role-model for students and colleagues? Multicultural transformation is a process that affects everyone; in different places, at different times along interconnecting and intersecting circular paths; students as well as educators whether they are administrators, staff, teachers, instructors, faculty, advisors or counselors. Multiculturalism and inclusive teaching reflects our diverse world in the broadest of terms; religion, race, nationality, family, age, sexual orientation/preference, physical appearance, ability, gender, education, socioeconomic status, ways of thinking, accent, health, style of dress, body adornments, hair style, etc. Through a multicultural perspective in the classroom as well as throughout the educational environment, students can feel more welcomed and be more successful as they see themselves reflected in the curriculum and within the eyes of the educational community of “K - higher education.”

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Each one of us is different and yet we have much in common, and each of us has a great deal to offer. This is true of our colleagues and the students in our classrooms and on our college campuses. Learning about difference and embracing difference has been an increasing process in education. But sharing this process by educators is long overdue. This book of articles by educators across the Indiana University system will positively impact other educational professionals in both K – 12 and higher education; faculty as well as student affairs and academic affairs professionals; teachers, principles, advisors, counselors, social workers and aids. It is the ‘missing link’ in educators’ life-long learning. Growing Through Our Past Into the Future: Journeys of Educators on the Path to Cultural Competence is a collection of outstanding articles/ short chapters on personal and professional multicultural transformation as seen through the eyes of a retrospective lens. Authors reflect on their professional beginnings, realizing that they started from a different understanding and place than they find themselves today. These longitudinal perspectives of personal transformation through writing create teaching and learning “moments” for professionals across the educational spectrum. Authors’ reflections prompt readers’ personal reflections; each author’s growth and understanding as a person and professional invites the readers’ growth and understanding. The articles in this book are a powerful combination; soul searching, from the heart, thoughtful and from the head incorporating a more formal approach than others. All clearly demonstrate the importance of reflection as a tool for professional growth and development, for both author and reader. The articles and experiences in this book are also universal to all educators; everyone begins at one point in “time and mind” and moves along in her/his own personal developmental process. Yet this as opposed to only theory and techniques is not often shared so that educators can benefit from one another’s learning curves; ‘ah ha’ moments, visceral understanding, intuitive awareness, immersion, insight, intersection of academics and application, ‘real world’ gestalt, etc. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) teaches that “success leaves clues and can be learned.” This book can help all educators successfully learn about multiculturalism from the “clues” shared in these educator’s journeys. In the end, readers will be learning more about themselves, as well as about strategies for reshaping their classrooms and relationships to reflect greater inclusion. Ultimately, students will benefit. A valued student, who feels connected to his/her educational experience, and feels a part of the institutional fabric, will be successful and have a great sense of hope for the future.

The book is divided into three parts plus a Conclusion; Part I includes articles by authors who have participated as Lumina Fellows in the Faculty Learning Community on Multicultural Course Transformation. This Faculty Learning Community included sharing, reflection, scholarly readings, cultural experiences and educational implementation. Part II includes articles that are more deeply and autobiographically rooted in “heart and soul” with regard to multiculturalism. Part III includes articles rooted in “heart and head” that speak to inclusion through both a personal and formal presentation. We are all on this critical path toward cultural competence, though we may not yet know all the steps we need to take, personally and/or professionally. This book presents steps that some educators have already taken and their “clues” can provide needed guidance, support and understanding for other’s journeys. It is my hope that this book which includes the personal and professional sharing and insights of educators can refocus the dialogue, regarding inclusive teaching and multicultural transformation in education, further toward a fait accompli! Thank you - Marla H. Zimmerman, MA, LCSW, LMFT Editor Indianapolis; 8/5/05

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multicultural multicult

Part One: Lumina Fellows

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Faculty Learning Community on Multicultural Course Transformation Pages Terrence Daley Homeward Bound ................................5-7 Archana Dube’ Introducing Multiculturalism in Teaching and Content ....................8-11 Natasha Flowers Schizophrenia’s Cure for Diversity Work: How My Mother’s Life Transforms My Notion of Inclusiveness ....................12-14 Beverly Linde & From Cultural Awareness to Deborah Demeester Cultural Competence in Nursing .....15-19 Janet Meyer “An Innocent Abroad” .......................20-22 Marla Zimmerman Fresh Air ...........................................23-26

Homeward Bound “Hey, Mr. Daley!” Walking across the IUPUI campus, I turned to see a student I had two years earlier in my W 131 introductory writing class. I was pleased to see him and even more to see he remembered me. We talked briefly and then I left to go to class. A few days later, I received an email, asking for a recommendation for this student for medical school. I was pleased a young African American male would ask me. Before I came to IUPUI, an urban campus of close to 30,000 students merging Indiana University and Purdue University, I had taught at the secondary level, mostly in rural areas, with little opportunity for a diverse student population. IUPUI was different and I liked the difference. My first two high school teaching jobs in Indiana were exciting, but there was a sameness in both schools so I decided after a few years there was something else and where else to find it but California? After one month I knew I was not in the “Heartland.” During the three years I enjoyed my teaching and coaching…and more. I was invited to informal meetings at students’ homes for the adolescents to talk about their experiences using drugs, asked to be moderator of the Black Cultural Center at the high school, and even served as faculty representative on the “informal” student dress code committee. These experiences gave me the opportunity to see students from different backgrounds, and I realized that while I had started out teaching English, I evolved into teaching students. I liked the transition. These were fulfilling times, to become rich memories unlike any I had had in rural Indiana which after a few years beckoned me. “Back home again”…. was way too familiar a refrain. My earlier teaching in rural Indiana quickly crowded out my California memories. I was teaching in a small high school near Indianapolis, in the city, but not of the city. Indianapolis was a “hilltop” of progress overlooking field upon field upon field … of tradition, of the past, I thought after my energizing experiences in the morning sun of California. Still, the current teaching experience itself was rewarding because of teaching college preparatory English and as I would learn ultimately preparing me for IUPUI. Indiana University, Purdue University … why not both?” is a catchy slogan used in recruiting students. Well “both” may be too limiting. IUPUI is an urban university rich in faculty and student diversity, a host of different segments of the urban population from which the University draws. Indianapolis and IUPUI complement each other. Just recently the city and campus joined in a new project to assure the metropolitan area is well positioned for a leap into the next century. The campus like the city is currently in a major building phase, and a drive on either of the interstates crisscrossing the downtown will soon feature the

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. . . I realized that while I had started out teaching English, I evolved into teaching students . . .

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new bell tower rising over the campus--a focal point for travelers, campus visitors, and to be sure new students. Looking forward is not limited to the physical campus. Innovative programs abound. One such experience I had was participation in a Lumina Foundation Faculty Learning Community on Multicultural Course Transformation that met for a full year. This group of instructors of mostly first and second year students faced the question of how we as instructors could change our courses to represent student diversity. This constant dialogue summoned the interest in student diversity I had from my days as a high school teacher, particularly in California. I began making changes. One was this addition to my W131 syllabus regarding diversity and civility; “Active participation engages the mind and increases learning. University classes are made up of a diverse student enrollment which makes for enriched discussions. Your opinion is appreciated, and your questions can help others learn too. When others are speaking in class, consider what they have to say and why they say it; then share your view on things. Remember also that some might be sensitive to your comments, so please think first. Never should class comments be stated in a personal way.” I made other changes, particularly in grouping students. I noticed in my Business Thematic Learning Community writing classes, the students were far more familiar with each other than in a typical class. This was due to the summer Bridge program, an “add on” to the usual new student orientation. During the first months of the fall semester, they would tend to group according to friendships formed on similar interests. Prior to my experience in the Lumina project, I didn’t care as much how they grouped, as they remained on task. However, to bring multiculturalism more to the foreground, and break down some of these “walls,” I devised a questionnaire to show students they have far more in common with others than appearances might indicate. The students kept these lists for future grouping. The “soil” was prepared, ideas planted; cultivating lay ahead. Since appreciation of different cultures is a campus PUL or Principle of Undergraduate Learning, diversity is continually mentioned at IUPUI. Thus at a meeting for Thematic Learning Communities, my colleague David Sabol shared a document he and his TLC colleagues devised to articulate diversity. This showed me even more student subsets. I was aware of differences in nationality, race/ethnicity and religion. The university frequently communicates to the faculty policies sensitive to these differences for observing special days in the school year.

But Sabol’s document mentioned appearance and gender, sexual identity, and even socio economic differences. I then tried finding ways to reinforce the information in the document. For example, after reading articles in the Indianapolis Star, I would locate that same article on the paper’s website, send it to students as a link to be read, and then use it in a discussion related to the essay unit the class was in. It went like this. In the very first essay, students were instructed to respond to a reading. The response is an exercise in thinking “with and against the grain.” Discussing provocative statements in a class activity, some of which might relate to Sabol’s document, and introducing Hegel’s Dialectics, stretched the mind and deepened their responses. If these discussions provoked a little more awareness of the multicultural parts of the IUPUI whole, all the better. What lies ahead? In one sociology class students studied various issues facing IUPUI students. Topics were very much “up front” in the lives of university students. They included African-American, International and Hispanic students at IUPUI, how taking a women’s studies course might make students more aware of female students and related issues like combining motherhood and work, and examining IUPUI students’ attitudes toward gender difference and discrimination. The sociology students also included in their questionnaires issues related to gay, lesbian, transgendered and bisexual students, body image and attitudes toward eating. The results were shown through posters created by students in the class and then posted in University College, a common gathering place for students. Clearly this information has implications for instructor and student alike, in curriculum, pedagogy, and in sensitivity and tolerance. Class projects like these help reinforce student tolerance and appreciation of campus diversity. In these days that’s a necessary step forward. “Mr. Daley.” In retrospect, I now see more than just one student calling out on the campus plaza. I see him in bas relief against a background of students, professors, scholars, all components of a colorful campus community. This is IUPUI. Recalling the years in Indiana, California and back to Indiana, I recognize an educational journey leading from a dim awareness of cultural differences to the brighter insight into multiculturalism I have today. I now realize my interest in being a part of a diverse community was always there. It just needed the right environment. Home at last. Terrence Daley MA, Lecturer English Department, IUPUI ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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Introducing Multiculturalism in Teaching and Content. I. Introduction. Multicultural awareness is an integral part of overall education and absolutely critical for student success in college and future life. Research indicates in today’s increasingly global world, college students are radically different in terms of race, ethnicity and readiness of higher education (Noel-Levitz, 2002). Of the projected increase in college-age students nationally, it is estimated that 80% will be minorities and nearly 50% of these will be Hispanic by 2011. Research also shows that students in introductory courses in quantitative majors frequently drop out and an estimated 35 percent of those who had quantitative majors when they entered college switch majors (National Academy of Science, 1987; Seymor and Hewitt, 1994; Ganen and Williamson, 1995). It is possible that students are not prepared for the challenge quantitative majors require and are unable to apply the knowledge and skills acquired in introductory classes to real world problems. On the other hand, student impressions of these introductory courses are often negative. Some of the complaints against introductory classes include dull lectures, impossible exams, minimal student teacher interactions and lack of application of theory to real world problems. If institutions are to provide meaningful and effective service they must be prepared for the challenges imposed on them by the changing demographic and academic composition of students in the global context of the world today. In light of promoting multicultural awareness and nurturing academic development I redesigned E101, a survey of economic issues and problems in Fall 2004. There were two main components of the redesign. First, the course was changed to include topics that students can relate to and are expected to enhance understanding of social and multicultural issues in the world today from an economic perspective. Second, the teaching method was changed to promote student learning through a hybrid of Problem Based Learning (PBL) and traditional lecture teaching. II. Problem Based Learning.

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PBL is a curriculum development and instructional system that “simultaneously develops both problem solving strategies and disciplinary knowledge bases and skills by placing students in the active role of problem solvers confronted with ill structured problems that mirror realworld problems” (Finkle and Torp, 1995). Within a PBL setting, students are placed in small groups to investigate problems. The group develops reasoning and interpersonal skills as they share different information, contribute to the solution of the problem and learn from each other. PBL encourages active, collaborative learning among students

in ways that impacts their ability to think and reason. Students are able to apply what they learn in class outside of class, and thus find the subject interesting. PBL is compellingly effective and orients students towards meaning-making over fact–collecting and memorizing (Rhem, 1998; Finkle and Thorp, 1995). Furthermore, PBL assists principles of multicultural education in several ways. It builds a positive learning environment and assists instructors in developing a safe and respectful classroom where student experience is valued and students know they are capable of succeeding. Like multicultural education, PBL often transforms the epistemology and pedagogy of a course through specific readings dealing with multicultural education topics like discrimination, poverty, health, and education. III. E101 & Redesign. E101 is offered as a three-credit class, and surveys economic issues and problems by introducing the methods of quantitative analysis. The course addresses the core critical thinking and quantitative skills of the principles of undergraduate learning (PULs) at IUPUI, and is appropriate for students who are not economic majors. The student population in a typical E101 class is diverse in terms of age, gender, race, and part-time versus full time status. The survey course was redesigned into a hybrid of PBL and traditional lecture format. Economic theory and models were taught with somewhat low technicality (level appropriate for freshman) and emphasis was placed on application of theory. Videos and films were occasionally shown to emphasize the importance of certain topics like health care and poverty in third world economies. Each topic had a discussion component that was aimed to bring in student experiences to class. Students were encouraged to solicit examples and express their views on issues discussed in class, thereby making the environment more interactive. Discussion and participation on issues of social problems was also expected to broaden student understanding and sensitivity towards multicultural national and global issues. To promote student participation, case studies were assigned for homework and students were asked to discuss these with their group. Student understanding of multicultural issues was broadened through reading assignments from published references, websites and current newspaper articles. Two PBL projects were included at approximately six week intervals in the term. These projects were aimed to promote application of economic theory and issues introduced in class.

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Thus, the redesign was expected to help students to develop proficiency in expressing their personal views on controversial topics and grow to respect the opinions of others.

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IV. Classroom Dynamics. Since some of the topics dealt with multiculturalism, special attention was paid to fostering a safe environment for challenging biases and differing perspectives, and respecting the opinion of others. For example, students were often asked to give written responses and critiques on sensitive topics. Since the responses were anonymous, students were expected to express their views more readily and truthfully. This was particularly helpful in navigating the topic and revisiting the differing viewpoints. Students were able to express their views more readily and gradually their roles changed from passive listeners to active participants. Based on their involvement in class, it was evident that working collaboratively in class and sharing information with each other had helped in the development of their interpersonal skills. Frequent class work, surprise quizzes and giving one sentence summaries helped in determining what the students understood and what they didn’t. This benefited in modifying the pace of the lecture. V. Student Benefits & Learning Outcomes. The redesign was expected to advance awareness of multiculturalism in several directions. People (including first-year students) are often unaware that economics deals with diverse issues even though in their daily life they make decisions that are deep-rooted in economics. This class was expected to make students perceive the relevance of multicultural issues in a functioning democracy like the U.S, and learn how social issues impact their lives as well as how they can impact these issues. Students were expected to acquire a basic understanding of economic concepts and the basic framework within which they will be able to evaluate social issues. Students would learn to think like economists and realize that people of different philosophies exist in this world and that opinion of others is valuable. Thus, the redesign was expected to help students to develop proficiency in expressing their personal views on controversial topics, and grow to respect the opinions of others. The redesign was also aimed to promote student learning in several directions. First, the hybrid model of teaching was expected to promote student growth in knowledge and mastery of class content. Individual and group discussions were targeted to promote oral and communication skills of students. These discussions revolved around cultural and global issues to enhance student awareness. The redesigned course integrated the PULs, and thereby addressed the core communication, quantitative, and the critical thinking principles.

VI. Assessment. Student learning was assessed through traditional methods including quizzes, homework, exams and class reports. Communication and interaction skills of students improved dramatically and students reformed from passive listeners to active participants trying to solve hypothetical problems that mirrored real world problems. Based on their involvement in class, it was evident that working collaboratively and sharing information with each other helped in the development of their interpersonal and critical thinking skills. The efficacy and success of the hybrid model of teaching was assessed by means of a survey administered to students. Overall, the results from the survey indicated that PBL enhanced student learning and motivation. Not all students like PBL, but the majority gradually got comfortable with this approach and shared information and ideas with others. VII. Conclusion. The vast majority of problems in the world occur because of misperceptions, insensitivity and ignorance of diverse cultural issues that characterize our economy. If our students are going to be effective learners, institutions must become effective educators. In accordance with this philosophy, E101, an introductory course in economics, was redesigned in Fall 2004 to include multiculturalism in its course content and teaching pedagogy. The objective of the redesign was to generate student interest and learning by engaging them in activities that enhance appreciation and understanding of diverse cultural issues and problems. Feedback from student surveys illustrate that the hybrid teaching model was successful in accomplishing the goals of the redesign. Archana Dube’, PhD Department of Economics IUPUI ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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Schizophrenia’s Cure for Diversity Work: How My Mother’s Life Transforms My Notion of Inclusiveness

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I have always been hypersensitive about the image of schizophrenia in our media. With all of the country’s education on the high incidence of mental illness, we still see countless images of murderous, socially inept, and unkempt deranged people roaming our streets. My experience with mental illness draws a more humane picture of a woman struggling to be a part of a community and a family. My mother’s lifetime grappling with schizophrenia has to be one of the most painful parts of my life and, up until now, has been one of my best kept secrets. However, what she taught me about inclusion will not be forgotten because it lives in the work I do. I can honestly say that my identity as an African American female pales in comparison to my identity as “Betty’s daughter.” The daughter of a brilliant woman thrown off course by a mental illness that was as malignant as it was blessed. It was the very thing that separated us as mother and daughter, and it became the thing that taught me about the kind of inclusion that is best seen and not just discussed. From a young girl’s perspective, I had no idea what my mother needed from her family. I just knew that she was always enthusiastic about family gatherings, but extremely irritated afterwards. It is easy to say that she was just having an episode of delusion, but there were certain things she would say that still stand out as a plea for inclusion into our family circle. We heard her, but we did not know how to respond. Being heard was one of the notions that she impressed upon me in those delicate years when shame, fear, and anger took precedence over family togetherness and regular doses of medication and therapy. She would make the statement that “she was a human being who deserved respect.” I can see her now in my grandmother’s kitchen asking to be treated like a person and not this thing to be pitied or ignored. Her plea became part of my philosophy that holds up the notion that you cannot wait for credentials to be heard. In essence, everyone has the right to ask for more attention and consideration, especially if their quality of life is in danger. In higher education, it is easy to look at a statistic and initiate an effort to help an underrepresented population. But beyond that, there has to be a broader idea of inclusion because the black and white of any issue is getting more complicated (or, maybe it has always been complicated). Nonetheless, her request for understanding and positive communication with people, in its simplest form, continues to form the advocate within me.

Along with the shame and anger that is still associated with mental illness, there is this stagnancy. Like anything difficult to grasp, we often muddle in the pain of comprehending it. In higher education, it comes in the form of intellectualizing a topic of diversity or listing all the reasons why a program will never work. As a faculty developer, I have to look at a starting point beyond the despair because that is where growth begins. In the world of mental illness, many stricken people are not lining up at the hospital doors for interventions, but there were a few folks in my mother’s life who tried to help her fight for a life worth living. I have decided that part of the work of diversity is to go beyond the gloom of slow progress and ask the question: what am I supposed to do about this? It may seem like a logical thing to do, but I know I have had my share of negative thinking when it comes to diversity efforts. Sometimes I cannot see past the misguided comment of a colleague or a skinny budget. I still get anxious when I think diversity is being replaced by another initiative. However when the anxiety comes, I am calmed by the fact that my mother finally chose to act on her desire to have a better quality of life. She took whatever resource was given and she used it to become an independent woman living with, but not completely victimized by, a severe chemical imbalance. She worked parttime in her chosen career field, she had a social life, and she continued to grow as an intellectual, spiritual being. My mother was active, and that is what I have to be in helping underrepresented faculty and the cause for multicultural education: active. I can stop and reflect but the reflection has to ignite another movement in the right direction. Helping minority faculty actualize their dreams of a successful tenure at the university and promoting multicultural education is time-sensitive and challenging. Five professors of color may enter and five professors of color may leave within a few years. Or, one day someone with amazing resources will ask: what do you need to further diversity’s impact on campus? For both, my office should be part of the answer. My mother’s tenacity taught me how to stay in the game. Like my mother, diversity deserves action or more specifically, action-oriented support. Unfortunately, before she took more control of her life, my mother was on the outside of the family circle because no one knew how to communicate with her. Consequently, conversations were tense. Can you imagine walking around with no one to embrace or even challenge your thoughts? Even after the family began to understand what the illness meant and who she was beyond it, there was still this sense that she was in her “own world” where no one could completely reach her. This condition has been a powerful lesson for me. Getting feedback and a supportive ear is more important than I once realized. I cannot battle inequity (the subtle and the more insidious kind) alone. I cannot afford

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I still get anxious when I think diversity is being replaced by another initiative.

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Her mental illness, among other aspects of her life, taught her about humanity, action, and connection . . . I cannot move forward in this field without integrating these three components into my work with faculty, colleagues and myself.

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to walk in my own world when there is so much work to do. I know that collaboration is not easy because authentic partnerships may take a while to develop. Regardless, the benefit of having such partnerships is worth the journey. Learning what it means to not have that supportive ear may have made it easier for me to let a colleague become a critical friend. I found a critical friend who will give you as much of a pep talk as a challenge. I also allowed this same critical friend to keep poking and prodding until I opened up about my own biases. My mother spoke often about the power of conversation and she was never wrong about how good it feels to grow from one. Over the years, I saw the growth in me, in her, and in my family as we talked and listened more. There is enough intellectual debate in higher education and especially with issues of diversity. But all diversity professionals need a close network of other professionals (critical friends) with whom they are safe to deal with their own development. I know that I need it, and I will continue to strive for it in my future work. I am honored to have lived alongside a woman whose darkest paths became the journey to enlightenment. Her mental illness, among other aspects of her life, taught her about humanity, action, and connection. In her death, I am reminded that I cannot move forward in this field without integrating these three components into my work with faculty, colleagues and myself. Natasha Flowers. PhD Director, The Office for Multicultural Professional Development Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

From Cultural Awareness to Cultural Competence in Nursing As students enrolled in two different nursing education programs in the 1970’s, the authors emphasized respect for all in both programs. The concept of culture was presented within a very limited scope that encouraged students of nursing to become aware that ethnic origin and religious affiliation should be considered when planning nursing care. Nurses in the current millennium must be educated to understand the multifaceted nature of diversity when assessing clients and families and when planning, implementing, and evaluating care. The concept of transcultural nursing was originally defined by Madeleine M. Leininger as nursing care “focused on comparative human-care (caring) differences and similarities of the beliefs, values, and patterned life ways of cultures” (Leininger and McFarland, 2002, p.5). A key concept in transcultural nursing is culturally congruent care, described by Leininger (2002) as care “that is meaningful and fits with cultural beliefs and life ways” (p.9). As faculty in the Indiana University School of Nursing, the authors have reflected upon their own personal growth as they strive to deliver culturally congruent care in their roles as nurses, and to augment the cultural competence of their nursing students in their roles as educators. Campinha-Bacote (2002) describes the components involved in attainment of cultural competence as cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skills, cultural encounters, and cultural desire. The authors have utilized this framework when designing learning experiences for both pre-nursing and nursing courses. As faculty teaching in a pre-nursing freshman learning community, we assist students to define culture as a first step to cultural awareness. Students identify aspects of diversity in a brainstorming session. Examples of aspects typically identified include traditions, clothing, foods, and holidays. We then facilitate the broadening of the scope of the definition to include such aspects such as attitudes, beliefs, degree of formality, and family structure. In this pre-nursing course, cultural considerations are further expanded to include personal space, verbal and nonverbal communication styles, practices in the bearing and rearing of children, modesty, expression of grief and loss, and beliefs about medical care. Students are then asked to reflect upon and describe their own culture to further enhance cultural self-awareness. Storytelling is a technique that we currently use to enhance cultural knowledge. Both authors have selected personal experiences to share that exemplify the importance of cultural knowledge in nursing.

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Much to her dismay, when the two gentlemen were introduced, the newly enrolled patient did not even make eye contact with the first patient.

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Early in her nursing career, one author had an experience in caring for two gentlemen from India. The first gentleman had started his outpatient cardiac rehabilitation sessions and was noted to be reserved with infrequent interaction with the other patients during sessions. One day another patient from India was referred to the rehabilitation program. This gentleman was much more gregarious, and the author’s first thought was that these two gentlemen should be enrolled in the same rehab sessions. Not only might this bring the quiet gentleman out of his shell, but it would provide an opportunity for the second patient to have an instant connection with someone who would share his cultural perspective. Much to her dismay, when the two gentlemen were introduced, the newly enrolled patient did not even make eye contact with first patient. He refused to touch the exercise equipment that had been used by the first patient. One of the clinic nurses asked the quiet gentleman if he was getting to know the new patient. He responded by explaining that in India, their relatives would be in different castes. He was pleased to be moved to a different session where he would no longer have contact with the other gentleman. The second author had an experience with a nursing student who was enrolled in a large university located in a city with a very diverse population. A student learned in morning report that there was a patient who had refused all meals for three days. When the student took the gentleman’s breakfast to his room, he again refused it. The student reported this to the instructor, who suggested that the student go back to the room and ask the patient why he was not eating. After a long interval, the student reported that she had discovered that his religious affiliation was with a Hassidic branch of Judaism which allowed him to eat only foods prepared in a Kosher kitchen. The instructor facilitated the student’s call to the dietary office, which had frozen Kosher meals prepared by the women of the local synagogue. The patient, reassured that his dietary needs would be met, voraciously consumed the new meal. Today, we share these stories with our nursing students so that they begin to understand the impact that diversity must have on the plan of care developed for any patient. The authors have expanded the use of the storytelling strategy by having groups of pre-nursing students submit their own reflective journal entries related to diversity. The students were asked to respond to the instruction: “Describe your feelings in a situation where you felt like a minority.” The responses reflect thoughtfulness and demonstrate introspection. Acquiring beginning cultural skills and participation in cultural encounters is another goal of the freshman pre-nursing learning community. Two learning experiences in settings with diverse populations had been established by previous course faculty. First, students participate in a service learning experience in a local agency.

Students were also given the choice of attending a cultural community or campus event or shadowing a nurse for one day. Students were then asked to submit a reflection that included a discussion of his or her experiences with diversity in both the service learning agency and at the cultural event. When evaluating the students’ responses, the authors noted that the reflections tended to be fairly superficial. The authors also noted that the vast majority of students chose the nursing experience over the community/campus event. As a result, attendance at a cultural event became a mandatory experience. The authors also recognized that beginning students needed more detailed focus questions to guide their cultural reflections. One of the outcomes of the focus questions in both the service learning component and the cultural event attendance has been a much deeper understanding of complex nature of diversity as reflected in their final writing assignment. Another example of a strategy used to enhance cultural knowledge was an exercise that involved assigning students in a nursing clinical group to explore nutritional aspects of various cultural groups. These students were enrolled in the fourth semester of an Associate of Science in Nursing degree program. Each student was given a scenario involving a family with multiple nutritional and health concerns. Each scenario described individual preferences of families with different cultural backgrounds and ages who were on a limited budget. The students developed culturally appropriate and appealing meal plans for one day that included three meals and snacks while addressing the dietary and health needs of all family members. This plan was to include pricing and food preparation methods. The students were encouraged to look at multicultural cookbooks and to interview individuals from that ethnic background. Students shared their meal plan with fellow students. Cultural skill as defined by Campinha-Bacote (2002) requires cultural assessment. That component of the journey toward cultural competence is more appropriate to incorporate into learning experiences with more advanced nursing students. In a senior level course in our baccalaureate nursing program, students were assigned to complete a cultural assessment of themselves. Culture and diversity issues were emphasized throughout the course, and at the end of the course the assessment tool was completed by each student on a patient. The subsequent assessments were much more detailed and students were able to incorporate this information into the patient’s plan of care. Based upon what we learned from theses experiences, the authors have embarked on a quest for more information through both reading and attendance and participation at conferences and workshops related to multicultural issues and inclusive teaching. Becoming aware of both barriers faced by “minority” nursing students (Gardner, 2005) and issues that influence the education of nursing students for whom English is a

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second language (Choi, 2003), the authors incorporated strategies to enhance the inclusiveness of the classroom environment. The Byrne Guide for Inclusionary Cultural Content (Byrne, Weddle, Davis, and McGinnis, 2003) was another resource the authors found helpful. Including activities that require participation of all students, establishing an atmosphere of trust and caring, offering support and resources to address individual needs, and making an effort to know students individually have all been successful approaches. When selecting a book of nursing stories to use in small group discussions, the authors considered the cultural content and illustrations of each book reviewed. As the authors’ experiences and growth with multicultural concepts and inclusive teaching have developed, we have created a multiple array of learning experiences to enhance pre-nursing and nursing students’ cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skill, and cultural encounters. It is our hope that students have an increased understanding of the importance of diversity when dealing with patients, and that we have stimulated them to ultimately advance to the final step in achieving cultural competence, cultural desire. Beverly J. Linde Ph.D., RN Deborah A. Demeester, MSN, RNC Indiana University School of Nursing IUPUI

From Cultural Awareness to Cultural Competence in Nursing References: Byrne, M.M., Weddle, C., Davis, E., & McGinnis, P. (2003). The Byrne guide for inclusionary cultural content. Journal of Nursing Education, 42(6), 277-281. Campinha-Bacote, J. (2002). The process of cultural competence in the delivery of health care services: A model of care. Journal of Transcultural Nursing 13(3), 181 -191. Choi, L. (2005). Literature review: Issues surrounding education of English-as-second language (ESL) nursing students. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 16(3), 263-268. Gardner, J. (2005). Barriers influencing the success of racial and ethnic minority students in nursing programs. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 16(2), 155-162. Leininger, M. (2002). Culture care theory: a major contribution to advance transcultural nursing knowledge and practices. Journal of Transcultural Nursing 13(3),189-192. Leininger, M. & McFarland, M.R. (2002). Transcultural nursing: Concepts, theories, research and practice (3rd ed.). New York: McGrawHill. ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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“An Innocent Abroad”

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There are essentially two themes that thread the years of my passage toward cultural competency. This pair of influences includes my own “minority” experience as a woman studying engineering, as well as the encounters I had with student-peers from other cultures. I arrived at the steps of higher education, Purdue University, as probably one of the most naïve new students on campus. I was truly an “innocent abroad”- except this was Indiana. The time was the mid 1960s and I was idealistic, dutiful, somewhat timid, and yet eager to begin studying to be an engineer. Sputnik, less than a decade earlier, had more or less shocked the nation out of its technological complacency and the nation’s educational systems had geared up their collective efforts to channel more young minds toward recovering the United States’ scientific preeminence in the world. Teachers encouraged young men who exhibited any talent in math and science to pursue careers in engineering and technology. I, however, attended a parochial girls’ high school. There were no young men for my teachers to inspire; thus, having shown interest in math and science, they endorsed and encouraged my interest in engineering. Mine was such a sheltered world that I actually didn’t know that it was quite uncommon for women to choose engineering as a career goal. The bulletin of the Purdue University School of Engineering noted that more than 40 women enter freshman engineering each year. What it didn’t say was that almost all of them dropped out – most before the end of the first semester. So, having been nurtured in the benign, soft compassionate world of young girls who, incidentally, were all of the same race, religion and economic class as I, I was literally plunged into a very different, although not completely opposite, world of men. My religious high school also imbued us with a strong sense of social justice and, hence, respect for the dignity of all. This was part of the core values that guided me forward in those years. I found myself during my freshman year full of optimism and trying to make sense of a whole new social order, but dealing with differences I never anticipated and, at the same time, managing a rigorous academic load. Much later in life when my first child was getting ready to start kindergarten, a teacher said that while parents have many goals for the kindergarten year, the primary goal of the child is to find a friend. In reading the work of my freshman students I found that many of them evidenced this same need. We know as educators that student involvement correlates to student persistence and success. Often involvement is very simply a way of finding social connections. I, too,

needed to make new friends and that was tough within the social dimensions of the 60s when women did not routinely have male friends unless there was a romantic component. My major of metallurgical engineering is traditionally an area that has only a small fraction of the total number of students studying engineering; nevertheless, within the school there were two tracks. I and one other student in our class chose what was called the “materials science” option. The student’s name was John and he was from Ghana in West Africa. We had almost all our classes together throughout our four years of undergraduate work. Situation and circumstances launched our friendship and provided me with an unexpected and rather dramatic multicultural education. John, very likely unwittingly, destroyed many of the ignorant notions and beliefs formed by my own very sheltered and monolithic cultural upbringing. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but my vision of Africa was largely formed by watching Tarzan movies. A particularly insightful event for me occurred when John made a comment about the American people he had met wanting to show him their dishwashers in order to impress him with American gadgetry. This actually startled me at the time because; I too, took pride in American invention and ingenuity. I could understand people’s motivation for showing their dishwasher since I had the same motivations. This rather ridiculous occasion of the dishwashers actually was for me a flash of multicultural insight. People have differing values. Furthermore, in the course of our friendship, I learned much about Ghana. John had great pride in his newly-independent nation. I had been instilled with a bedrock core value that America was the greatest nation. I had always thought that anyone who experienced the wonders of the U.S. would want to remain in America. Yet John was eager to someday return to Ghana and eventually contribute to his country’s development. Viewing the world through the lens of under representation and getting to know well individuals such as John and other international peers and professors grounded me very early in my career. That differences exist was a given. That people also share much in common despite these differences was something else I learned. I truly love working with international students as well as all students both as an instructor and as an advisor. I try to view each student I encounter as an eager learner who has come to this place to achieve his or her goals. Janet Meyer, MA Freshman Advisor, Engineering Purdue School of Engineering

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I had always thought that anyone who experienced the wonders of the U.S. would want to remain in America. Yet John was eager to someday return to Ghana and eventually contribute to his country’s development.

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Suggestions:

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You cannot begin dialogue, much less communicate, if you are doing all the talking.

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1. Listen, listen, listen!!! I give this advice to myself all the time. Slow down, stop talking and allow the student to “get his or her story out.” This is especially true when English may be halting and slow. You cannot begin dialogue, much less communicate, if you are doing all the talking. 2. Relate to students as individuals. See beyond the ethnic, racial, cultural or other differences to the person before you. 3. Realize, too, that students from other cultures, especially international students, might be learning from you about your culture. It’s okay to be who you are. 4. Don’t neglect your more seemingly mainstream students. The world of higher education may be strange to some of them, too; and, if they are encountering a new level of multiculturalism, they may need guidance. 5. Finally, if you can, try new things – food items or events – especially if invited by students. I, for instance, have gone bowling with Indonesian students who never bowled before and have developed a fondness for the jellied candies from Turkey brought in by students. ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

Fresh Air NO JEWS AND NO DOGS ALLOWED! These are words engraved in my memory from childhood. Signs littering the front lawns of hotels and motels along Miami Beach. We had moved to that area from New York when I was about four. My father had completed his basic training on Miami Beach during WWII before he was sent overseas; he thought it was paradise, sun and ocean, the salt air, clean as compared to the inner city where he grew up in Manhattan. My Grandma Lillie worked in the sweatshops in the garment district, but would take jobs on farms in western New York and then in hotels in the Mountains during the summers just to get my father out of the city to be around animals, trees and fresh air; and as he got older both my grandmother and father would work during these summers. After experiencing Miami Beach, my father hoped someday to move from New York to “paradise.” We had lived in the Bronx, in New York. At that time my family was quite religious. I can remember walking to Shul with my father and grandfather and sitting with the women because men and women sit and worship separately in Orthodox Shuls. I remember lots of family; grownups speaking Yiddish, religious Holidays and Holy Days; special foods, kosher and Eastern European. I lived within my family culture but in a neighborhood of many cultures. It seemed OK, and though very young, I learned many things in those days about feeling protected and loved. All four of my grandparents’ families escaped from Russia, Austria, Latvia, Poland, when my grandparents were children. They were all naturalized citizens. Some of their names were changed when they came here because immigration could not pronounce them, so they just gave the same family 2 or 3 different last names. My grandparents’ families escaped from these countries before the Nazis, but not before the pogroms, famine, poverty and lots of anti-Semitism. They came to this country like so many other immigrants of yesterday and today, for a better life, a safer life, a more hopeful life for themselves and their children. Had they not left their home countries, they would have perished in the Nazi concentration camps as had most of the Jews of Europe. From the time I was a little older than 4 years old, I grew up in South Florida. My father loved to tell us stories of his growing up and his Army days during our evenings of High Holy Days. The lights would be off because we did not use electricity on those days. We’d light the religious candles and say the prayers in Hebrew, and we’d sit together and listen. He loved to tell about KP duty; “cooking stew with shoe leather in it,” what it was like to sit in a huge mess hall and have the food passed down a huge line hoping there would still be some when it got to you.

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When the other soldiers first learned “he (my father) was a Jew” they were shocked that he didn’t have “horns” . . . He told them to “touch his head, he had no horns”, which they did. Then they told him that it must be because he was a “good Jew”.

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I’m not sure I ever believed the shoe leather story, but my father is a great story teller; detailed, picturesque, emotive; you could taste the shoe leather! Then he’d tell about being the only Jew in his military unit. When the other soldiers first learned “he was a Jew” they were shocked that he didn’t have “horns.” Of course, my father was shocked that they had such an astounding belief. He told them to “touch his head, he had no horns”, which they did. Then they told him that it must be because he was a “good Jew.” These were his Army buddies who he needed to depend on. I don’t remember what age it was exactly that I was told about the Holocaust, but it seems like I have known about it all my life; maybe transmitted in my genes. I remember meeting people my parents knew who had the numbers on their arms from the concentration camps; my parents would say not to ask about it. I learned about the life of Anne Frank and read her Diary; I learned that a huge ship filled with Jews tried to escape from the Nazis but were turned away by every country including the United States. Sometimes my parents would share experiences they had with people who turned out to be anti-Semitic; “you Kike,” “you Dirty Jew,” “Jew you down.” My mother would tell what it was like when the American Nazi Party marched right down the streets of New York during WWII. These were experiences from my parents’ lives that they shared as history, and yet more so as a transmission of protective armor just in case “my world” hadn’t had its consciousness raised all that much. “I was a Jew, born a Jew and will die a Jew.” Jews in Germany that may have tried to hide or belie their roots, part or whole, were put in concentration camps and killed anyway. Many German Jews felt that they were “Germans” first, and then Jews, but Germans/Nazis saw them only as Jews. This is who I am. My parents always wanted me to remember this; it is a safety mechanism to know who you are. I was different and I always felt different and separate inside. My dietary life was different; my holidays were different; my Bible was different. I worshiped in a Shul or synagogue and not a church, and prayed in a different language, and Friday night and Saturday was the “seventh day when God rested,” and thus it was my Sabbath. My grandparents and parents many times spoke a different language, Yiddish. I missed school for religious holidays that no one else did and no one understood or seemed like they wanted to understand. I had teachers that were blatantly anti-Semitic and picked on me, and kids who I thought were friends that called me a “dirty Jew,” and parents who stopped letting their children play with me after they invited my parents to church and found out my family was Jewish. In elementary school the

Bible was required reading every morning and I can remember being required to read the Christian Bible in front of the class, even though it was not my religion. When they found out I was Jewish, several kids wanted to “save me,” and several would constantly tell me I was “going to hell.” Stereotypes are strange things; they can make you worry. They can feel like some one pinning a scarlet letter on you so you can be easily identified and quantified; so “they” know “your place;” “they all have big noses, glasses, dark hair, New York/East Coast accents.” They’re smart, rich, in charge of everything, “behind” everything, responsible for all the bad things, “it’s all because of the Jews.” We were poor, and then struggling and then working very hard when I was growing up and not really in charge of anything. My father went to night school, worked two jobs some of the time, my Mom worked on and off. I worked starting in 7th grade. But that “scarlet letter; the big nose, the dark hair, the accent, sometimes smart;” the stereotypes made me worry because so many people believe they know all about YOU from the stereotypes. It felt like wearing my religion on my sleeve; a kind of “yellow Star of David” in an unpredictable world. I’ve grown up with a kind of “sixth sense” of my environment. I find myself almost always the only Jewish person in a room; in my work environment, in class, at meetings, in a group. Never really expecting an untoward event or interaction or remark; yet the low level radar is always in force; the protective survival gift my parents gave me. Stuff pops up at the most unexpected times; jokes, walking into groups that are just talking about anything. Even at friends homes or for instance the meal after a funeral with extended family and their friends, and boom there’s an anti-Semitic remark; “those Jew dogs.” Hatred, just right under the surface waiting to rear its ugly head. I had a job once in a small rural community; knew the sheriff, the mayor, even ate lunch with them, but shortly after they seemed to learn I was Jewish, I was laid off. Insidious, demoralizing, discrimination. I’ve had colleagues debate about not wanting to take certain things into consideration since there’s not one of “X” working with us in our office. Or some people telling jokes about an ethnic or other group and saying “Oh, I don’t mean anything by it.” Or maybe there’s the beginning of a story that just happens to need a “Jew” in it. I spent many years not knowing what to say in such circumstances, but at some point I decided that these statements, jokes, conversations were a slippery slope and are the first steps, bricks on the path to a lynching or the crematoriums. Left untreated, unchallenged, the cancer grows. Now I suggest people use their own culture and then tell the joke. Not many takers, doesn’t seem funny to them any longer. Or I might say, “that’s interesting, I’m Jewish, tell me more . . .” I remember my dear colleague,

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Stereotypes are strange things; they can make you worry. They can feel like some one pinning a scarlet letter on you so you can be easily identified and quantified; so “they” know “your place”. . .

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When we open our doors to one another and allow the fresh air to come in, multiculturalism may or may not be readily apparent . . . yet palpable in the lives of our students or colleagues.

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Dr. Joe King, who was a maverick of a psychiatrist; interviewing a new patient that I was staffing with him, and the man was talking on and on and used the disparaging racial word, “nigger.” There was a moment of silence, as the patient was suddenly aware of his words and his African American doctor. Dr. King, in the blink of an eye assessed the situation and with his very special wisdom, broke into one of his deep and hearty laughs, after which he continued the interview. I learned a lot that day and I think the patient may have, too. Inclusion on our campuses, in our classrooms, in our interactions with other educators and those we work with is our lifeline to a hopefilled future. In sharing an internal life of “feeling outside looking in;” of “participating yet feeling a sense of separateness,” I propose to you by example that there are many colleagues and students that navigate the campus and classroom landscape feeling similarly for many different reasons. For some, “scarlet letters” or “yellow Stars of David” may be obvious; but for others they may not be. When we open our doors to one another and allow the fresh air to come in, multiculturalism may or may not be readily apparent, or public, or transparent or what we thought; it may be silent, or hidden, or “under the radar,” and yet palpable in the lives of our students or colleagues. I’ve kept a quote for many years, one that Helen Keller wrote, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing.” As educators we must have the “daring” and courage to create an open invitation to the entire experience of multiculturalism in our classrooms and on our campuses; to include the creation of a “safe haven” where students and colleagues can grow, learn, change, challenge themselves and share, and be ... the wonderful and diverse human beings that they are. Marla Zimmerman, MA, LCSW, LMFT Coordinator Student Assessment & Evaluation Adjunct Assistant Professor Coordinator of Service Learning; Nursing B104 Indiana University School of Nursing ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

Part Two: Heart & Soul

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Writings more deeply rooted in autobiography Pages Elizabeth M. Goering What to Do “When in Rome.” My Journey to Revised Understanding of Intercultural Communication Competence ..........28-31 Jay R. Howard Social Class, Age, and Religion: Turning Marginality into Empathy for Students ......................32-34 Paul Kriese From Ghetto to Ghetto: Growing Through The Past into the Future .................................35-37 Michael C. Morrone A Path of Inclusion ..........................38-40 Robert L. Osgood Meeting the Other: Autism, Emotional Disability and Learning to Teach .............................41-44 Mary Jo Pride The Open Door: For Persons With Disabilities ..............................45-48 Ragheda “Anne” Rabie A Multicultural Advisor ....................49-50 Vandana Rao Colin’s Vision ...................................51-64 Jennifer Thorington Springer Reflections on Diversity Practices: Surviving Student Resistance In The Classroom ............55-59 William Sweigart Sexual Orientation as One Component of Multiculturalism ......60-64 Michelle Verduzco Born Again Mexican ........................65-69

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What to Do “When in Rome:” My Journey to a Revised Understanding of Intercultural Communication Competence

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Growing up in a small, homogenous farming community in the Midwest, I had limited exposure to cultural diversity. In elementary school, junior high, and high school, all of my classmates were AngloEuropean Caucasian. With very few exceptions, they all lived in traditional, nuclear families, in which the fathers farmed or worked in one of the handful of businesses in the small town and the mothers were housewives. Eighty-five to ninety percent of my classmates even shared the same Mennonite religious heritage. Although the homogeneity of my childhood community did not offer much ongoing exposure to cultural diversity, the values communicated to me through my church and family did include a clear appreciation for individuals who were different from us. We grew up singing (and believing) that “Jesus loves the little children; all the children of the world; red and yellow, black and white,” and I still remember the round story cards from Sunday school about “Pedro from Peru” or “Kim Lee from China,” stories that told us about a world that was very different from ours and assured us that these children were our “neighbors” and also part of God’s family. These messages from Sunday school were reinforced at home. My parents were very supportive of the Civil Rights movement, and each summer as I was growing up, our family hosted a child from the Fresh Air program, a program which brought African-American children from the inner city to rural areas for a week or two. All in all, the messages I received throughout my childhood placed strong emphasis on valuing cultural diversity, but my actual encounters with people who were culturally diverse were limited. As I reflect on the understanding of intercultural communication competence that was communicated to me through these early experiences, I can see the construction of what I will call the “When-inRome” mentality, a mindset that operationalizes the popular saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” This approach to cultural diversity assumes that in an intercultural encounter, one culture is the “host” and the other culture is a “guest.” According to this perspective, it is the responsibility of the “guest” culture to adapt to the values, beliefs, and practices of the “host” culture. So, if I am an American visiting Rome, the adage admonishes me to adapt to Italian culture - to do things the way a Roman would. Of course, the inverse is implied as well, suggesting that I can expect anyone from another culture visiting me to do things “my” way. This approach to intercultural communication, which is represented in Figure 1, is quite prevalent in America, I think, and it is the attitude that characterized my

childhood experiences related to diversity and provided the foundation for my earliest understanding of what it means to be a competent intercultural communicator. In the model of diversity taught to me by my church and family, people from different cultures were very welcome at our table - as long as they believed, thought, and acted pretty much like we did. I see now, although I did not see it then, that my family, church, and community were probably less willing to welcome diversity if that meant that “we” would be changed. I brought this “When-in-Rome” approach to diversity with me when I left my small farming community and went away to college. Here I encountered diversity on a regular basis for the first time. In the dorms, I lived with Native Americans and African Americans, and in my classes I had the opportunity to interact with people from several different countries and a variety of religious orientations. I appreciated these encounters with students and teachers from other cultures; I enjoyed hearing about life in Uganda or Japan, or in the big city, or on the reservation. However, I see now that while I valued - even sought out interaction with people from different cultures, these experiences, too, were under girded by the “When-in-Rome” mentality, because I expected them to adhere to “my” culture’s norms and practices. After all, they were “visiting Rome,” so it was their responsibility to adapt. I recall one instance in particular when a women’s quilting group at my home church had invited a student from Uganda to speak at one of their monthly meetings, and I was asked to provide transportation for the student. I welcomed the opportunity and arranged with the student to leave campus at a time that would get us to the church without any chance of being late. The agreed upon time came and went. I waited 10 minutes, 20 minutes. I tried calling the student’s room unsuccessfully. I called the church to let the quilting group know what was happening. I waited some more, becoming increasingly nervous and frustrated as the minutes passed. Finally, at the time when the program was scheduled to begin, the student walked in - as if nothing were wrong. And, in fact, in her mind, nothing was wrong. Now I understand that different cultures have different temporal orientations, and that not all cultures place the same value on punctuality as American culture, but at the time, I was irritated by what I saw as rude and inappropriate behavior. I was expecting her to adhere to the temporal orientation of my culture. “When in Rome.” In graduate school, I enrolled in an Intercultural Communication course, and, as I began to study culture and communication, my approach to diversity began to change. A key change was in my conceptualization of what it means to be a “competent” intercultural communicator. One of the first assignments given us by the instructor in this class was to write an essay, making an argument for whether America

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I see now, although I did not see it then, that my family, church, and community were probably less willing to welcome diversity if that meant that “we” would be changed.

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The “melting pot” eliminates cultural differences, making a completely new “culture” out of all of the cultures that have been mixed together. The unique characteristics of the original ingredients end up being virtually unrecognizable. In a “salad,” on the other hand, the individual ingredients maintain their uniqueness . . .

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should strive to be a “melting pot,” a “stew,” or a “salad.” At first I dismissed the assignment as “silly,” but as I began thinking about it, I realized that each of the three metaphors makes quite different assumptions about what the goals of a culturally diverse society should be, and that answering that question was integral to understanding intercultural communication competence. The “melting pot” eliminates cultural differences, making a completely new “culture” out of all of the cultures that have been mixed together. The unique characteristics of the original ingredients end up being virtually unrecognizable. In a “salad,” on the other hand, the individual ingredients maintain their uniqueness. They are tossed together, but lettuce remains lettuce, tomatoes remain tomatoes, and broccoli remains broccoli. In a “stew,” the individual ingredients are transformed, but they maintain their uniqueness to some degree. The potatoes, meat, and carrots are cooked together in a way that blends the flavors, creating a “new” culture that binds all the ingredients together without completely sacrificing their individual identity. I had some difficulty determining which metaphor was promoted by the “When-in-Rome” mentality I had been exposed to as a child. Was the “we welcome you, but we expect you to adhere to our cultural norms” attitude creating a “melting pot,” in which “outsiders” were totally absorbed within the dominant culture? Of course, in a melting pot, as new ingredients are added, the constitution of the original substance changes, which is not completely consistent with my childhood experiences. However, by keeping the infusion of “foreign” ingredients to a minimum, the purity of the meld can be maintained. Or were we the embodiment of a version of the “salad” metaphor, one in which the ingredients were all processed through a salad shooter, with my culture controlling the settings on the salad shooter. The ingredients in the salad could “look” different, but they all were expected to be essentially the same. Through my contemplation of melting pots, stews, and salads, I began to shift my understanding of intercultural communication competence from the “When-in-Rome” mindset of my childhood to one that did not expect either culture to “become” the other. Rather, I began to see the goal of effective intercultural communication as being the creation of a third cultural space that brings together elements of all cultures, while allowing the individual cultures the freedom to maintain their identity. This revised understanding of intercultural communication is represented in Figure 2. In this revised model of intercultural communication, neither culture is assumed to be the “host” culture, so the expectation that one culture should adapt to the other is eliminated. This approach maximizes

the benefits of diversity because it encourages communicators to look for ways in which cultural difference can expand behavioral repertoires rather than expecting communicators to adhere to the behavioral norms of the dominant, “host” culture. Of course, this approach assumes that all of the participants in the interaction have a basic understanding of the dimensions of cultural variability as well as an appreciation for the potential benefits of different ways of thinking, being, and doing, emphasizing the need for strong intercultural communication education. Figure 1: The “When-in-Rome” Approach to Intercultural Communication “Guest“ “Host“ Culture Culture Figure 2: Revised Model of Intercultural Communication Competence Culture A Culture B “New” Culture Combining Elements from Cultures A&B Elizabeth Goering, PhD Associate Professor Department of Communication Studies ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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Social Class, Age, and Religion: Turning Marginality into Empathy for Students

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As a product of the working class and being part of the first generation in my family to attend college, being a nontraditional student, and being an evangelical Christian, as an undergraduate I often felt like a stranger in the strange land of higher education. The vocabulary of professors in my freshman level courses challenged me. They were using words I had never heard at home. (What does he mean when he keeps saying “infrastructure”?) I came to college as a nontraditional student who had completed high school seven years earlier. The youth of my classmates left me wondering if I was as well prepared for college as they. Finally, I came to the world of higher education as an evangelical Christian - a group that is sometimes characterized as the antithesis of what a well-rounded, educated person should be. Occasional hostility from faculty toward the religiously devout left me puzzled. These differences of social class, age, and religion made me feel marginal to the world of higher education. While sociologists Robert Park and Georg Simmel argued that marginality is often a wonderful place from which to conduct sociological investigation, it is a position that can be quite uncomfortable for a student. However, over time these experiences of marginality have become a source of empathy for my own students who often come to IUPUC feeling marginal for many of the same reasons. As the product of a working class family, I frequently felt estranged from faculty members whose current and past experiences were so distinct from mine. Even as a senior seeking input regarding my graduate school application essay, I remember being advised to say something like, “coming from a family that has always valued and been a part of higher education...” However, my father was an eighth grade drop out who worked in manual labor jobs his entire life. My mother did graduate from high school, but I quickly determined that I would need a different angle for the essay! Likewise, my blue collar family took a “meat and potatoes” approach to meals. Rice was considered an exotic dish and never served at home. The local chain steakhouse was fine dining. Later when I attended professional conferences and joined faculty colleagues for dinner, I never knew how to respond to questions like, “Do you like Indian (Thai, Cambodian, etc.) food?” I didn’t know. I had never gone to an Indian (Thai, Cambodian, etc.) restaurant before and had no idea what to order once I got there! The lack of familiarity with the social class norms typical of university faculty left me feeling insecure and on the margins. Growing up in a working class family in the 1970s, a college education, while not ridiculed as unnecessary, was not emphasized as essential for success despite the fact that I was a good student throughout

my elementary and secondary years. Thus, I attended a small private liberal arts college for a single semester immediately after high school, but dropped out to work full time. After a career in radio broadcasting, I turned to factory jobs for a couple of years. It was seven years after my high school graduation when I returned to college. This time I attended a regional commuter campus of a state university. Having been out of school for a while, I worried that my academic skills would lag behind those of the typical student. I quickly discovered that I identified more with my professors than my 18-20 year old classmates despite the distance in terms of social class. I was a much more focused and motivated student than the majority of my younger classmates. Despite my academic success and the approval of my professors, I was marginal among my classmates. When my research methods class was assigned the task of creating a single survey, it was three nontraditional students who stuck around to do the task while the majority of the class disappeared during our supposed working sessions that the professor did not attend. I got a quick lesson in the “free rider” problem that makes group work a challenge. The younger students were content to trust that the few older students would do a more than adequate job for them. We received an “A” for the project, but the three of us who did the work felt that we were exploited. Occasionally, my classroom experience also left me feeling marginal because of my religious orientation. As an evangelical Christian, I occasionally encountered faculty members who would make disparaging remarks about how intelligent and educated people could not believe in God. Given my own confidence in my beliefs, I tried to ignore such remarks and often left class feeling as if I didn’t belong. However, occasionally I would challenge my professors on their claims. I was pleasantly surprised that I could enter into a debate about hermeneutics and what topics science can and cannot appropriately address and be received with respect. I think faculty members hostile to religion were often surprised to discover that intelligent students capable of critical thinking could take their religion and spirituality seriously. These experiences of marginality in higher education have made me a more reflective teacher. I find that I can readily relate to my first generation college students, many of whom are from working class families. Ironically, my wife is fond of pointing out how I now “speak like a college professor.” When introducing new terminology in class, I jokingly tell my students they are “getting their tuition money’s worth” as we learn “college vocabulary.” I try not to assume that students will know the meaning of words that I commonly use in conversation with faculty members. I also share my working class background with my students as I illustrate sociological concepts. I believe that it helps build students’

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. . . I also share my working class background with my students as I illustrate sociological concepts. I believe that it helps build students’ confidence that they, too, can succeed in higher education even if they come from a family that has little or no experience in the area.

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confidence that they, too, can succeed in higher education even if they come from a family that has little or no experience in the area. My research in the scholarship of teaching and learning has explored differences in the participation of traditional and nontraditional students in classroom discussions. Without a doubt, traditional students are likely to sit back and let the nontraditional students speak for the class. I combat this tendency by learning student names and calling on the quieter younger students to participate. I also get nontraditional and traditional students talking to one another by placing them into small groups for discussion of assigned readings. In order to maximize participation grades in these groups, one must ensure that all members of the group have spoken up. This strategy creates both social pressure for all students to speak up and encourages talkative students to invite quiet students to join in the discussion. It helps solve the “free rider” problem while getting nontraditional and traditional students talking with each other. Finally, I seek to respect my students’ religious orientation or lack thereof. This can be challenging when teaching courses like the Sociology of Religion. The last time I taught the course I had everything from a “practicing atheist” (his words) to a fifty year member of a local Baptist church. Such diversity in religious orientation makes inclusive teaching challenging. We set ground rules that included no proselytizing during class time, respect for one another’s beliefs, and a careful recognition of the questions a social scientific approach to the study of religion could and could not address. Given the security these ground rules provided, students were quite interested in one another’s diverse religious experiences as they applied to topics in the course. I am a better teacher because of my experiences of marginality in higher education. These experiences, while sometimes leaving me feeling estranged from faculty colleagues who come from very different backgrounds, have given me great empathy for my students who frequently come to higher education feeling marginal themselves. I hope to enable them to become comfortable and successful in what often feels like a strange new world for them. Jay R. Howard, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology Head, Division of Liberal Arts ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

From Ghetto to Ghetto: Growing Through The Past into the Future I was born in the ghetto waterfront community of Buffalo, New York. Most of my neighbors did not “look” like me. They were of African, American Indian and Latino descent. My parents were simple people. They worked all of their lives in low paying, low prestige positions. My father, who had no education beyond high school, still possessed a wealth of worldly knowledge. He taught me to respect experience as much as book learning. He taught me to see beyond the outside to the inner core of a person. He taught me to promote human relations regardless of the exterior package in which I was to find these experiences. My father marveled at simple things. He and I would sit for long periods at the end of a day simply watching the sun go down. We watched parades and took walks in the neighborhood. We talked to people as we went by. While I was informed that not all people were trustworthy, I was also reminded that all people were to be given that assumption, at first. My father said I needed to honor and revere other realities as well. This was not an easy thing to do. I grew up “poor”, but until I went to college and was informed that I was poor in my Introductory Sociology class, I was unaware of my status. These experiences reminded me that “reality” is as much definitional and perceptual as it is “factual.” My neighborhood was a real mix of people. I was ‘white’ in a neighborhood dominated by people who did not look like me. I did not realize how “different” I was because it was never pointed out to me. When someone wanted to do something for you usually you said ‘thank you’ and that was that. It was only later that I found out that to be white and male was an ‘honor’ to maintain, to savor, to defend against all new comers. I was to learn this when I went to college in Iowa. There I was, a poor city boy who grew up on the waterfront of a major urban environment. So, like anyone in a strange environment, I sought out people who had what I considered familiar faces. This group included African, Latino, and Native Americans; poor people who did menial labor such as janitors, day laborers, and women - as many of my close relations were female. The student population was about 95% white, a few Asians, and even fewer Africans and African Americans. Most of the students were mainline Protestants with a few Roman Catholics and even fewer Jewish students to make the mix a mix. And then there was me. When I sought out people who were “like me,” people who looked like me accused me of not sticking to “my own kind.” Well, I

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I learned that there is always more than one way to view reality. I learned that difference is natural.

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thought that I was with my “own kind.” It was just that my definition differed from the definition of others. So I associated with Africans and African American students. I spent time talking with janitors, grounds keepers, and secretaries. I had to choose between my image of reality and those of others who wanted me to “purchase my reality in terms of my friends, not in terms of what I saw in front of me.” Again, my choice was an easy one to make. But the greatest education was to come to me during my sophomore year at COE. Organizers for what was to be called ‘freedom summer’ came to COE to recruit students to travel to the South to help African American citizens register to vote. Now this seemed to be an obvious activity for a person with my background. But it caused changes in me that are to this day still a fundamental part of who I am. These experiences - positive and negative - and the people I met, both Black and White, are images I hold dear to this day which help orient many of my activities inside and outside the classroom. I spent that summer, and the following summer in many small Southern towns and rural areas. So how does the above story relate to how I teach? I learned that there is always more than one way to view reality. I learned that difference is natural. I came to trust my experiences as foundational to understanding my ideas; and discovered that ideas are, in fact, a combination of personal experience and ‘facts.’ We teach and reach students through books and personal experiences. When we link the personal and the public, we connect people to the community around them in ways that they can connect for themselves. When people are able to connect the dots themselves this is the most powerful and most lasting type of teaching one can accomplish. Democratic education engages and involves people in realities both close at hand and far a field. We create realities that show why and how we are connected to a community of like-minded but diversely prepared people. My classes are created communities, however brief they may be in time and space. I treat my students as enfranchised adults even when we disagree as to the pieces of those communities. Rules are set to act as guides, not as brick walls, because I realize that we need structure, but also that structures are there to facilitate learning. Rules change because experiences that people encounter also change. Change and innovation of practice facilitates best learning because life is a constantly moving target. It is a combination of the usual and the newly discovered. Classes are a microcosm of that broader cultural reality, and thus needs to reflect those other realities. Classrooms that value diversity of all types work when we can convince students of the importance that all people are involved in

mortgages and dental appointments, and that we all draw lines between these two realities. We can do so when we realize that, as my father said, “We are all after the same things in life, we simply approach the attainment of those things in different ways.” I have learned that diversity is not political or even economic but relational. I found that we need to become aware of the whole person and not just their cover. I have come to understand that we have to teach people and not subjects. We have to become involved in the lives of our students to be able to teach them concepts and ideas. I realize that as a white male I can teach courses on African Americans and women if I am willing to listen to individuals and groups as they live their lives, and then add my observations about my relation to their lives. I teach politics as if we are all part of the problems and the alternatives. I learned all of this from where and how I grew up, and this is how I teach. I teach by remembering the walks my father and I took, and the lessons he taught me on those long ago inner-city ghetto walks. Paul Kriese, PhD Associate Professor of Politics ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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I teach politics as if we are all part of the problems and the alternatives.

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“A Path of Inclusion”

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The following autobiographical vignette presents my mindset at the time I began teaching Business Communication at the Kelley School of Business. At that time, I was leaving a career as an immigration attorney working for Catholic Social Services. I’m a lawyer. I try to make people talk about bleak periods in their lives. Some won’t. Some almost can’t. I remember one Liberian woman who told me Charles Taylor’s rebel troops forced her from a line of death-marching women and children. Being separated from the group usually meant rape, torture, death…words I don’t fully understand. She told me how the troops raped her and how she became some sergeant’s “woman;” how she cooked cassava for him; how she suffered everyday. I recall the ease with which her eyes went blank. When this happens, you know that person somehow has left your presence. One day she left me like this for five or ten minutes that felt like an eternity: her voice changed. She was frightened. She told me how she JUST ESCAPED from the sergeant. She wanted to know how I could help her. After she came back to me, she was withdrawn. I convinced her to meet with the staff psychologist. His diagnosis: She lives in a time warp; She cannot at times distinguish between now and then; She suffers bouts of weeping, but cannot explain why; She manages to struggle through everyday life, as long as nothing reminds her of then; She cannot maintain long term relationships…and on and on for three pages. How could I help her? My only answer even now: by doing my job well so that she received asylum. So, she and I had to rehash this torturous period of her life so many times that five years later, I likely recall the details of her life as a slave better than I recall most details of my own life. And I remember a Salvadoran woman, who routinely saw her deceased parents hovering in a pasture near the pick-up-truck camper she called home. She lived off a dirt road in nowhere, South Texas. You couldn’t find her home without counting mailboxes after turning off the highway onto a paved road that cut through mostly undeveloped land. Her little camper had no running water, a port-a-potty bin, and a rusted stove. The camper was raised on cinder blocks. One of her neighbors let her grow corn in a 20 by 20 foot patch of hard dirt. She kept about twenty little dogs. She walked miles a day to the closest town to get food handouts from a church pantry. She preferred this life to the one she left.

At least once a month, she would hitch hike to the non-profit law office where I worked to tell me that a dark Jeep Cherokee drove by her and that the people inside were watching her. Every time she would remind me that the death squads often use dark Jeep Cherokees. She would tell me how a death squad showed up at her house because a neighbor, who was married to a military man, hated her and spread rumors about her. How the esquadron de muerte killed her dogs and used the blood to write “dogs” on her squat, thatched-roof mud house, then rounded up as much of her family as they could, raping the children in ways I won’t describe, and shot them. How she fled to Mexico. How she fled from Mexico when after close to eight years there, she began seeing suspicious people, people dressed like death squad members, in shirts with embroidered stripes. The first I heard of the shirts was when we were in court and she was trying to convince a judge not to send her back to El Salvador. I can never forget the precision of her testimony, how chests opened up like red rosebuds, how she crouched behind a waist high palm plant…the dripping red word “chuchos” on her home. She can’t read, but to me her words that day described life and death more clearly than I’ve ever heard before or since. I can never forget how she saw her parents hovering above the cows in the pasture. They talked to her. I remember all the people that I’ve tried to help and the parts of their lives they don’t ever want to talk about again. I can tell you more ways to cut peoples’ souls than I ever dreamed existed. I’ve crawled into a dark corner of my house late at night and brooded about what I wish I didn’t know, but do know, because I’m a lawyer. The mindset in this vignette is easily traced back to my high school experience. The highest award at my all-male high school was not “valedictorian.” It was the “Man for Others” award. My teachers prodded for non-self-absorbed thinking; the curriculum included a lot of community service. The result: my high school experience sent me down the path of seeking and discovering otherness, a path of inclusion. Traveling this path became an inextricable part of who I am. Some may find it remarkable that my high school experience did this for me. But it did. And this remarkable high school experience meant that I expect my teaching to help others reach or travel the path of inclusion. Aim high, right? But mindsets are limiting. When I began teaching, I thought that I could bring the world to my students. I had supervised several recent college graduates in my legal

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. . . my high school experience sent me down the path of seeking and discovering otherness, a path of inclusion. Traveling this path became an inextricable part of who I am.

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These days, as I sketch a plan for a given semester, as I meet my students for the first time, as we walk the first awkward steps of the semester, I see the most important part of my job is to give my students avenues to be heard, confidence to speak, and feedback on how to make their voices more significant.

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career, and they were always into what I had to say. They always engaged passionately in the conversations about our clients’ harsh lives, the strategy about cases, the cold legal system, et cetera. I came to the school of business to teach communication with incredible stories to share about the power of communication. My students reacted; they either loved or hated the world as I presented it to them, a world with grim surprises waiting to change their lives for better or worse. I am aware that many teachers who try to shake up their students run into the love/hate reaction. For years I struggled to find ways to avoid this reaction because the price of negative affect in our students is often too high. Finally, I had an insight about my teaching. The path of inclusion does not demand the bipolar reaction if you teach in an inclusive way. Students, like all people, need a significant voice, meaning an opportunity to be heard and an audience that listens; that’s what I did for my clients, and I needed to do the same for my students. These days, as I sketch a plan for a given semester, as I meet my students for the first time, as we walk the first awkward steps of the semester, I see the most important part of my job is to give my students avenues to be heard, confidence to speak, and feedback on how to make their voices more significant. Beginning on the first day of class, we consider the importance of everyone’s need to feel significant. These days, as I teach, I chart my students’ participation; I note their ample willingness to engage in conversation, to listen, to react, and most of all to consider possibilities that they did not think of alone. I see my students starting down the path of inclusion, and I see myself continuing along the path with them. Michael C. Morrone, Esq. Lecturer, Business Communication, Kelley School of Business Indiana University Bloomington ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

Meeting the Other: Autism, Emotional Disability, and Learning to Teach In September, 1971, I got off an airplane in Detroit. As an eighteen-year-old first-year student at Antioch College in Ohio, I was embarking on my first co-operative study experience: assistant teacher at a private school for children identified as autistic and emotionally disabled in suburban Detroit. The position was to last three months; I was to assist the school in working with these children while living with the family of one of the students. The only requirement for the job was to be interested in working with children, which was fortunate as I had no prior teaching experience or background in special education or disability. The intent of the cooperative study program at Antioch was to give students an opportunity to experience the world beyond college as a college student, as well as engage in learning activities that would support academic work and career choices. In each of these ways, my experience at Tim-Ro-Nan-Go School that fall of 1971 fulfilled these expectations, having a profound effect not only on my career choice, but also on my evolving perceptions and understandings regarding American society and culture. Through my work as a teacher with and of these children, I initiated the imperative life-long process of understanding how disability relates to multiculturalism in a general way and how my subsequent professional life has been framed by constructions of equity, disability, and student-centered teaching and learning. Although recent critique and scholarship has begun to address disability as a fundamental social and cultural aspect of the human condition, disability has not been traditionally viewed as a central aspect of multiculturalism in the United States (Davis, Winzer, Longmore and Umanski, Safford and Safford, Baynton, Biklen, Osgood). Race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion have all gained recognition as fundamental elements of diversity and multiculturalism in this country, generating a substantial stream of scholarship and critique regarding the ways in which each of these constructs contribute to perceptions of “otherness” among us. Yet, disability has not. This omission has been a mistake, both in my opinion and in those of other scholars of disability and special education. Through historical, social, ethnographic, and other modes of research, disability has repeatedly been shown to constitute an aspect of cultural and social experience, whereby those who are labeled “disabled” have faced discrimination, prejudice, hostility, contempt, pity, and misunderstanding as a consequence of their constructed condition. The children at Tim-Ro-Nan-Go School exemplified this fact quite clearly. These children were rejected by the Detroit Public Schools because of their perceived disabilities, conditions that the DPS were

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neither prepared nor inclined to address in regular education classrooms. As this was prior to the Federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, the Detroit Pubic Schools were technically within their legal right to deny access and services to these children and their families on the basis of their disability. With an unwelcoming and unconcerned public school system not an option, these children were enrolled in TRNGS (named for the first four children enrolled) in hopes of providing some form of formal education and socialization opportunities. With a staff of four licensed teachers and several assistant teachers (four of whom were from Antioch), the school attempted to provide activities, therapy, and curriculum that would allow these children to grow and adapt to their social worlds as much as possible. From early September to late December in 1971, I worked with about twelve children ranging in age from 4 to 15 on an intensive, daily basis. I was responsible for assisting with four hours of in-school time, as well as three hours daily of driving five of the children to and from school. The children displayed a wide range of ability levels in terms of communication skills, social skills, personal hygiene, and cognitive ability. Many were identified as having autism and exhibited the typical spectrum of behaviors associated with clinical definitions of the condition. Others exhibited behavioral disorders manifested in aggression, anger, and withdrawal. As teachers, we used a wide variety of approaches to working with our students, including group activities, functional (or “life skills”) curriculum, and intensive one-on-one intervention. My experience as a young, neophyte teacher proved almost overwhelming. My learning occurred not so much in terms of teaching skills or knowledge of categories of disability - limited as they were to two or at most three general categories - but in terms of how I viewed my relationship as a teacher with students and, more importantly, how I came to view disability as a complex and unique characteristic of the human condition, lessons from which I continue to learn to this day. The first two weeks on the job were confusing, exhausting, and frustrating. I did not understand how these children could behave in the ways they did, having never encountered individuals with similar patterns of behavior and self-expression. The screaming, biting, shouting, repetitive practices, and physical actions of the children startled me. The need to communicate expectations and ideas through ways other than words challenged and at times angered me. The experience and patience of the licensed teachers contrasted sharply and dismayingly with my absence of these qualities. Daily consultation and weekly Friday afternoon staff meetings at first did little to console my sense of inadequacy on multiple levels.

But as has been recounted frequently in the literature on cultural competence and on the value of exposure to and involvement with diversity on a continuous basis, my intensive immersion into the worlds of these children soon began to yield significant benefits for them and for myself. To begin with, the on-the-job pedagogical training, while quite tiring, exposed me to the power and vitality of student-centered learning the idea that all teaching first and foremost should be designed for the sake of the student, not for that of policy, administrative ease, fiscal efficiency, or individual whim. These children, rejected by a public school system comfortable only with predictability and regularity, blossomed in their own significant, if not spectacular, ways within a caring and adaptive educational environment that focused on the whole child and respected their individual needs and assets. Prior to any formal course work in educational philosophy or learning theory, this experience nonetheless cemented my belief that in any classroom, the student must come first. That has been a cornerstone of my own approach as a teacher ever since. Even so, it was the opportunity to experience disability as a reality and as a series of possibilities, opportunities, and assets, rather than as a Problem, that changed my view of human interaction - in the classroom as well as out - in stark and essential ways. For the first week or two Terry, Alan, Shiela, Annie, Mark, and even Kim - with whom I shared a house and meals daily - were undecipherable beings, infused with drives and rationales for action that I could not begin to appreciate. Yet, in my opinion, it is impossible to engage in such intense contact with other human beings without gaining substantive insight into their approaches to life and human interaction - both in terms of differences and similarities. I saw these children become confused, angry, happy, hungry, tired, excited, bored, and overjoyed. I saw them enjoy learning for learning’s sake and become under whelmed by my attempts to communicate. I met their sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, grandparents; I saw their homes and neighborhoods. I learned what they liked and didn’t like for lunch. I watched them behave in ways that puzzled me, yet satisfied them wholeheartedly. And ultimately I came to see them as real kids, real students, and real friends. In the world of disability, the competence, value, and even humanity of children for whom life offers different possibilities and modes of interaction have been severely and consistently questioned. The notion of “normal” is potent and comfortable; those who exist on the margins of that zone experience the world in vastly different ways. The literature on diversity, multiculturalism, and cultural competence consistently emphasizes the need to respect difference and value alternative perspectives. This is especially true for teachers, in whose classrooms - and hands - so much of the rich diversity of our communities lies. And it has proven especially valuable for me.

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. . . it was the opportunity to experience disability as a reality and as a series of possibilities, opportunities, and assets, rather than as a problem, that changed my view of human interaction . . .

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This personal experience of just three months thirty-four years ago has transformed little in my memory. The sights, sounds, smells, and thoughts remain vivid and vital. When I talk to students about their decision to work with children and families shaped by disability, I refer to my time in Detroit often and emphatically. It constituted a rare opportunity to learn about a profession and about a community simultaneously, and the whole has truly proven to be more than the sum of its parts. As a historian, teacher, and advocate for the better understanding and appreciation of disability and the qualities of those so labeled, the children from Tim-Ro-Nan-Go taught me much. And I continue to appreciate their mentorship. Robert L. Osgood Associate Professor of Education IUPUI ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

The Open Door: For Persons with Disabilities Over the course of my lifetime I have observed and experienced a broadening of opportunity within the teaching profession, particularly for those teachers with handicaps. This broadening has resulted from the efforts of determined individuals working diligently at many levels to develop policies and legislation which identify and protect the rights of teachers to function fully within their profession in spite of what in earlier years were seen as limitations. Doors that once were shut in the faces of many teachers are now being held wide open for them. The 1930s. My mother was an elementary school teacher in the 1930s, a time of economic depression in the United States. After two years of teaching, she and my father decided to get married, but the policy of the time dictated that a husband and wife could not both be employed because there were not enough jobs to go around. My parents took the Interurban train to a small town in southern Indiana and asked a local minister to marry them. His wife shut off her iron to attend the ceremony as the sole witness of their wedding, and they kept their marriage secret for two years in order to save enough money to buy a house. Their story has always seemed a very romantic one to me, even though what they did was in violation of the “policy” of the time. The 1960s. In the spring of 1967 I was teaching English at Howe High School, and before my pregnancy became noticeable, policy dictated that I take a leave of absence so that my students would not be negatively affected by being in the daily presence of a pregnant woman. My husband was just finishing his last year of medical school and preparing for a residency in obstetrics and gynecology, so money was tight. Thanks to the moonlighting jobs my husband found, we managed to pay the bills. The 21st Century. These stories are part of the “lore” of our family, and we like to retell them with fondness at family gatherings. The policies behind these stories no longer exist. In our more enlightened times, I can appreciate the progress represented by the elimination of such policies. In the fall of 2003, however, I became even more aware of how much more inclusive society in general and education in particular had become, specifically regarding policies affecting the handicapped.

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. . . and now I had the condition in both eyes, leaving me with vision so limited that I could no longer drive a car . . .

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That fall, I was teaching freshman composition at Indiana University – Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI). One November evening, I was responding to a set of student papers, writing comments on the drafts as I read them. Quite suddenly, I could no longer read Vincent Thomas’ paper! I had experienced an incidence of Anterior Optic Neuropathy (AON), resulting in permanent partial loss of vision in my left eye. I had had a similar episode in 1996 in my right eye, and now I had the condition in both eyes, leaving me with vision so limited that I could no longer drive a car, and I fearfully struggled to face what seemed the certainty that I would never again be able to teach as I had for much of my 62 years. Luckily, I soon discovered that recent sociological and technological advances would make it possible for me to continue teaching. These advances had been made mostly without my conscious awareness of them, and I am still discovering additional advances that promise even more assistance for me in my situation. Sociological Advances. One piece of legislation which has offered handicapped persons opportunities to adapt to their disabilities is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enacted on July 26, 1992. According to the website of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/fs-ada.html), the ADA prohibits private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies and labor unions from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions and privileges of employment. A “qualified employee or applicant with a disability is an individual who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the job in question.” My disability left me no longer able to drive a car, and I was delighted to learn that one result of the ADA was the initiation of the IndyGo Open Door program by the Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation Board. This program provides door-to-door bus transportation for handicapped persons in Indianapolis. For the past year and a half, I have used this service to get to and from IUPUI and feel a little guilty that I no longer have to undergo the sometimes extensive daily search for a parking place my colleagues face.

To assist me in adapting to my disability, the English department allowed me to reduce my classroom teaching load. In the spring of 2004, I worked full-time in the University Writing Center (UWC), tutoring, consulting, and mentoring undergraduate tutoring “fellows.” In the fall of 2004, I taught one class and continued to work additional hours in the UWC. In the spring of 2005, I taught two classes and worked in the UWC. In the fall of 2005, I will teach three classes and work in the UWC. This is the same schedule I had at the time of my AON incident, so I will consider myself at that time back to my normal routine. Additional accommodations have been made for me by the English Department. My classrooms and office are now all located in Cavanaugh Hall, making it no longer necessary for me to trek all over campus and possibly risk tripping or falling due to my limited vision. Technological Advances. I have been amazed by the number of technological devices that have been developed for people with limited vision. ZoomText icons now appear on my office computer screen and on the screen of one of the computers in the UWC. When I click on this icon, a program is uploaded which magnifies anything on the screen as large as I wish, from Oncourse postings to email messages to surf-rides on the Internet. My low-vision specialist at the Indiana University Indianapolis Eye Care Center introduced me to a wide array of technological devices to choose among for additional equipment to assist me with my vision. I finally decided upon a FlipperPort device, a small closed-circuit television camera which can be “flipped” into adjustable positions to focus on anything I want to see more clearly. The televised image is displayed on a portable screen, and I can adjust the image in several modes and multiple sizes to magnify any item and see it more clearly than possible even before my AON episode. In the fall of 2003, my suddenly weakened eyes seemed to focus on a door closing on my life as a teacher. I am grateful to have discovered, instead, that the door was actually opening onto a new world that still includes the teaching that I love and also a new awareness of just how far humankind has come in its quest for ever fuller actualization of human potential. Mary Jo Pride Trustees Lecturer Department of English, IUPUI

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. . .my suddenly weakened eyes seemed to focus on a door closing on my life as a teacher. I am grateful to have discovered, instead, that the door was actually opening onto a new world . . .

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IUPUI Resources

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There are two specific entities at IUPUI which assist students, faculty, and staff who have disabilities: Adaptive Educational Services Cavanaugh Hall 001E (317) 274-3241 http://life.iupui.edu/aes Adaptive Technology Center Informatics and Communications Technology Complex Room 131 (317) 274-4580 http://www.indiana.edu/~iuadapts/ ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

A Multicultural Advisor I have dealt with multiculturalism for many years as a college student and as an advisor. I immigrated to the United States 28 years ago and went to college. Multiculturalism was not talked about and students were left to deal with these issues on their own. Having a name that is different and speaking with an accent are not easy things for a student to deal with. Faculty, staff and students did not know how to relate. Things have changed tremendously, and I have experienced these changes just by observing how other advisors and students relate to me personally. Coming from a different background makes me more sensitive to multicultural issues and more at ease working with those students. By writing this article, I hope to provide a new perspective on the issue. Some of the things that I have learned from working with multicultural students and from my own experiences as a multicultural advisor are: - We need to listen carefully to the student’s needs. Adjusting to a new place to live and dealing with the pressure to succeed in college are overwhelming experiences. - Do not use slang language. Students might speak fluent English, but have a limited exposure to the language. Most of it is through high school English classes, or TV and movies. They do not have many opportunities to practice spoken English. - Do not use higher education language without an explanation. Sometimes we use the words we are comfortable with and know what that word means. An example will be “pre-requisite,” “waiver,” or “certification.” These words don’t mean much to a new student, and may be difficult to understand for a multicultural student. I often write a word down and explain it, and also encourage the student to look it up in the dictionary to get the whole meaning of the word. -Tell a student to ask for help when he needs it. It might not be acceptable in a student’s culture to ask for help; it is most likely considered as a sign of weakness, especially for male students. We need to be aware of that, and encourage a student to ask for help. Faculty members might also be seen as authoritative figures and

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We are trained on how to deal with academic, family, and emotional issues, but are unprepared to deal with multicultural issues.

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unapproachable, not as a person who has an interest in their academic success. - Encourage students to belong to student organizations. Multicultural students tend to make friends from the same multicultural group. It makes them more comfortable because they can relate to the other students since they share the same background and language. They need to be encouraged to experience the different opportunities available on campus to give them a sense of belonging. - Be sensitive to a student’s personal issues. As an advisor, I find myself involved in students’ personal problems. We are trained on how to deal with academic, family, and emotional issues, but are unprepared to deal with multicultural issues. For instance, I found myself showing a student at the Jag Junction cafeteria what “deli meat” means. Things we take for granted are not obvious for these students. I hope this gives insight into some of the issues that the students might face. We can improve the quality of our service and help the students be successful just by being aware of the different needs of multicultural students. Ragheda “Anne” Rabie, BSEE, MBA Academic Advisor, University College Pre-Professional Advisor, School of Science IUPUI ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

Colin’s Vision It was my second year in an academic teaching position, and I had just been observed by one of my peers in several of my classes. Following a lengthy conversation, an exhaustive examination of teaching materials and a thoughtful review of my teaching philosophy, she asked me a question. The way that I approached quantitative methods was different from anything she had seen, and she was curious to know how I had happened on this specific method. I had been able to explain my philosophy and the evidence indicated that my methods were successful; but, I had not explained how it had evolved. It was some years before I was able to answer the question that my colleague had posed. We need to walk back several years down memory lane to a time when I was a graduate student. It was the end of summer and I was in the final year of writing my doctoral dissertation when I first met Colin. A friend called to inquire whether I would be willing to tutor Colin in econometrics. As I had not taught this particular course, I suggested others who had taught the course before, and agreed to meet with Colin and help with introductions if necessary. A week or so later, an African American in his early thirties walked into my office, introduced himself as Colin and proceeded to explain the purpose of his visit. Within the next hour I learned that Colin wanted to learn econometrics because his life’s ambition was to secure a federal job in Washington D.C.; a job that required forecasting and modeling. Colin had followed up on the list of names I had provided, but was unable to find someone willing to work with his special needs. It wasn’t until Colin explained gently that he was almost blind that I understood what he meant. Colin had examined the syllabus for econometrics and spoken with seniors who dissuaded him from taking the course because it was difficult. It was an elective, but Colin wanted to work in a field where econometrics was required. He was left with one remote possibility at this point - which happened to be me. I pointed out that I lacked both the experience and the skills to guide him. I was not a trained tutor and I had no experience in working with special needs. Colin responded that he had heard that I enjoyed teaching and learning, and that I just might be the right person to work with him. I promised to think over the request. I could sense the courage and the strength of purpose that Colin possessed and I was touched by his faith in me. When Colin and I met the next time, I suggested we start working on a trial basis. Colin would be my guide and mentor just as much as I would be his. If our experiment did not succeed, Colin would withdraw from the course.

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And so it was that I learned to paint pictures with words.

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For the first few weeks, Colin and I worked on finding effective ways of working around our limitations. Since it was impossible for me to master Braille in such a short span of time, I could not use chalkboard illustrations or writing. Colin suggested meeting weekly for a two hour session and taping our conversations. And so it was that I learned to paint pictures with words. I used examples and applications so that Colin could develop the intuition and understanding to begin visualizing mathematical equations and models in his mind’s eye. It became a challenge that occupied most of my leisure time. When I needed a break from research, I would ponder on the best way to communicate a concept efficiently so that Colin could build on it. Each week, Colin would return with questions, eager to move forward, for he was both motivated and disciplined. In time, as I began to know Colin better, the extraordinary character that I had glimpsed at our first meeting became evident. Not once did I hear a complaint or note the slightest trace of self-pity. Colin had balanced his failing eyesight with a compelling vision for a future filled with new challenges. Just knowing Colin helped me, for I threw myself into my thesis with renewed vigor and confidence. When the mid-term results were announced, Colin was at the top of his class. Since most of the class complained bitterly about the exam, the instructor requested that Colin speak to the class. Colin shared his story and his courage and determination became a source of inspiration. As Colin grew more confident with econometrics, our conversations began to extend to new topics. When we had finished our work for the week, Colin would ply me with questions about India. Why are Indians good at mathematics, he asked; and I tried to present a viewpoint encompassing the economic situation, the brain drain, the value of education in Indian culture, as well as self-selection and sampling bias. Another time, he wanted to know more about the system of arranged marriages and we talked about dowries and bride prices, the joint family system, gender equality and the status of women. Soon, there were more questions from Colin and I was sharing details of my life in India and my impressions of America. By the end of that semester, Colin had picked up enough about India and Indians to surprise his friends. As for me, Colin’s enthusiasm to explore different cultures and values taught me to value the heritage that I had taken so much for granted. I marveled at Colin’s wisdom in opening this door for both of us. These conversations laid the foundation for my career in teaching and learning. The relationship between Colin and me hardly conformed to the typical relationship between a student and teacher. Instead, we

were both learners, bound by a shared and mutual commitment to learning. In working with Colin, I grew adept at creating a framework with examples and applications before presenting formal mathematical models; a trait that was to become a hallmark of my teaching philosophy. Furthermore, in extending our discussions beyond econometrics, Colin and I crossed the narrow boundaries of subject matter and content, and engaged in authentic conversation where both answers and questions were complex and ambiguous and required us to look deep within ourselves. Just as Colin drew me out and taught me the value of selfknowledge and authentic inquiry, I learned to look for opportunities to draw out personal stories and weave them into our learning interactions. For instance, it was my experience with Colin that led me to encourage one of my foreign students in sharing her account about the country of her origin and her experience with political and economic turmoil. Her narrative explained hyperinflation, and her personal stance helped the economics class begin thinking about different cultures and political systems with empathy. It built a bridge of cultural understanding, and helped her gain confidence as she tried to adjust to a new country. For her fellow classmates, her story opened a window to a new world. It was the same concept that helped me guide learners in their independent projects. I encouraged learners to find personal meaning in the topics that they chose and to share the interest and excitement of discovery. In later years, I learned to reflect on my own experiences and visit them anew in the context of pedagogy. My experience with Colin had trained me to assume the role of ‘teacher as facilitator.’ In responding to Colin’s needs, I had grown accustomed to seeing things from the viewpoint of the student, and I had adopted a ‘student-centered’ approach. In looking for personal meaning and creating an environment where learners could interact and share experiences with one another, I had begun to value the ‘learning community.’ The next semester, Colin applied for and got the job of his dreams; and around the same time, I got my first teaching position. As we prepared to say farewell, I expressed my gratitude to Colin for all that I had learned from him. Colin did not understand why I thanked him and at that point, I could not articulate how much knowing him had meant to me personally and professionally. True, Colin’s courage had touched and empowered me, but that was only a small part of what I had received from him. It has taken me years of reflection to acknowledge the many lessons that Colin taught me. Until Colin walked into my life, I was not certain that I was suited to an academic career. It was Colin’s faith in me that led me towards teaching and learning. I learned that the passion for excellence

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For her fellow classmates, her story opened a window to a new world.

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gives you the vision to touch and inspire others, just as Colin inspired me. I discovered that the path to excellence becomes a joyful path if you take others along in your quest, as Colin did with me. For all this and more, I thank Colin’s vision. Vandana Rao, Ph. D. Associate Professor of Economics Division of Business and Economics Indiana University East ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

“Reflections on Diversity Practices: Surviving Student Resistance In The Classroom” As a new Teaching Assistant at a predominately white mid-west university, I co-designed a course titled, “Love Through the Black Literary Experience.” The first class period materialized into “The Battle Royal.”1 I did not anticipate the high level of student resistance I encountered when one student stated, “Not another course about whiney minorities.” Was I being challenged because I did not mirror the traditional college professor? I was young, black, and female instead of being older, white, and male. I felt disempowered. How would I regain my status as “instructor?” Instead of the liberal space I’d hoped to develop for my students and me, the classroom was on its way to becoming a very oppressive site - a boxing ring where I was an opponent and not the referee. My response was a few quick jabs: “this university is trying to do its part to ensure that students receive a well balanced education; therefore, it is important that you are exposed to different cultures. Furthermore, have you ever questioned the motives of an instructor who teaches literature written by and about whites?” The student’s come back was a quick right hook, “why are you and this university so intent on shoving diversity down our throats? I am not racist but it seems to me that offering a class on just black writers is reverse discrimination.” It was definitely time for a knockout, or I was doomed in my desire to remain “in control.” I stated, “This is the material we’ll be covering; if you don’t want to be here, feel free to sign up for another section of ENG112.” Interestingly, no one dropped the course, which was my green light to execute my diversity mission. This article examines how my efforts to ensure that non-dominant literature be taken seriously were interrupted by student resistance. I also outline the pedagogical strategies I’ve since implemented to survive student resistance. My assumed victory highlighted above was short-lived. I went under the ropes and became an opponent yet again. As we analyzed the literature, my students’ misinformed knowledge of black experiences and lack of interest in gaining new knowledge was daunting. Students approached the literature with hostility and defensiveness. During an explication of Alice Walker’s “For My People,” one student exclaimed, “Why is the poet so angry? She’s trying to make white people feel guilty. I wasn’t a slave owner. Why is she harping on race? Racism no longer exists.” I was speechless. My student’s comment was no longer an affront to an author but a dismissal of my knowledge and experience as a woman of color in a culture where, as Cornel West writes, “race matters.” Was I knocked out, or would I recover before the countdown? I came to. After asking my student if he existed in a bubble, I informed him that even 1 Borrowed from Ralph Ellison’s “The Battle Royal.”

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I needed to understand that creating a progressive classroom would entail sacrificing some “power” and “control” of the classroom.

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though my presence in the classroom did say something about the improvement of race relations, it could never support his claim that racism is nonexistent. I lectured at my students with no mercy reminding them that they were not slave owners and I was far removed from being a slave but that the institution of slavery had left a legacy that placed them in a privileged position. The History and Legacy of Slavery 101 was in full swing as my precedent about interactive learning and a classroom where students are encouraged to share their ideas ended. I silenced them. I had surpassed referee status. I ruled. However, this position as ruler disturbed me. Student resistance made me a very angry instructor who could not understand why my students were so “closed minded” and “culturally incompetent.” Too much class time was spent defending why I was teaching non-dominant literature. My students probably unconsciously challenged my authority in the classroom because I did not meet their idea of what the traditional professor should look like, and they ought to be held accountable for such shortcomings. However, instead of interpreting their resistance to the literature as their rejection of me, I probably could have had a more successful course if I had addressed why my students were resisting course materials.2 In reflection, I only perceived my students’ resistance and what “they” were guilty of. I focused more on pointing out students’ misconceptions of black cultures and mythical ideas about the dynamics of race in American culture. Additionally, I felt the urgency to expose them to non-dominant literature at any cost. I am still committed to “diversity initiatives,” but approach student resistance differently. First, I had to identify the kind of instructor I wanted to be. Did I aim to be the sole voice of knowledge and authority or the progressive instructor who encourages multicultural approaches to learning? I desired a learning environment where students’ contributions would be heard and respected. Why, then, was it so easy for me to silence my former students? An evaluation of my earlier teaching experiences revealed that I had an unconscious fear of losing student respect and control of the classroom. I needed to understand that creating a progressive classroom would entail sacrificing some “power” and “control” of the classroom. In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks notes that as instructors, our styles of teaching need to be changed. We must face our fears of losing control “in a classroom where there is no one way to approach a single subject–only multiple ways and multiple references” (36). If I wanted to successfully expose my students to non-dominant 2 While I do agree to an extent that as instructors we should not interpret students’ resistance to texts/writers/subjects as a rejection of us, I am not sure is a simple task to achieve. Quite often what we teach defines us. this

cultures, I would have to meet the student where s/he is instead of where I believe s/he should be. I also had to examine my students’ responses to me and my teaching. My white students’ resistance was not only about “having diversity shoved down their throats,” but more complicated in that many of them had never had an instructor of color and thus had concerns of their own: will I be graded fairly? Will she think that I am a racist if I disagree with something she says? Fear was often at the center of my students’ behavior. In my attempts to develop survival mechanisms that would prevent student resistance and address their fears, I queried: how can I present course materials without creating further anxiety among students or present texts in a non-threatening way? How do I help students to recognize the importance of engaging with texts that they claim they can’t identify with or may challenge their former knowledge? I’ve survived by implementing the following strategies: - It’s important to challenge students, but in a non threatening, non-silencing way. Instead of asking a student who states that racism doesn’t exist with “do you exist in a bubble,” I introduce them to texts that specifically challenge and complicate such beliefs. Students respond well to Peggy McIntosh’s, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” They do not feel threatened in ways that they do when the instructor of the class lectures extensively on their misguided thinking/cultural incompetence. Let someone else challenge the student’s thinking. This approach is successful in that as instructor, I don’t have to go to war with students as was the case in my first teaching experience. - Distribute handouts and other useful information early in the semester to broaden student’s knowledge base. When teaching a course on Caribbean literature, for instance, I no longer assume that my students know where the Caribbean is located or have basic knowledge of its people and culture. I now issue a map of the Caribbean at the beginning of the course and offer what I’ve called the History of the Caribbean and Postcolonial Studies 101 during the first two weeks of the semester. Students are empowered in that they can apply this knowledge to issues that evolve in the literature. - Inform students of their responsibility to be active participants in their educational experience. Remind them that their experiences and ideas matter and will be taken seriously by engaging them through questionnaires

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. . . as long as students are allowed a space where their varied yet important views are valued, they are accepting of challenges and are more open to learn new knowledge even at the expense of re-evaluating their former beliefs.

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and other evaluative forms. My students are required to fill out a questionnaire at the beginning of the course where they state why they signed up for the course, and their expectations of the course and instructor. About mid-term, they receive the opportunity to state if their expectations are being met. We discuss these responses as a class and address any problem areas. Students are more open to learning when they are active participants in gathering knowledge and shaping their educational experiences. They are less resistant when they recognize that their views are being registered. My classroom is no longer a boxing ring. I have accepted the risks of teaching non-dominant literature from a multicultural perspective by focusing more on approaches to learning and trying new teaching styles. Occasionally I still have the urge to retrieve my boxing gloves, but I’ve found that as long as students are allowed a space where their varied yet important views are valued, they are accepting of challenges and are more open to learn new knowledge even at the expense of re-evaluating their former beliefs. Jennifer Thorington Springer, PhD Assistant Professor Department of English School of Liberal Arts Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

“Reflections on Diversity Practices: Surviving Student Resistance In The Classroom” References: Ellison, Ralph. “Battle Royal.” An Introduction to Fiction. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Pearson/Longman P, 2002. 577587. Hooks, Bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. West, Cornell. Race Matters. New York: Vintage, 1993. ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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Sexual Orientation as One Component of Multiculturalism

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Just how important is it that teachers acknowledge sexual orientation as a component of multiculturalism? Even as a gay man, it never seemed all that important to me until something happened, as often happens in life - in one dramatic moment - to change my view forever. Even in 2005, debate continues in some circles about the role of sexual orientation in a discussion of multiculturalism. Newly introduced in mid-century, the term itself refers more narrowly to “culture,” but that narrowing often does not help much. However, the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), founded in 1990, includes in its defining materials a charge to educators: “Thus, school curriculum must directly address issues of racism, sexism, classism, linguicism, ablism, ageism, heterosexism, religious intolerance, and xenophobia.” While addressing issues of heterosexism does not seem necessarily specific, in its statement of philosophy NAME claims commitment to “the basic tenets of cultural pluralism” and further specifies that “multicultural education promotes equity for all regardless of culture, ethnicity, race, class, language, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or religion.” “Thus, fair and full participation in a society’s institutions is paramount as both means and end in NAME’s philosophy. Xenophobia, discrimination, ethnocentrism, racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia are societal phenomena that are inconsistent with the principles of democracy and lead to the counterproductive reasoning that differences are deficiencies.” Having participated in the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and having taught afterwards for three years in West Africa, I felt my multicultural perspective was about as developed as any (white) American’s could be. But somehow, even after years of political activism in the San Francisco Bay area, I managed to maintain very distinct blind spots. In 1990, when I began teaching English at Indiana University Southeast, my own view of multiculturalism still did not include sexual orientation despite my being out at Stanford in graduate school. Indeed, arriving in New Albany, Indiana, after 18 years in California, the last thing I wanted to do was to make a point of sexuality: in my view, sexual orientation was separate from academics. I was a teacher of writing. Period. Besides that, I had tenure to consider. Busy making other changes in the Writing Program (I was hired, in part, because of my training and expertise in Composition and Rhetoric), I decided to teach for my first semester from the previously established curriculum of First-Year composition: the textbooks had already been ordered and there would be plenty of time to make changes

in the course the following year. Consequently, one of the first courses I taught that fall was a W131, inheriting a set curriculum that included a textbook with essays and commentary on, among many other topics of contemporary interest, gays and lesbians. The syllabus in use by the department proposed that for a personal essay assignment, students might write about issues arising from sexuality or sexual orientation. Fifteen years ago I thought this an advanced state of affairs and was pretty much pleasantly surprised when about four or five of the 23 students, having been provided with a wide range of topics in that section of the course reader, chose to write about sexual orientation. I gave no special instruction for any of the topics mentioned except to suggest that if students chose to write about sexual orientation, they might actually talk to some gay or lesbian folks to avoid writing drivel. Even though I thought this a sensible instruction, I didn’t provide any sense of how students might actually achieve such contact, nor did I volunteer myself as an informant. Sometimes it’s difficult to remember the very repressive social climate regarding gay and lesbian life just fifteen years ago, pre-“Will and Grace” and certainly pre-“Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and before easy access to the multitude of resources to be had in several mouse clicks on the Internet. The following week the first drafts came in. The few students who wrote about sexual orientation produced the predictable mix of stuff and nonsense: “I don’t agree with lesbianism” or “The Bible says….” The notable exception was a paper from, call him Eric, a quiet but attentive student who shared his great interest in football during first-day class introductions. He didn’t say much in class but was attentive and always looked interested. Given that Eric also looked the part of a fullback, I was surprised that he had chosen to write about sexuality. As a further point of interest, his draft was much better than the others on the topic with a strong voice arguing in a more than disinterested way for the need for acceptance of gays. In fact, the piece was a clear plea for a more accepting society, calling for tolerance in a world that seemed hell-bent on denying it. I was impressed with what seemed to be personal knowledge, yet the writer made no mention of specific friends or associates. A week after submitting this first draft of a freshman composition essay, and before I could return it with comments, Eric committed suicide. Utterly stunned, I tried to make sense of what had happened. To further compound the tragedy, because IUS is a commuter campus, Eric’s death took place away from the university. Either unaware or unable to react appropriately the Student Affairs Office did not notify me nor did anyone intervene to offer appropriate help for the class. But more than

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Utterly stunned, I tried to make sense of what had happened ... That semester changed my academic outlook and my academic life forever.

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To put it precisely: sexual orientation is now as clearly a component of my multicultural view as any other aspect.

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that, I could not avoid facing the terrible possibility that some kind of intervention on my part might somehow have made a difference for Eric. But what would that have been? Prior to this tragic event, youth suicide, for me, was an object of study, a political (and medical) issue, something not related to the real lives of real people. But I also knew of the work on teen suicide of researchers like Paul Gibson, Gary Remafedi, and others regarding the particular burden felt by many young males struggling with their sexuality. Being faced with seemingly crushing homophobia and not finding support or solace anywhere can lead to inevitable disaster. Here I was, a professional who took pride in knowing my students and in being accessible and in being able to run a supportive classroom, feeling horribly inadequate. That semester changed my academic outlook and my academic life forever. In the weeks that followed, the class moved on, but I could not give up the notion that I surely should have done something that would have helped Eric. Might it have been something as obvious (and sensible) as providing a more systematic framework for writing about a topic as challenging as sexuality? Might it even have been something as simple as conveying a view, a value, a notion that issues around sexual orientation can be dealt with positively? To have consciously done that, I would have had to have accepted the premise that sexual orientation is as important a consideration as gender, race, ethnic differences, or any other dimension of multiculturalism that might have been present and accounted for in that classroom. The sad fact of the matter remains: I was not yet, at that moment in time, ready. Classes where lively, meaningful discussions unfold are usually small in number. Given the work load of reading and responding to multiple drafts of writing, writing classes are especially limited. As a result, students and instructors get to know each other fairly well, and fairly early on. A great freedom to be honest and frank emerges, and discussions can become far-ranging. As writing assignments progress through drafts and class discussions, students may make claims and assertions about almost anything including matters involving race, gender, even physical appearance. Any good instructor becomes skilled at challenging underlying assumptions in claims that are illogical or that have embedded discriminatory beliefs. Prior to Eric’s class, I found myself readily challenging assumptions based on race, gender, social class, almost any characteristic of separation except sexual orientation. The reason I made that exception would clearly take us beyond the scope of this essay, but the consequences of such an exception, I have decided, lead to potentially disastrous results. To put it precisely: sexual orientation is now as clearly a component of my multicultural view as any other aspect.

In the years following my major multicultural transformation, I became extremely proactive. First, I volunteered to advise Lambda, the fledgling GLBT organization on campus. In 1996, several members that year wanted to know why no course existed at IUS on gay and lesbian issues. The query prompted a colleague in sociology and me to create the first-ever such course on our campus, a one-credit reading and discussion course called, quite simply, Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies. Populated by students of every stripe, the class provides instruction on how questions about sexuality and gender get asked and answered. We will teach it again next spring, and I consider the course among the most important work I do at IUS. In 2005, IUS, like most campuses, continues to struggle with issues around sexual orientation. Last year’s Lambda president was publicly critical about the lack of support from the university’s Office on Equity and Diversity for the group’s campus activities. As part of my proactive stance as a faculty member and advisor to the group, I was able to encourage direct intervention by the Chancellor. More support has been promised for next year. In addition to these activities, I am now invited to lead discussions about sexual orientation as related to curriculum development for Diversity Seminars or faculty development workshops. As with most folks, my personal path toward multicultural competence continues in surprising and powerful ways. However, I am still left with that unsettling question: what if, in 1990, I had been enlightened enough to accept sexual orientation as part of multiculturalism? Would my understanding have made any difference for Eric? William Sweigart, PhD Associate Professor of English School of Arts and Letters, Department of English

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I am still left with that unsettling question: what if . . . I had been enlightened enough to accept sexual orientation as part of multiculturalism? Would my understanding have made any difference for Eric?

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Sexual Orientation as One Component of Multiculturalism Selected References:

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“Definition.” National Association for Multicultural Education. February 1, 2003. http://www.nameorg.org/resolutions/definition.html Accessed June 14, 2005. Gibson, Paul. “U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Task Force on Youth Suicide Report,” 1989. See also Remafedi, Gary. Death by Denial: Studies of Gay and Lesbian Youth Suicide (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1995). Remafedi, G., Fanow, J.A., & Deisher, R.W. (1991). “Risk Factors for Attempted Suicide in Gay and Bisexual Youth,” Pediatrics. 87 (6), 869875. ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

Born Again Mexican I am a fifth generation Mexican-American. We did not speak Spanish at home; the Spanish I learned in high school was taught by a non-native speaking nun, and in college, by a very funny, native-speaking Spaniard. Both were good teachers, but neither, in the duration of 8 years of Spanish, gave me insight into my Mexican cultural roots and neither taught me the Spanish most commonly spoken in the United States. It seems odd to me that in one generation, so much could have been lost. My parents both spoke English as a second language. When they began school, unable to speak English, they were punished and ridiculed. They felt they would have done their seven children a disservice to have spoken Spanish at home. They rarely did so, and only when they did not want us to know what they were saying. We all (including my parents) now wish we’d learned both languages as kids. Oddly, I don’t recollect having any sense of, or pride in, being Mexican growing up. I grew up in Gary, Indiana, in a predominantly Black and Mexican neighborhood, and attended a Catholic grade school that was also predominantly Mexican and Black. I didn’t watch much television and really didn’t have much, if any, sense of otherness as a kid. My family and those in my neighborhood looked similar to me. I had a lot of Black and Mexican friends and at the time, and in my neighborhood and school and home, I don’t recollect much tension or any real discussion on race nor ethnicity. I am sure my folks had a sense of it, but it wasn’t something that hit my radar much. I went to a predominantly White high school in another town. The culture shock hit me like a tidal wave. It was here that I first had a sense of “other” and of being “less than.” We were the kids who got bussed in from Gary and it was pretty clear that we were the undesirables. There were more Blacks than Latinos (but still very few of any of us) at my school and my best friend was the same best friend I’d had in grade school. She was Black, and two of my closest male friends were also Black and one was Mexican. There was also one White male who went from our grade school to our high school but I didn’t hang out with him much. Upon starting high school, those were the only 5 people I knew. Because of my closest circle of friends, I didn’t know until sophomore year that the majority of kids at my school thought I was a light-skinned Black girl. I learned this by a boy in my class telling me that his friend, upon whom I had a crush, would never go out with a Black girl. My closest circle of friends was predominantly White by the time I graduated from high school, but I maintained close friendships with my grade school pals and other kids from Gary.

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I felt as though I had unfinished business in Mexico and that I was returning home for a better look at myself and my roots.

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I married and had kids young and didn’t go to college until my kids were three and four years old. As a mom, I attended a commuter college in northwest Indiana close to where I’d grown up. This campus had more Latinos than any other school in Indiana. I began working in student affairs there and as one of only two Latino administrators on campus; I quickly became the advisor to many of our Latino student organizations. We had seven Latino student organizations and I was the advisor to almost all of them, including our umbrella group, ALSO, the Alliance of Latino Student Organizations. Thanks to my students who were typically first or second-generation Mexicans or Puerto Ricans, I became more aware of my ethnic culture. Most of the students had a real sense of pride in their ethnicity. In one of my final graduate classes, I had a Sicilian professor for an intercultural communication class. She was very into her culture and very interested in how culture informed identity. Prior to my work with Latino students and this faculty member, the concept never crossed my mind. As an assignment in this course, we had to research our race or ethnicity and prepare a presentation. I learned so much from my research as well from my classmates. I was the only Mexican in the class, but I also had 2 Puerto Rican classmates. We all spoke of the importance of family in our lives and interestingly, we all brought family members (as visual aids?) to our presentations. None of the other students in the class did that. All three of us did so without really thinking of doing our presentations otherwise. This course and my work with Latino students began my interest in, understanding of, and appreciation for cultural and ethnic diversity. Fast forward nearly 20 years; I am currently the director of Campus & Community Life at IUPUI and have just completed the successful launch of a language and cultural immersion program in Mexico that I’ve been working to develop for the past couple of years. The experience has been personally and professionally defining and developmental for me. I have learned so much in this process. I have shared with people that the experience has allowed me to find parts of myself that I did not realize I were missing. As I arrived in Mexico this past May, I had a lump in my throat driving in from Mexico City, and that lump remained there the entire time while in Mexico; it is still there every time I think about my stay this year. Coming in, I felt as though I had unfinished business in Mexico and that I was returning home for a better look at myself and my roots. This 4th trip to Mexico in the past 2 years has definitely come to feel like a second home, and a place that keeps answers to questions that I need to continue to explore. Sometimes, when I watch particular events in the news or I’ll catch something on entertainment or reality television, I want to pinch

myself and ask where I am, what year it is and is what I’m watching “real.” Has American taste really become that shallow/bad? I often feel like I don’t belong or like I don’t understand what’s going on, or more accurately, why it’s going on. I often have a feeling of being in the wrong place or of living in the wrong time. I’m aware that I feel less that way when I’m in Mexico. Things just seem to make more sense. The language is sweeter, what matters most seems more real; the pace of time feels more sensible. I love the look and feel of things - rustic things, like the pottery, simple jewelry, the really rough pine furniture, and I love the vibrant colors of Mexico, and have them in my home here in Indianapolis. I think we’ve all had the experience of eating something that seems too rich. For me, lobster makes me feel a little queasy. Almost on a daily basis, I have a similar, but non-physical reaction like that to life here in the USA. It feels like things are “too rich” and that we’re gluttonous in too many ways. We don’t recycle like we should. We want too much, waste too much, throw away too much, eat too much, have too many pairs of shoes and choices of breakfast cereals. The abundance and stimulation we get from all angles can be overwhelming at times. It’s no wonder so many Americans suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome and depression, and have way too much “stuff ” in their homes. I keep hearing about a study that was done recently to measure happiness - to identify the happiest countries. That is, the researchers wanted to know where people felt most content in the world. The first country was in Africa, Nigeria, I think. Mexico was second and the next eight countries were all Spanish-speaking countries. In Mexico, people don’t measure happiness and success in the same way we do in the United States. It has nothing to do with salaries, possessions, or status. In Mexico, happiness and success is based upon quality of relationships and the importance of family. This past summer while in Mexico, my class learned the verb, andar, which means to walk around without any particular purpose. I was really fascinated by the word, and am aware that I’ve experienced people doing this in the town centers in Mexico, especially on Sundays. You see a lot of people at the Xocolo, often with their families, just enjoying the day and one another. By contrast, in the United States we also have a word for this. It’s called loitering, which is often noted on signs as not being permitted. Mexico is far from perfect in so many ways, yet my sense is that real things matter more and, despite the problems with governmental corruption, unemployment and poverty, people seem happier. The kids seem more like kids, and families are still families who are very in touch with one another; in general, people have reverence for one another -

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. . . I often feel like I don’t belong . . . I often have a feeling of being in the wrong place or of living in the wrong time. I’m aware that I feel less that way when I’m in Mexico.

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After my first trip there last year, I told my mom that I needed to write a story called “Born-Again Mexican.”

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even for strangers and foreigners. I worry about how Mexico will change, as so many of its citizens are forced by unemployment to travel to and work in the United States to provide for their families. Will this really improve life quality? During my most recent trip to Mexico, I didn’t sleep well. I felt tired and sleepy a lot of the time. For me, being in Mexico demands a lot of reflection and coming to terms with internalized oppression and pride. After my first trip there last year, I told my mom that I needed to write a story called “Born-Again Mexican.” Again, that sense of finding pieces I was unaware were missing. Despite wanting to return for service work this summer at LaLagunilla (very “poor” in social economic measures, but rich on the “relationship and sense of community” meter) I did my service work in Xoxocotla. This community is about 40 minutes from Cuernavaca and is inhabited by indigenous people of Mexico who don’t appear to be very interested in opening to, nor exploring, “modern Mexico.” For the most part, Spanish is a second language to the people in Xoxocotla. Nahuatl is their first language. We visited this community last year, but were unable to do service work there because of transportation issues. This year, we worked in Xoxocotla at a very small grade school with over 50 children. Our primary goal was to teach basic English. We had to have an introduction to the community by someone from within. Our primary point of contact was a man named Gigio. Gigio is an engineer and supervisor at a peanut and snack packaging company in Xoxocotla. He cares deeply about his community, and wishes to be involved in improving the quality of life in Xoxocotla, while preserving the community’s strengths. We always had at least 6 IUPUI folks at this service site and for the first year, our work there was extremely positive. The school was very small, only 3 classrooms. During our final week, I was happy to see that construction had begun on 2 additional salons with three additional rooms in each. The kids there were beautiful. They were curious and interested in learning, despite extreme heat and lack of any moving air. The rooms did not have fans, let alone air conditioners, and there were no computers. Each afternoon, a herd of cattle would mosey down the road in front of the school. It was hot in Cuernavaca that summer, but I think it typically had to be close 100 degrees on the days we were in Xoxocotla. We drank all the water we brought with us before we finished our service session, and had to stop for more cold water before we got halfway down the road. The kids seemed relatively unfazed by the heat. We were melting. On the last day we went to do our service work, there were a lot of parents at the school. We had brought snacks for the kids that day to

have a little “fiesta” with them in all three of the rooms. After the kids finished their snacks, we went outside and the parents had put chairs against the building for us to sit on. They had put together a “school program” and we were the obvious guests of honor. They began by giving us homemade popcorn (not the microwave variety) to enjoy during the program. The kids spoke, sang, danced and played the flute. During the break between “acts,” the parents continued to give us gifts. It was so unexpected, and quite frankly, a bit overwhelming. They were so incredibly generous and intent on honoring us. Though I’d only known the kids for 2 weeks, I felt the same depth of emotion and pride as when I’d watched my own children in their school programs. Despite being advised against giving the kids school supplies, we did give them a pencil “box” with a few school supplies. Their lack of supplies sometimes hampered our work because they’d share pencils and erasers. The kids and parents appreciated the gifts. On our final day at this site, this “reserved and closed” community had certainly opened its doors and hearts to us, and asked us to return “muy pronto (quickly).” The parents also gave us their permission to take photos at the site. We’d obviously been accepted. I was pleased to see Gigio again, in attendance at the final celebration. He shared with me that Xoxocotla was the “real Mexico.” I told him that the kids were beautiful and that I’d really enjoyed working with them. He told me their beauty was “because their hearts were pure, unspoiled by the fast-paced world.” Those were both good explanations of the place and people of Xoxocotla. I learned a lot from the kids and parents of Xoxocotla, and they all inspired me to want to improve my Spanish so my level of connection with them will be stronger and deeper next year. Real Mexico - that statement really hits me when I think about it. I find learning more about the real Mexico informs me about many of the things in life that are important to me. I do love my time spent in Mexico and have begun researching how to retire there. A respected, native Mexican friend of mine tells me that those of us who did not grow up there romanticize Mexico. I know there is truth in this, and clearly see so many of Mexico’s needs for change and development. Nonetheless, I look forward to continuing to work on my Spanish and developing my understanding of Mexican culture, and in so doing, my understanding of myself. Michelle Verduzco, Director Campus &Community Life, IUPUI ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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diversity diversity

Part Three: Heart & Head

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Writings rooted in a personal and more formal presentation Pages Charles R. Barman Meaningful Model for Diverse Learners ...............................71-77 Jacqueline Blackwell Sharing Personal Perspective: Connecting Baby Boomers and Millennials ................................78-82 Carol Hostetter, PH.D Up the Down Staircase: Learning to Experience .....................................83-87 “Otherhood” Deborah Biss Keller Teaching as Transformation: An Evolving Art ...............................88-90 John A. Woodcock Multicultural Learning from Mis-takes .................................91-93

A Meaningful Model for Diverse Learners Introduction. My first few years of teaching were a time of experimentation and learning. I started using a didactic model of teaching, consisting of lecture followed by verification lab exercises. As I observed my students, it was clear that they were not engaged in the learning process. This provided the impetus to search for better teaching models. Through my graduate studies, membership to professional organizations, and teaching experiences which have involved diverse learners, I was introduced to alternative ways of viewing my role as a teacher and my students’ role as learner. Because it is difficult to change one’s methods of operation, I didn’t change my teaching practices overnight. Instead, this was a slow and gradual process, involving the testing of different ideas and strategies. In many ways, it was a painful process, because the more I gave students the responsibility for their own learning, the more it felt like I was losing my “teaching authority.” It took several years to feel comfortable with making the student the center of the learning experience. As I reflected on my role as a teacher, I searched for ways to maximize the classroom climate by including instructional strategies that take into account student diversity. To meet this goal, I believe it is important to view classroom diversity in broad terms, beyond the lines of race, culture, and gender, to include traditional versus non-traditional students. According to Irvine and York (1995), specific learning styles are not unique to a given cultural group. In other words, the issue is not one of identifying a specific learning strategy for a particular ethnic group or gender, but rather to select an instructional model that fits the needs of many different students. As a result, there are specific “big ideas” about learning that have formed my teaching philosophy and practice. For example, like John Dewey (1953), I believe students need to be actively involved in the learning process. Two ideas theorized by Jean Piaget (1952) that have had an important influence on my professional work were: (1) concrete learning experiences are the building blocks of abstract thought and (2) the process of altering one’s concept is the result of assimilating or accommodating new knowledge. In addition, Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model (Anderson & Adams, 1992) has influenced my classroom practice. This model includes four dimensions that progress in a clockwise direction. For example, the learner is first exposed to concrete experiences followed by the process of observing and reflecting. The learner then forms abstract concepts and generalizations, which gives rise to the application or testing of these concepts to new situations.

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Therefore, it seems reasonable that effective learning models should include ways to identify students’ “pre-concepts” and use strategies that will promote a re-examination of their ideas.

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One other area of educational research has played a major role in framing my ideas about teaching. Studies conducted by science educators have shown that students come to class with well-developed ideas they have personally constructed about the natural world (Novak, 1983; 1987; 1993). Often these ideas are incomplete and include aspects that are not related to the current scientific understanding. I recognize the importance of identifying these misconceptions as part of the learning process to facilitate conceptual change. Therefore, it seems reasonable that effective learning models should include ways to identify students’ “pre-concepts” and use strategies that will promote a reexamination of their ideas. Identifying a Teaching Model. Because of the beliefs I hold about teaching and learning, my professional career has centered on identifying a teaching model that is consistent with the theories of Dewey and Piaget, and one that incorporates other learning models and specific educational research. As a result, I have adopted an instructional model, known as the learning cycle (table 1). This model originated in the 1960’s, but has gone through several modifications as new information about student learning has been reported (Barman, 1990). Table 1. Components of the Learning Cycle. Phase I - Engagement - In this phase, strategies are used to help students reveal their pre-concepts and misconceptions. It is important not to be judgmental of the students’ ideas. All reasonable student responses should be accepted. Phase II - Investigation -The students are presented with a problem or a task that is open-ended enough to encourage students to pursue a range of strategies, yet specific enough to provide some direction. The activities used in this phase provide a basis for students to question their current ideas relative to the lesson’s topic and form a framework for developing new concepts and related vocabulary pertinent to the lesson topic. Phase III - Dialogue - The teacher engages the students in discussion about their findings and questions based on the investigation. They are encouraged to seek additional information in multiple ways and reflect on how this process has changed their prior knowledge.

Phase IV - Application - The students are presented with additional examples of the main concept of the lesson or they are challenged with a new task that can be solved with information obtained during the previous phases of the lesson. Ideally, one or more of the application experiences will have a direct relationship to the everyday lives of the students. Although evaluation can occur in any of the phases, the application activities provide an excellent means of performance-based assessment. Connecting the Learning Cycle to Multicultural Education. Because the learning cycle is a very flexible instructional model, I have found that it can also be an effective tool for students from culturally diverse backgrounds. As shown in table 1, this model follows a similar pattern to Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model in that it provides concrete experiences, opportunities for observations and reflections, and the application of specific concepts to new situations. According to Jarrett (1999), inquiry-based instruction, cooperative learning and formative assessment strategies play a key role in inclusive education. These strategies are easily incorporated into the learning cycle and they can create multiple opportunities for diverse learners to demonstrate their knowledge. For example, the active and self-directed nature of inquiry learning provides students with concrete experiences, increasing the meaningfulness of the information being learned while reducing language and literacy demands (Jarrett, 1997). Cooperative learning is considered a cornerstone of inclusive education because it can accommodate the varied abilities of students. (See Johnson, D.W., Johnson, E. and Holubec, P.R. 1984. Circles of Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development ) Winzer and Mazurek (1998) have found that cooperative learning is very effective for many Native American, African American, and Latino students. In addition, formative assessment, using a variety of strategies, such as journal writing, embedded assessment, performance assessment, and concept maps, give diverse learners multiple ways to demonstrate proficiency and provides meaningful feedback to teachers about student progress (Jarrett, 1999). As described in Table 1, the learning cycle focuses on student inquiry as part of the investigative and application phases. At this time, students can also engage in concrete experiences, including observation. The dialogue phase promotes reflection and applications to new situations take place in the application phase. In addition, the engagement, investigative, and application phases are ideal in promoting

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cooperative learning and formative assessment. To demonstrate how these strategies can be incorporated into a lesson, the following example of an introductory lesson on genetics and the use of the Punnett Square is shown in table 2. In this particular lesson, guided inquiry occurs in the investigative phase, reflection takes place in the dialogue phase and cooperative learning experiences occur in the investigative, dialogue, and application phases. In addition, students apply the Punnett Square to new situations in the application phase and formative assessment occurs in all four phases of the lesson through discussion and performance-based activities. Table 2. Sample Learning Cycle Lesson. The Use of the Punnett Square Engagement. Hold a penny up and ask: How many times do you think I will get heads if I toss this penny 10 times? Have your students do this to verify their predictions. Collectively record their results. Discuss the outcome. Then ask: If I toss two pennies, what are my chances of getting - two heads? - a head and a tails? - two tails? Have your students make predictions, carry out the investigation, and collectively record the results. Discuss the outcome. Investigation. Explain to the students that they should pretend the pennies represent a pair of alleles for the human trait of tongue rolling. Heads stand for the dominant tongue rolling gene (T) and tails stand for the recessive non tongue rolling gene (t). One coin represents the possible genes that could be contributed by the father and the other coin represents the possible genes that could be contributed by the mother. Have your students work with a partner. One student should toss the coin designated as the father’s gene contributions and the other should represent the mother’s contributions. Each student is to toss the coin 10 times and determine at each toss what genes a potential offspring would have received from the mother and father.

Before they begin, have them predict what their results would be and have them justify their predictions. Dialogue. Have the students work in groups of four to discuss the results of and questions about their “genetic investigation.” When they complete this discussion, explain that, in the previous activity, each parent was heterozygous for the tongue rolling trait, meaning that each parent had one dominant gene and one recessive gene to contribute to the sperm or egg. This means hypothetically, that at each fertilization, the genotype would be in a 1/4:2/4:1/4 ratio. Next, introduce the Punnett Square as another way to predict the possible genotypes of the parents’ offspring. Demonstrate how a monohybrid cross between two parents heterozygous for a dominant/recessive trait can predict the possible offspring. Application. Arrange the students in groups of four. Provide each group with several genetics problems dealing with monohybrid crosses involving human dominant/recessive traits, such as “tasting,” “cleft chin,” and “free ear lobes.” (Make sure you explain how each of the dominant traits are manifested in the phenotype.) Have each group use a Punnett Square to determine the possible genotypes each offspring could inherit during each fertilization. Have them share their results and explain how they used the Punnett Square to solve these problems. Summary. As indicated above, the learning cycle is an effective way to provide students with concrete experiences, opportunities for inquiry, reflection, and observation, and ways to apply their newly gained knowledge to new situations. Due to its flexibility, the learning cycle is also an effective mechanism to promote cooperative learning and formative assessment making it a useful instructional model for diverse learners. Listed below are a few things to think about if you decide to use this approach.

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. . . change your role from direct instruction to more of a facilitator. Any change in teaching strategy requires one to become more introspective and self-evaluative of his/her teaching.

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- Any change in teaching strategy requires one to become more introspective and self-evaluative of his/her teaching. The process of change takes time and does not occur with one or two lessons. - Students who are used to a more traditional mode of teaching may at first resist this instructional strategy. They also need time to make the transition to this approach. - A good way to start using this approach is to select topics that you feel comfortable teaching. This makes it easier to change your role from direct instruction to more of a facilitator. Charles R. Barman, Ed.D. Professor of Science & Environmental Education School of Education

A Meaningful Model for Diverse Learners References: Anderson, J. & Adams, M. 1992. Acknowledging the learning styles of diverse populations. In L. Border & N. Chism (Eds.) New directions for teaching and learning. No. 49. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publications. Barman, C. 1990. An expanded view of the learning cycle: new ideas about an effective teaching strategy. (Monograph #4). Washington, DC: Council for Elementary Science International. Dewey. J. 1953. How we think. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath Co. Irvine, J.J. & York, D.E. 1995. Learning styles and culturally diverse students: A literature review. In J.A. Banks & C.A. McGee Banks (Eds.) Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 484-497). New York: Macmillan. Jarrett, D. 1999. The inclusive classroom: Mathematics and science instruction for students with learning disabilities. ERIC Document – 433-647. Novak, J.D. (ed.) 1983. Proceedings of the first international seminar on Misconceptions and educational strategies in science and mathematics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Novak, J.D. (ed.) 1987. Proceedings of the second international seminar on Misconceptions and educational strategies in science and mathematics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Novak, J.D. (ed.) 1993. Proceedings of the third international seminar on Misconceptions and educational strategies in science and mathematics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Piaget, J. 1952. The origins of intelligence in the child. NY: International Universities Press. Winzer, M.A. & Mazured, K. 1998. Special education in multicultural contexts. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill. ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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Sharing Personal Perspective: Connecting Baby Boomers and Millennials

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“I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.” (Piper, 1930) I like you because when I tell you something special you will know it’s special and you remember it a long time. You say remember when you told me something special and both of us remember. (Stoddard Warburg, 1965) Regardless of school level (P-16), all students bring many connections with them to the school settings. These special connections include cultures, families, friends, neighbors, and communities. From my early experiences as a student in K-16 classes, my teachers often were from generations older than my parents and from different cultures. However, these teachers possessed special skills in attentively listening to and interacting with all their students in ways to create inclusive classrooms that welcomed all students and responded to the cultures, skills, dispositions, and talents. Reflecting upon my experiences as a kindergarten - grade16 student, former pre-kindergarten- primary classroom teacher, and college professor, I have been concerned about whether “all” school levels ask students to get ready for school, rather than to have the schools ready for the students. Therefore, this paper will (1) raise questions regarding baby boomers and millennials as co-learners, (2) highlight ways to get ready for millennials as students, and (3) offer discoveries regarding intersecting journeys of baby boomers and millennials. Recently, I completed an intensive four-week professional development class (5.5 days plus 3 evenings per week) with individuals from varied cultures and four generations. Although this class offered an excellent curriculum, I kept thinking about the importance and impact of cultures, active engagement, teacher and student personality types (i.e., extroverts and introverts), and expectations of our collective experiences. As a baby boomer student, I was accustomed to the lecture approach to instruction, even though I do not use this approach in my teaching. However, sitting with my four generations of colleagues during the 22 days of instruction caused me to rethink my questions regarding baby boomers and millennials as co-learners. The following questions require that I remember that each millennial student and I bring a unique culture and personal history to add to and intersect with the planned and unplanned class curriculum:

1. If I were a student in our (my) class, would I feel comfortable sharing my stories with this instructor and the class? Do personal stories really have a place in creating connections between the instructor and the class? 2. Would “our” class create authentic connections between generations and cultures in terms of relevance to our individual and collective lives? 3. Would our class be intentional in responding to the various personality types and learning styles present in our class community? Next, let’s turn our attention to highlighting ways to get ready for millennials (1982- present) as college students. From my extended experiences with students enrolled in Kindergarten- grade 12 programs, in urban and suburban school settings, I believe we must first understand the special characteristics of the millennial students. This understanding will help create the learning environments that nurture and nourish these students. However, we must be aware of the diversity within this group in terms of ethnicity, gender, economics, culture, peers, and family involvement. Millennials represent the 24/ 7 culture that regularly engages in multi-tasking, expects split-second responses to all requests, are technology savvy, and exhibits impatience with slow service. Being a consumer means “my personal needs” must be met now or “I am entitled.” The millennial generation students have parents who are described as “helicopter parents” because of their tendency to hover over their children. They expect total involvement and participation in their daughter’s or son’s school, social, and extra curricular activities. The millennial students measure success in terms of being the best or at the top in all areas of their lives. These students lead stress-filled lives with regard to fulfilling their parents’ expectations of and dreams for them. Given the aforementioned descriptions and needs of millennial students, who represent a diverse group regardless of geographical location or cultural background, all instructors, who are 25 plus years older than their students, must be willing to follow a simple plan. This plan would or could require that we: 1. Acknowledge and remember that each millennial student is a person first. 2. Connect with our students in the present tense.

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These students lead stress-filled lives with regard to fulfilling their parents’ expectations of and dreams for them.

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...remember that baby boomers and millennials, although from different generations, can understand the importance of building and nurturing relationships.

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3. Take advantage of the keen interest in online communication for extending time with individual students and the entire class (i.e., e-mail, chats, etc.). 4. Engage our students in interactive activities (i.e., case studies, problem based learning, etc.). 5. Use the technological shrewdness of this group to increase understanding of and appreciation for diversity with our learning community. 6. Use the “sound byte” interest spans to create increased teachable moments. 7. Ask students to join you as partners in creating a course or curriculum that responds to their questions and interests. Following the outlined simple plan offers flexibility for all, increases success possibilities, and opens new learning opportunities. As a member of the baby boomer generation and a university professor teaching in the Undergraduate Teacher Education Program, I am keenly aware of the difference in my age and the age of the college students, who are members of the millennial generation. With excitement, this awareness has allowed me to uncover five insights into the journeys of baby boomers and millennials. These insights intersect to allow all to grow both personally and (pre)professionally. Understanding the varied experiences of baby boomers and millennials has set the stage for these discoveries. First, honor and accept each generation as special and unique, as well as diverse. Second, identify special service learning projects that utilize the talents of both groups and connect back to the mission of our university and the goals of the university course. Third, share oral and written stories that highlight millennial and baby boomer cultures, individual values, and histories, thus featuring special moments that connect us on non-academic levels. Fourth, create spaces for listening to one another in order to learn about the generations; acknowledging the differences while finding similarities that will unite us as a community of learners. Fifth and last, remember that baby boomers and millennials, although from different generations, can understand the importance of building and nurturing relationships. We must place ourselves with and beside one another. Our collective group can offer support, make connections, share time, and move our “mutual agenda”

forward. Connecting with the millennial generation has reaffirmed my belief that groups of individuals can create a bold tapestry that will make a difference for both groups if we are willing to use our lenses to see a different landscape. Jacqueline Blackwell, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Early Childhood/ Elementary Education School of Education Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

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Sharing Personal Perspective: Connecting Baby Boomers and Millennials Selected References:

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Piper, Watty (1930). The Little Engine That Could. New York: Platt and Munk. Warburg, Stoddard (1965). I Like You. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

Up the Down Staircase: Learning to Experience “Otherhood” Foundation. In earning my master’s in social work, I was exposed to a value system that celebrated diversity. However, there were two problems with the diversity education I received. One was that the diversity we discussed in my student years, 1975 through 1977, pertained only to racism and sexism. We did not discuss people outside the dominant culture in terms of their sexual orientation, mental and physical abilities, social class, religious backgrounds, or age, to name a few areas of marginalization. The other problem was that while we read books and articles explaining the experiences of people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, something seemed to be missing for me. The literature might have had information explaining different cultural styles, but there seemed to be no one right answer on how best to interact with people from the many diverse groups in our world. I thought I was wellprepared to relate to people from different backgrounds than my own, but once I was in the “real world,” it was not so easy. It became apparent that I had to open my mind, be sensitive and aware, and get into the world to experience people with whom I was working. I clearly had a lot to learn. When I started teaching in the late Seventies, a few students complained about the generalizations in textbooks – generalizations implying, for example, that “all Hispanic families had submissive mothers and machismo fathers.” Other students also pointed out that, while books were written about “the African American family,” there were no books on “the Caucasian family.” These complaints surprised me; I thought I was teaching the latest and best information. Yet what they were saying rang true. The generalizations seemed to be just another way to stereotype people. Also, students from the dominant group in terms of their race, class, and sexual orientation, often expressed a lack of any knowledge about their backgrounds and heritage. Often stating “I don’t have any background,” they seemed to have an invisible membership in an unknown group. What they were expressing, I realized, is the invisibility of privilege (Kimmel, 2000). Kimmel explains that as a middle class Caucasian male, it seems as though he is without race, class, and gender. It is as though he is the “default” mode, the standard issue human being. Only when students can really feel what it is like to be the “other,” the member of the marginalized group, can they recognize the unjust power structures in our society. I finally came to realize that understanding and appreciating diversity, and comprehending the structure of society, could not be taught from a textbook. Perhaps it had more to do with the awareness of one’s perspective?

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Experiential Exercise. Reaching for a way to connect with students’ deeply-held points of view, I developed an experiential exercise to lead students to a place of reflection, self-awareness and open-mindedness. Reminding them that the exercise was optional, I invited them to join by closing their eyes and reflecting on my words: Imagine that you are exactly who you are, but the world around you has changed. As you look around your campus, you see that the vast majority of students are African American. The majority of your professors are African American. When you look at your state government, the governor and lieutenant governor are African American. The majority of people in the statehouse are African American. Looking beyond your state, to Washington, D.C., you see that the president of the United States is African American, as is the vice president. The vast majority of people in the House of Representatives and in the Senate are African American. Of the nine Supreme Court justices, eight are African American. Coming back to your community, you decide to apply for a job, and the business owners and the people taking applications are almost all African American. You decide you need a loan, and the bank tellers and loan officers are African American. You need to rent an apartment, and the landlords you meet with are African American. You drive on the highway and realize you have started to speed – sirens flash, and the police officer who comes to your car is African American. You decide to fight the ticket, so you go to court and the judge is African American. You go grocery shopping, and almost all the employees are African American. If you are not African American, you have a hard time finding hair products for yourself – you might find them under a small section marked “ethnic.” And while you are looking for that section, you might feel that people are watching you closely in the store to see if you shoplift. Take a moment more and look around this world, and just notice what you feel, what you are aware of. Then return your attention to our classroom For the most part, students have important “a-ha” moments from this exercise. In discussing the exercise, Caucasian students often express the uncomfortable feeling of being conspicuous, or standing out. At the same time, they might express feeling somewhat invisible, that people are not really seeing them for who they are. Sometimes Caucasian students

like the feeling, or can relate it to a time when they visited a location when they were in the minority. African American students also express a variety of reactions, usually feeling safe and comfortable, or wondering what life would be like with so much power. Sometimes they feel frustrated with the reminder of how the odds are stacked against them, or empowered by considering the challenges they have overcome in life. Students from other diverse backgrounds also express a range of feelings. Occasionally, students from any background will say, “I just couldn’t get into it,” which is understandable. Being able to let yourself be carried away into a guided imagery, especially in a public setting, can be an emotional risk. After discussing the exercise, I ask students to do it again on their own sometime, but next time imagining that the dominant group in the world is women, or gay men and lesbian women. At this point students seem ready to take in an explanation of the Dual Perspective concept. Dr. Leon Chestang (1972) created this concept to explain the two worlds experienced by a person born outside of society’s dominant group. He describes life for a typical African American boy: his family comprises the nurturing world, the world where he is known as a unique individual and is loved for who he is. This world might contain not just his family but his neighborhood, including local stores, parks, and their church. Eventually, however, he must venture outside the nurturing world, into the sustaining world – the world in which he will have to be educated, earn a living, and deal with the economic and political realities of life. In the sustaining world, he is more likely to be seen as “an African American male,” not as a unique individual. Therefore, he must develop two views of reality, that is, a dual perspective. He must constantly evaluate disappointments in life, such as not being selected for a job, as to whether they are based on his qualifications or based on racism from the dominant culture. Students seem to understand Chestang’s dual perspective concept fairly well. The next step is to ask them to apply the same concept to someone who is gay or lesbian. If the boy in our example is gay, chances are he is born into a world that does not understand and accept him. He must then create his own nurturing world as he grows up – not an easy feat in a heterosexist society. Similarly, I invite students to apply this approach to a girl born into a family that is not female-affirming. Students can also consider social class as another area in which there are profound cultural differences, the discussion of which is almost taboo in our society. I also ask students to consider the perspectives of a child who has a disability, whether the disability is present at birth or acquired through a life-changing event. Recognizing that life is viewed differently by people in marginalized groups is an important learning experience for students. Once they have this foundation, they are more able to understand our culture as one that seeks to maintain the dominant

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I am like the fish which does not know that it is wet, because it has never known what it is like to be dry. Being open to new learning and growth is a challenge that I share with my students as we struggle to understand and live in our social world.

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group’s power by objectifying the “other.” We can then discuss concepts from standpoint epistemology (Harding, 1991) and Lorde’s idea that there is no hierarchy of oppression (1984). Future Growth. While I have learned a great deal from my students and other experiences in life, I have no doubt that I still have much to learn. I am like the fish which does not know that it is wet, because it has never known what it is like to be dry. Being open to new learning and growth is a challenge that I share with my students as we struggle to understand and live in our social world. Carol Hostetter, PhD Assistant Professor of Social Work Indiana University

Up the Down Staircase: Learning to Experience “Otherhood” References: Chestang, L. (1972). Character development in a hostile environment. Occasional Paper No. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago. Harding, S. (1991). Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kimmel, M. (1996). Manhood in America: A Cultural History. London: Free Press. From: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/djglp/articles/ gen4p181.htm#F12 Lorde, A. (1984). Sister Outsider. Freedom, CA: Crossing. ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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Teaching as Transformation: An Evolving Art

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My personal and professional growth toward cultural competence has been informed primarily through my teaching practice itself. Key to this growth process was my experience teaching multicultural education to pre-service teachers for two years as a graduate student. My teaching assignment increased my awareness of the multicultural issues that are part of our society, as well as the issues that instructors must grapple with in the classroom when addressing diversity directly. I came to believe and understand that effectively engaging students in issues of diversity, many of which they have never had to confront, is an art. Integral to this endeavor and teaching any course with cultural competence is bringing my students’ own lived experiences into the curriculum. The “art” for me is being able to facilitate discourse in the classroom about the complexities of diversity, as well as other issues, while being able to address student resistance to multicultural and other issues in a way that doesn’t silence my students. Multicultural education is, after all, inclusion of everyone’s cultures and voices. Talking to my education students about how they need to negotiate knowledge and the curriculum with their own students, then denying my students the opportunity to negotiate knowledge with me in my classroom is hypocritical and counterproductive to the process of transformative education. It has taken much reflective practice on my part, and recognition that effective teaching is a lifelong evolution of sorts, for me to become comfortable dealing with student resistance to multicultural issues - in particular, those concerning gender, race, class, and sexual orientation. Early on in my experience as an instructor of multicultural education, I sometimes allowed my passion for the cause of demarginalizing the oppressed to negate the inclusion of my students’ voices. As I reflected on this displaced irony, I came to realize that in order to expect my students to become truly engaged in the dialogue and “hear” the voices of the oppressed, I had to alter my tactic such that I could “hear” my students’ voices. A significant element of this transition for me was acknowledging the fact that the students, like the rest of us, have to begin this journey toward cultural competence somewhere, and many of them had barely, if at all, begun. Another key component of my own personal growth in this area was learning to practice mindfulness in my communication with my students. Mindfulness, as I refer to it here, derives from the Eastern philosophical tradition and involves being present in the moment, a heightened awareness. Although I had begun mindfulness training several years prior to teaching multicultural education, I realized that I wasn’t engaging in mindfulness practice much

of the time when I was teaching complex issues of diversity in the classroom. Mindful teaching affords me, and consequently my students, a more communicative environment in which to share experiences. This “transformation” of my teaching tactics also becomes particularly significant when engaging my first-year students in dialogue and reflection about their service learning experiences. Students in F200, Examining the Self as Teacher, complete a predetermined number of hours in an urban school or community center, and for many this is a life-changing experience, as most of them are not from the urban. As the students develop a better understanding of diversity issues through their service learning experiences, it is imperative that they be able to express their concerns and fears, as well as their positive feelings about these experiences. In order for them to process their own journeys toward cultural competence, they need to be able to dialogue freely, and the classroom, as well as their reflection journals, provides them a forum in which to do this. Part of their process involves comparing and contrasting their own lived experiences with those of the children with whom they work at the service learning sites. This component becomes very important as my students grow to realize that in spite of the cultural, racial, and class differences, they and the children have commonalities as human beings. This helps to foster empathy for others, and debunk some of the myths that surround urban individuals. Addressing empathy is one of the ways I bring my students’ own cultural, lived experiences into the classroom. Everyone can relate to being hurt in some way, and most have been treated unfairly at some point. An environment that welcomes their voices furthers the learning for us all; as their experiences become a part of the curriculum, they become intrinsically motivated, and they become more open to hear and learn from others. In order to convey to my students that their lived experiences are important in the classroom, I emphasize that the learning process is reciprocal; I learn from them as they learn from me - we all learn from each other. I talk with my students at the outset about the importance of bringing their lived experiences into the classroom, but I note the dangers of essentializing; what is one individual’s experience in a particular context will not necessarily be the same as another person’s in a similar context. In this way, students are more apt to appreciate the complexities of diversity through their own lives. One of the situations in which mindful teaching has helped me “hear” more fully my students’ voices is the contradiction that many of my seniors and graduate students experience in their student teaching and their post-degree teaching jobs respectively. On the one hand, they learn in their college courses that effective teaching involves drawing upon students’ cultural backgrounds and lived experiences and implementing active, hands-on learning opportunities that are relevant to their students’

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I emphasize that the learning process is reciprocal; I learn from them as they learn from me—we all learn from each other.

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lives. On the other hand, my students are faced with the pressure and demands of state and federal mandates that hold them accountable for their students’ standardized test scores. The latter restricts teachers’ autonomy to engage their students in the methodologies reflected in the former to the extent to which they believe is necessary. This situation often results in objections raised by my students to the progressive methodologies due to their incongruence with the reality of their teaching experiences. While the limitations my students face in their own classrooms are difficult for me to hear, especially when most of our curriculum addresses progressive and critical pedagogy, I must listen attentively and “hear” their voices and empathize with them, as otherwise I would be practicing methodology antithetical to that which I espouse. We therefore discuss both how they can attempt to meet mandates through progressive means to the extent possible, and how they might work for change in the mandates themselves that they believe to be unfair, impractical, and ill-informed. My experiences teaching both about and for cultural competency have themselves been transformative. The “art” of raising consciousness in my students such that they don’t shut down in the face of issues with which they might not be comfortable is an evolving one. I also must not “shut down”; that is, I must keep discourse going, and in order to do this, I must invite my students’ lived experiences into the curriculum. Mindfulness practice helps me in this endeavor. This “art” to which I refer, however, is ongoing, evolving; I believe as teachers we never cease to be taken by surprise at times by students in the classroom, and it is how we address these challenges that determines whether our personal and professional growth becomes stifled or enhanced. To be mindful is to take each moment as it comes and be fully present; it is the essence of engagement. Deborah Biss Keller, Ph.D. Visiting Assistant Professor School of Education, IUPUI ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

Multicultural Learning from Mis-takes When I began my university teaching career, I did so, like many in the late 1960s, with no training and no respectable pedagogy. It was a time of cultural change, and my teaching reflected that to a degree, but I never felt I knew how to teach the subject of racial discrimination, for instance, except by looking respectfully at books like Invisible Man, Soul on Ice, or Black Boy. These extraordinary books worked well in many ways, but it wasn’t until I began teaching autobiography and creative nonfiction workshops that I thought I’d found an approach that successfully took classes of mainly white students to a deeper understanding of racial discrimination. One day, in the middle of the semester, I was teaching a course in autobiography with a section on difficult childhoods, and I was looking for a way to make as clear and as palpable as possible the pain involved when a child’s personal identity is denied or strongly distorted by others. Since my authors represented various kinds of discrimination, I was looking for an approach that would cover race and other negative social or interpersonal responses to difference, when suddenly the obvious occurred to me: everyone has been taken wrongly at some time and suffered from it. Perhaps if students looked at their own experience in this light, it would open doors to understanding the experience of our authors. So I designed a new writing assignment in which I asked my students to think of a time when a person or an institution had got them wrong, mis-taken them in some negative way that mattered, and to tell the story of that from the inside, focusing on what it was like to be mis-taken. The assignment went this way: Much of the energy in our first three autobiographies (Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl; Richard Wright, Black Boy; Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club) comes from the tension between the writers’ self-images and the views others had of them. This assignment asks you to think of a time in your life when some person or institution “got you wrong” in some way that mattered to you, and then to briefly tell the story of that event--the background, the mis-taking, and the consequences of it--in 200-300 words. The event you choose need not be earth-shaking in any objective way, just important to you at the time. Then, in a separate paragraph of about 100 words, say in what way one of our autobiographers - Frank, Wright, or Karr - seems closer to that experience than the others. The assignment was short, but the results were very gratifying. It turned out, as I had suspected, that my students all had been mis-taken in some way that mattered. They worked hard on the assignment, and the

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This assignment worked, I think, for two reasons ... its subject was an important part of everyone’s experience; ... the assignment’s process involved students in writing about their own lives, which meant that more of them than usual had a stake in getting things right.

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results were engaged and concrete. A number of students commented that the assignment gave them a new respect for, and insight into, the dynamics of social difference. This assignment worked, I think, for two reasons. First, its subject was an important part of everyone’s experience, so it was easy for students to find a connection to the public issue of discrimination in their own lives, and, just as important, they felt they had the authority to tell this story. Second, the assignment’s process involved students in writing about their own lives, which meant that more of them than usual had a stake in getting things right. And in that labor they had a relatively clear criterion - truth to an experience they knew from the inside - against which they could test what they had written, and judge when it was good enough that they were finished. Because of these things, I believe energy, authority, and clear standards - the written results had little of the lazy abstractness or lack of intellectual drive that can plague undergraduate work. My students took to the assignment and worked hard to make it right. Writing in a focused way about their own experiences brings these same particular energies and concrete criteria to creative nonfiction workshops. After having taught both fiction and nonfiction workshops for many years, I came to believe that my students naturally learned more in nonfiction workshops, for the same reasons: Students care about the assignments in a primary way, and they also have a built-in feedback from the criterion that tells them they need to keep at it, until it tells them they are done. When students write about their own lives in a focused way, they do a great deal more than write down things that happened or that they thought. They learn, and they can learn a great deal because at the heart of their subject is an experience that is real to them. They may not understand it completely, but working toward a better understanding by crafting the story of it is an exercise that is disciplined at every point. There are very few courses in which there is not a good place for a short nonfiction assignment that would involve exploration of a courserelated idea through self-reflection and development, with the insight and energy that come from the personal stake and the authoritative stance of the autobiographical writer. I know that many instructors are reluctant to incorporate autobiographical writing into their courses because they are concerned that the subjectivity of the assignment would lead to lazy or irrelevant work, or that it might generate an intimacy that would be inappropriate or embarrassing in the classroom setting. These are good things to be concerned about - and autobiographical writing is very different from

expository writing we usually assign. However, instructors can avoid these problems by specifying the assignment’s range and its tone. The writing will naturally be about personal experience, but the intimacies can be contained or focused by the assignment’s briefness and by its reference to external documents and issues. Thus framed, the intimacy that emerges will tend to be more intellectual than personal. And certainly the development of an intimate relation to one’s intellect is one of the finer goals of higher education. John A. Woodcock Associate Professor of English (ret.) Indiana University-Bloomington ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected])

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Afterword

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We have in common a long and winding thread – a common source, a kind of “Lucy”; oldest skeletal remains, she whispers our shared beginnings A thread that weaves a tapestry in all its varied beauty that we can be as a people. We breathe the same air are reliant upon the same water experience a “life giving” energy, We have probably all felt some level of happiness and sadness, We are permeable beings, though we hide from the truth of our interconnectedness, at root we are all one, in our “better natures” we are joined, We must say “yes” - to our shared humanity; creating hope for the future, where all is possible, learning is possible, “success leaves clues.” Marla Zimmerman, MA, LCSW, LMFT Copyright 8/2005

Note About the Editor

Marla H. Zimmerman, MA, LCSW, LMFT, has worked in the fields of higher education, mental health and social services, organizational consulting and community building for over 30 years. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She is a trained mediator and diversity trainer. Ms. Zimmerman coordinates students’ experiences and provides training in the areas of service learning and multiculturalism. She also consults in the areas of student success, student satisfaction, customer service, program development, communication, stress reduction, conflict resolution, strategic planning, problem solving and troubleshooting. Ms. Zimmerman is an Adjunct Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Student Assessment and Evaluation at Indiana University School of Nursing on the IUPUI Medical Campus in Indianapolis. ©2006 Trustees of Indiana University For information about this work, please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI ([email protected]) ISBN 0-9776899-0-5

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