Reflection

On Being Vulnerable

I am resistant to vulnerability.

Allowing myself to be vulnerable, allows myself to be hurt…to be criticized. I am not against a healthy dose of constructive criticism, but I am very aware of who I am as a person and the strides I have taken to get here. 

I am independent. To a fault, honestly. Allowing myself to be open and to not be the expert is shaky ground for me. I feel like I’m tumbling down a hill, grasping at weeds to keep myself from getting hurt. I don’t like asking for help. I don’t like acknowledging my weakness in areas where I feel like I should be the expert. I have spent a lot of time working on this aspect of my personality. I know that I can’t be the expert on someone else’s lived experience. I can only share what I have learned from others who have lived that life. I will always advocate for people sharing their own lived experiences. They are the experts on their own lives. However, as a white educator in a predominantly white system, I sometimes need to step up and speak out. In doing so, it is only ethical that I acknowledge my own limitations.

Being involved in the MIT Cadre has meant being vulnerable and open in ways that I did not expect when I signed up. I knew we would be talking about important topics like culturally relevant teaching and making sure all students were respected and valued and given access to materials. These are topics which I have advocated for since I started pursuing my Master’s Degree in 2014. 

I don’t remember when I first started noticing race. That tracks with what I have studied in Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. Tatum’s explanation of self-discovery of race aligns with my perspective as a member of the majority. I grew up a white kid in a white neighborhood in a predominantly white town. I grew up surrounded by racism. I recall my parents talking about Native Americans in pejorative terms. I recall them commenting on things like “it must be payday” by the number of Native Americans at Walmart or about “drunk Indians” when we drove downtown. I can remember thinking “I don’t need this IEFA stuff at school, I know everything about Indians”--insert eye roll here (I was a white teenage girl in the early 2000s…I rolled my eyes a lot). I had to take a course on Native Americans for my degree at the University of Montana. I still thought I knew everything. Tragically, my uncle also passed away while I was taking the course over the short January intersession, so I also missed classes and assignments during that course for personal reasons. 

Ultimately, two things factored into my real awareness of race and culture which has subsequently led me down this path to being in the Cadre. First was my move to Boston, MA for graduate school. Walking around a Target by my new house was the first time in my life I was visibly in a racial minority. Everyone around me was a person of color–primarily Hispanic or Latino. For one minute I had the feeling of what it was like to be different from everyone around me in a visible, immutable way. I cannot hide or change the color of my skin to be a different race. This happened during the same time as the second factor: the murder of Trayvon Martin. I was shocked at how many people I knew didn’t see this as an act of racism. Trayvon had clearly been targeted as a Black male teenager. The murder of Black Americans has continued. As I moved back to my home state, I was determined to do better than what I was raised with. I cannot stand by and listen to my family make racist statements as an adult. I know better now. I have also learned skills that have helped me address these comments. The Cadre has helped with both identifying and responding to racist statements. I am able to point out cultural differences because of conversations shared in the vulnerable space of the Cadre. When coworkers complain about absenteeism, I am able to bring up cultural differences. I don’t always succeed at interceding in conversations. It’s a part of ongoing work. I look forward to the next two years of Cadre work that will include having difficult conversations with both students and faculty about cultural differences and how we can support all students.

I struggle to share with students about myself. The activities we participated in during Cadre meetings will help me share with students and learn about students. I think about the activity which asked about our names and what we like to be called and the history of our names. That activity gave me time to think about how meaningful names are and how what people call me changes how I interact with them. The I Am From poem was one of my favorite pieces of writing and sharing we ended up doing. It gave me time to think about my own childhood. It also gave me an excellent example of how to scaffold for students. By removing nouns and leaving blanks, the structure of the poem is retained. It keeps the structural meaning and by replacing the nouns in the poem it’s given personal meaning by the student writing it. This was a clear and excellent example of scaffolding. 

Researching for my Teacher-Inquiry project made me a better educator. I am in the process of broadening my knowledge and appreciation of Indigenous literature. Regardless of which book I choose for my book group, I will be a better librarian because of this. I will be able to provide better reader’s advisory to students who might enjoy one of these books. The academic articles and books I read have given me knowledge and awareness of teaching styles. I have learned several different activities to include in lessons. I am excited to employ these strategies in not only my book club sessions but in other collaborative teaching opportunities. 

In looking back at the conversations and activities I participated in through the cadre, I firmly believe that I am a better educator because of them. If this is the result of one year, I am excited to see how the next two years unfold. As my research taught me, “The transformative work of fostering culturally responsive teaching doesn’t happen overnight, nor even in the course of one school year” (Jones 43). We are actively involved in transformative work, even though we might not see the widespread changes from it for many years to come.