Improving Practice

I would never do that to an adult, far less a child. Writing the biography paper and thinking about my parents and siblings roles within the educational system of the 1970's, in Portland, Oregon provided me with stronger convictions about my own tendencies, habits and proclivities as an instructor and classroom facilitator and assisted me in refining my values regarding what constitutes appropriate behavior in a classroom. 

Being perceptive and observant enough to see the emotional reactions of other people in many of the classes I took and being able to reflect on many of my own experiences as a creative writing workshop coordinator helped me to see in just what ways adult learners can be guided or harmed while engaged in learning, by the classroom facilitator. Looking back on my own experiences in grammar school particularly, I could see the ways teachers harmed young students with mockery, favoritism and indifference. I learned from this class the importance of always remembering those experiences, to retain the acquired knowledge that there is never a time when one can engage in familiar jocularity at the expense of proper, respectful instruction in which the adult learner feels safe, validated and understood. 

ARTIFACT: 

Educational Biography Paper

Student: Ms. Theresa Kennedy 

Professor: Ramin Faramandpur 

October, 3rd, 2012 

ELP 551 

My Journey into Awareness; what higher education has given me 

Introduction: My education was always an important preoccupation for me. Namely, because all through grammar school, I was not as good a student as I could have been. I had been told by several grammar school teachers that I could be a “straight A student, Theresa, if only you'd apply yourself.” I coasted through grammar school, getting B's and C's and doing well enough but I never really tried that hard, it seemed easy. When we had to read or write in class activities, I was facile and able. It was never a challenge to read long paragraphs in class and I become known as one of the "good readers." Spelling I enjoyed and I did well. I rarely studied, but perhaps only for a few minutes before the test. With math, I was lost and generally tried to avoid being a focus of attention during math lessons. This under achieving attitude followed me into high school, but whereas I had earned B's and C's in grade school, I earned C's and D's in high school. This was due to a lot of depression and a lack of familial support during high school. A complete lack of parental support and no mentors to speak of created a feeling of complete social isolation. It was only when I went back to school, to higher education, in 2001, when I was 35, that I really began to earn the A's and B's that I'd been told I could earn, as a grammar school student. It was only when I went back to school, as an adult, that I truly found myself. 

1.) Educational Background of Parents and siblings: Both my parents valued education, as a force of self improvement. They always encouraged their nine children to do well academically, but were never supportive, in terms of helping us with homework and being responsible about turning in our work. This created a sense of confusion in many of us. We were encouraged to speak properly, to use proper grammar but neither parent was that interested in making certain we turned in our work or got good marks. This had more to do with the fact that there were nine of us, and only two of them and they were essentially exhausted.

2.) Shaping Educational Outcomes Due to Class and Gender: Class played a very distinct role in the lives of both my parents and the manner that they pursued any form of education. Mainly because both my parents grew up during the Great Depression and money was tight. There were 'rich people' and 'poor people' and though they were neither, they grew up with a distinct awareness of the power and influence of class. With my father, attending college was always something he wanted to do, to broaden his horizons and to make his father proud. But he had to go to war first. He enlisted in WW2, as a young, idealistic 22-year-old. He had heard “about what was going on in Germany and we felt we had a moral duty to try to save the Jewish people.” He was a 'radioman' and kept the radios running in jungles of New Guinea during many very dangerous operations in the army, where he was finally promoted to Staff Sgt, and later won a Bronze Star for meritorious achievement. Being that he was a man, a college education seemed very desirable to him, mainly as a way to make his father proud. His father, Edwin Griffin, had left school at the age of 14, running away from his severely abusive father, Nicolas Griffin, who had come to America from County Cork Ireland, born shortly after the end of the Great Hunger, in 1849. Nickolas Griffin had graduate from College in Ireland and also graduated from Law school, and though he fathered four sons, with his wife Mollie O'Donnell-Griffin, who was a school teacher and school administrator for many years, not one of them got past a grammar school education because they all left home, due to their father's abuse. He was a neurotic and competitive man who sabotaged the success of ALL his sons, who later became alcoholic, with the single exception of my grandfather, my father's father Edwin Griffin, also known as “Grandpa.” So, for my father, a college education was expected and he later attended Seattle University on the GI Bill. My mother was never able to pursue a college education, until she was in her late 30's and a recently divorced single woman. She attended PSU for almost two years, before finally leaving. Though she did not graduate, she always claimed that the experience was very positive and that she benefited a great deal, from having gone to college, even for so short a time.

3.) An Experience in Fifth Grade: Though grammar school was generally not a negative experience, as I was confident, playful and somewhat popular or well liked, I can recall a very negative experience that occurred in fifth grade that had a profound effect on how I would approach the topic of Math. The teacher, a man named Mr. Downer, (his real name) was showing us how to do a simple math problem. When I was shown the steps, I wold try to memorize them and then replicate them. However, he kept asking the students what the “Common Denominator” was and it was a term that had never really been explained to me. I just didn't get it. When he called on me, asking what the common denominator was, I could not tell him. He proceeded to admonish me and shame me in front of the entire class. As several of the other students were 'rich kids' it was hugely embarrassing for me. None of the other students snickered or laughed, because they all knew that THEY might be his next victim, and I was grateful for that, still it was very humiliating for me, to be made fun of by the teacher. It was extremely distressing to be ridiculed for not understanding this term. It effected my attitude toward Math for the rest of my life. It was something I avoided. It was something I told myself I was just “never good at.” Number one, because I had always had a hard time with math, with trying to understand all the endless rules and as my mind was not particularly rational or methodical, it was very, very hard for me to 'get' math or do well. When I returned to school, first PCC for 18 months full time and then later PSU, I waited until I had only one class left to take, and I made sure that that was my math requirement. It was a math 111 class. The lowest level math class to get your math requirement at PSU. I devoted that final term to only that one class and experienced 'math anxiety' on those occasions when I thought the instructor might call on me. She was a very wonderful instructor though and very patient and kind. She knew math had always been hard for me and never once called on me during the term. What I learned in that class was, that I could learn math. I went in hoping to get a flat C, but passed the class with a B+, which stunned me. Partly, I think she gave me the better grade because I turned in all my homework, which my high school aged daughter, Amelia often helped me with, and I agreed to do a project, an oral presentation on a math concept, instead of a final exam, which I know I probably would have failed. I chose to do a short paper and oral presentation on the concept of infinity, which strangely was something I could get my head around, as opposed to a difficult math problem for example. I came away from that experience a better person and was so thrilled with my unexpected grade and Sita's kindness to me, I wrote a letter of commendation for her and dropped it off with the math Dean. But it was the one experience with Mr. Downer that created that level of insecurity in the first place. The episode had lingering effects on my psyche that I could not have predicted or understood at the time. 

4.) Remembering the struggles of Higher Education: Returning to school, at the age of 35 was daunting, mainly because I already felt like a social has-been. I felt I was not worthy or valuable because of my age. I was not young anymore, in my mind at that time. But I did have an advantage over many of the other much younger students. My writing skills, language ability and spelling were much better than a good portion of the younger students. What I remember most about my experiences in higher education were the sometimes negative experiences I had with female instructors or professors. I had much more success with male instructors or professors, who seemed to have more interest in my academic success and more general kindness towards me on a general social level. This dynamic often confused and confounded me. I wondered why women instructors so often just didn't seem to like me. One experience I had while at PSU, that was profoundly positive was in meeting a particular advisers, Dan Fortmiller. I found him to be engaged, interested, supportive and reassuring to me, when I first visited his office in 2003. I went to see him thereafter several times and it was shortly before he left that department that he told me I had enough credits to get a second major in Arts and Letters and English, while still working on my main major of Criminology and Criminal Justice, with a minor in Writing. I was thrilled he was so alert and knowledgeable and happily did just as he instructed me to do. It was a good decision to take on that second major and minor and really boosted my self esteem. He was always so very supportive of me and it was a nice feeling knowing that someone at PSU actually cared whether I did well or not. 

5.) My Father's influence was the most important influence: Probably the most important role anyone played in my education was the desire by my father that I finally attend. He always encouraged me to write and to study. For years in fact, when I had not enrolled or gone back to school, he would give me reading lists. And always for gifts, at the holidays, I got books. When I finally did go back to school, and then in 2005, when I started getting published on local newspapers and literary reviews, he was very proud. I would send him copies of the things I'd had published and he would read them and then reread them. Once when my teen daughter was visiting him, as he lived with my younger sister, this being before he passed away in his sleep in February of 2008, she told me, as she had passed his room, he was reading a dog eared article I had written and then sent him. She had asked what he was doing and she said, “Oh, just reading one of your mother's articles.” It made me feel happy and grateful that he approved of my writing. Though we had a somewhat formal relationship that didn't really achieve any ease, until I was 21 and we started corresponding, he was always so encouraging of me when it came to my writing and also to the fact that I was in school and was soon to graduate. His influence I consider the most positive, with regard to my success and perseverance academically. Unfortunately, the response of two of my sisters was not at all positive to the fact that I'd returned to school. They became jealous, as neither of them had attended college for any length of time. They began to distance themselves from me, while I was at PCC. When I transferred to PSU, the estrangement really began. These were two sisters I thought I was close to and I thought loved me, as I loved them. I was wrong. They were unable to break free of the limiting family dynamics that our family had unwittingly imposed on me.

6.) Remembering the 1970's: Probably the most significant thing to happen during my younger school years was the situation in Iran, with the Iranian hostages. This was something that was televised a lot. It was something that my parents commented on a lot. What I remember now is how little Americans knew of the culture of the middle east, which I've learned since that time, is a wonderfully complex and rich culture. It seemed for well over a year, each night my mother and father would eagerly watch the news for details regarding the Iranian hostage crisis. I never really understood much of what was going on but I do remember it as being a very important focal point for both my parents and for people in general. The situation with the Iranian hostage crisis taught me for the first time, that Americans were not untouchable. That they were vulnerable and could be made powerless by events beyond their control. I can remember in some of my grammar school classes, not many but a couple, that the teachers made a point of discussing the realities of the hostage crisis. It was educational in the sense that we were informed of our nations general weakness and infallibility.

Conclusion: My educational experience was hardly ideal, nor was it traditional. I would have loved to have gone to college straight out of high school but I had not the faintest idea how to make that happen and at the time, both my parents were nearing retirement age and exhausted from raising nine children in a low-income environment. The 15 years or so, that I was a wife and mother, were good for many reasons. And one of those reasons was that in being a wife and mother, with only one child to raise, I had a great deal of time in which I could focus on reading books and maintaining my journals and my correspondence with my father and a few other friends and relatives. This prepared me for the rigors of academic life. At this point in my life, I can look back on the dynamics that shaped me and be totally at peace and content with my personal challenge. I would have liked things to be different but I think also that my path was predestined and chosen for me. It all happened as it should happen and the end result is that I'm a far wiser and more balanced person because of higher education.