Jaymie Ni

As someone who also attended a magnet high school, I felt a lot of pressure and experienced many burnouts as a student. After reading Grace Kai Louie’s post, I very much resonated with her experience. When she mentioned how, as a child, she very much enjoyed learning and loved learning something new every day, I could see that learning was driven by passion and served a purpose for her. However, when she mentioned how labels like “gifted” and “accelerated” are used in our education system and how they can be problematic, it also made me reflect on my own experience. I remember when I was in high school, we had a so-called “honors grading system,” where classes were divided into enriched, honors, and sometimes even AP. Every student is pretty much put into a class-level, and once you are in a class level, it is very difficult for you to change it. I took many science classes with “enriched” grading level, and I always felt like I was “missing-out” in my education journey. I do understand that labels like these exist in our education system for a reason, and they can be beneficial to a certain point. On the other hand, I very much agree with Grace’s point about how it reinforces the competition between students, which can create a learning environment that is not uplifting. From my education experience in China, I feel that learning as an individual works differently than learning as a community. Learning would be more enjoyable when an individual feels supported by their peers. Having these labels in our education system defeats the purpose of helping and uplifting the education atmosphere. It creates barriers that reinforce power and privilege, which, again, can be very problematic.

When Grace shared her memory about how a teacher made them create a whole plan for their high school and how it would get them into their dream school, it led me to think about how learning is viewed in our current education system. Is learning just something we value academically? Or can learning happen outside of the academic setting? It also made me wonder whether or not the structure of the K-12 curriculum really facilitates the learning of each student. It seems that all effort leads to one goal: college. This creates a misperception and could develop standards that are not ideal for everyone. It limits the outcomes of learning and puts more pressure on people who might not choose college as an option for whatever reason. I am glad Grace was able to have a teacher that is inspirational. But at the same time, I know not all students will have a teacher who inspires them and encourages them that learning goes beyond so much more than just academics.

Building off of Grace’s representation, I am more certain that the teacher and the people who facilitate the learning of the students play a significant role in the learning process. I want to propose the question that, as future educators, how do we facilitate our students’ learning in diverse ways that cater to their needs and individualities? I think this is a fundamental idea to discuss and consider because of the nature of the learning. 

I have always believed that the way we exist is a form of storytelling. We learn our past from stories passed down from people before us, and the stories we tell now will become the future. Storytelling is a cycle of how humans develop and move forward; it is a never-ending process. In “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative,” Delgado discussed how storytelling is related to social issues like racial inequality. The author identified two groups regarding storytelling: the ingroup, which is the dominant group with power and privileges, and the outgroup, which are people of color who are suppressed, devalued, and abnormalized historically (2412).

As an immigrant cisgender woman of color who grew up in Louisiana, I experienced lots of racism that is passive. I often felt the story of “my people” was never heard, and my voice did not really matter. As Delgado discussed in the writing, although people of the outgroups have always told stories and used storytelling as an essential tool for survival and liberation (2436), the dominant group uses these stories to remind of its superior positionality (2412). When I was in school in Louisiana, we rarely studied any literature written by people of color. The perspective being passed down to us is very limited to the lens of “cisgender white men.” I remember my first quarter here at UW; I saw how every professor would do the land acknowledgment before they went over the syllabus. At that moment, I realized there were so many stories on this land that we call the United States of America. However, the stories of the people before us were never being heard. The struggles, the desperation, and the violence all seem to have just been hidden away all this time. To me, the nature of learning is to hear stories and understand the issues embedded in our society. It is to listen to stories from the ingroup and also tell my own stories as someone who is of people of color.

Delgado described storytelling as powerful. However, there is even more power in listening. The majority race should listen to stories to enrich their own reality (2439). Only through listening can more stories be shared, and new environments can be created. Listening is the first step to deconstructing racism, inequality, discrimination, and many other issues in our education system and society. Teaching is about being a good listener rather than taking ownership of the learning environment. Learners should feel comfortable to share their stories as part of their identities. Through mutual communication, we find how different we are as people and how similar we are because we are each diverse in our ways. It is through this enriched experience that we get to learn about the people and the world around us.

Building off of Delgado’s ideas about storytelling and how voices of people who are not the majority race need to be spoken and heard, I think the same concept and idea should also apply to other issues in our current society like sexism, gender discrimination, ableism, and many other more. Discriminations towards people who are not the majority need to be deconstructed, and just like race, it starts with telling the story and making sure those stories get to be heard. As educators, teaching and learning can only be justified when we keep justice and diversity at the core of our work.