Identity and Self Location- Becoming a Relatable Teacher

After reading the article, "Locating Yourself for Your Students",  I checked it off my to do list and honestly thought it would stop there. I figured I would only think about it again when it was time to write this blog. However, Friday evening at dinner I found myself turning to a fellow teacher and saying, "so I just read an article that suggested teachers who discuss their identity tend to have more successes teaching". My fellow teacher, said they weren't surprised, I followed up with saying, "well in the article the authors also suggested that whiteness is invisible". Our conversation continued forward and we went on to discuss how our students similar to, the students written about, probably appreciate it when teachers, like us, white and privileged, discuss the elephant in the room. 

This one sentence, "whiteness is often treated as invisible" (285) has struck a cord with me. I haven't necessarily thought about whiteness this way, but it makes perfect sense. On a typical day I don't have to stop what I am doing and discuss my identity, but my students on the other hand do. When thinking about this, I also can't help but make the connection to people that identify as straight and those that identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and or queer. Being straight is the "invisible" while everything else is different and must be "seen". I find this idea striking and very powerful. This pattern needs to change and one of the ways to break that pattern is in the classroom. 

The classroom is one of the strongest places to start breaking these patterns. It is where the students access the knowledge they need to proceed forward in life and if that learning environment is not safe and open, than students are less likely to learn.  From experience I really believe that earning trust, bye-in, and motivation from a students comes with listening and learning to what they have to teach you. And for me, as a white privileged women, I have a lot to learn from my students about identity. Within the first month of my teaching career, I was given that chance. 

My classroom was out of control, and in the mix of things, one of my students said, "yeah well miss you're white". This statement took me by surprise, and without even thinking, I quickly replayed, "I am, lets talk about that". The students then proceeded to tell me that I don't understand their lives and what they have go through daily. I was also informed that I am lucky and have it easy. I agreed with them, I don't know and I am lucky. However, I tried taking the conversation a step further by explaining to my students that I will do all that I can to learn from them and am here to listen with an open ear.   Parmar and Steinberg are correct, it is important to discuss one's identity as directly as possible in a school setting, in doing so, teachers have a better chance of breaking trends of dominance and instead starting trends of trust.  

To totally change gears, I would like to also take this time to discuss identity and the other macro-level factors that affect people's identity, especially immigrants. Most of my students are immigrants and are constantly developing and addressing their identity. In the article "Identities and Social Locations, Who am I? Who Are My People" (Chapter 2), identity is discussed through several lenses, however the lens that stuck out to me the most was the lens of macro level factors that affect immigrant identity. Just the other day in my class, one of my students who identifies as Dominican stated, " I wish I was Black." I honestly didn't think anything of this until I read this article. In the article it is suggested that, "immigrants are drawn into the racial landscape of this country... dominated by a Black/White polarization in which everyone is assumed to fit into one of these two groups" (55). After reading this statement, I immediately thought of my student! Here is a 15 year old that is trying to find a place in the world and locate his identity and he cant find a socially accepted group to acclaim to, and therefore wishes he was something else. I'm not exactly sure how to proceed forward with helping my student or even responding to his statement. But I know that I will do all that I can to learn about how he feels and support his emotions as he searchers for his identity. 

Identity is a very complex idea and as I read the article I couldn't help but think, "categories, categories, categories, humans love their categories. Categories provide structure, comfort, safety, clarity, and definition. We like categorizing everything into tidy neat boxes with the hopes of better understanding our world and surrounding. Yet, as we do this, we can actually end up handcuffing ourselves and limiting our ability to think out of the box and adjusting our already set categories. 

Since categorizing can provide clarity and definition, we tend to define people and their identities by categories they match. We also believe they will act according to our categories and therefore we already know them: "Indeed, on the basis of these categories along, others often think they know who we are and how we should behave" (50). I understand why humans like their categories, but I would like to challenge myself to be more aware of the categories I have created in my head for people. I also need to be aware that  categorizing for understanding and clarity can provide comfort and safety but at the same time can limit one's ability of truly understanding others identities. So I need to make the effort to step out of my comfort and not resort to comfort first. Humans are extremely varied and therefore not two humans are the same, and the limited world of categories cant keep up with humans and their ever evolving identities.