The Cutlure of Me

Artifacts:

Defining one's own culture can prove difficult, especially when it is influenced by so many different cultures and consists of so many different ideas and ways of doing things. Cultures also seem to vary widely from person to person.  Below are some artifacts of my personal culture.

(Painting by Del Parson)

The most important part of my culture is my belief in Jesus Christ.  This believes leads me to value service and compassion.  As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have a lot of beliefs and cultural practices.  One of these is reading scriptures daily and another is attendant the temple.  We as a culture place value on families, speak in terms of eternity, and share a common bond of understanding certain concepts. Temples are a symbols of some of these beliefs as well as of marriage.  

This is my family after we traveled all night to see a play that my youngest siblings were in.  The value of family is a huge part of my culture, especially being there for special moments in members of my family's lives.  We value supporting each other and helping each other out when we can. "Family first" is a common saying among us.

I live in a very celebratory culture.  We love decorating and celebrating holidays, many of these being very christian based celebration.  There are also symbols and traditions involved in the celebration, such as candy canes, that might not be understood to an outsider.   Another example of a celebratory tradition, is to cook cinnamon rolls for the LDS General Conference.

(Picture from Wikipedia)

As a student at BYU, with parents who went there, I am part of a culture that rejects certain cultural concepts like beards as well as certain behaviors (such as drinking, smoking, or premarital sex).  Being at BYU also comes with norms and jokes that are hard to understand outside the culture.

Just as going to college is a commonly desired thing in my culture, I am part of a culture where reading is considered important to intelligence. The culture I'm in also values hard work and education.  It is accepted that, without education, a persons options for the future are limited.

Being an American citizen adds to my culture.  Being American is associated with a certain patriotism that has been throughout my life to the point where I would be angry when a fellow American preferred Germany over america.  We say the pledge in schools and ideas such as freedom and liberty are things that are valued.  Our identity as a nation is also valued in itself.

One thing often associated with America, is a love of food, particularly in large amounts.  This kind of pizza is a common food loved in America.  I feel like this picture demonstrates the concept of food in America well with a massive pizza, which was delicious even if not of great quality.

Politics is a very important part of my personal culture.  Individual voice and efficacy are highly valued in this culture as well as good research in knowing about issues in politics.  It is valuable to know what candidates, such as Rubio, stand for and judge their policies for myself. My voice in government is a privilege that I shouldn't take for granted.  Part of this means I should do my part to stand up for ideals that I agree with, even if only by supporting organizations that share values similar to my own (as shown in the second picture).

(Picture from Wikipedia)

As an "army brat"  I have a lot of influence from military culture in my life that I think includes and awareness of the issues around me, the value of fighting for freedom and for what's right, even when it's difficult.  Sometimes, army culture also comes with a mildly morbid sense of humor.  

Having a father in the army also allowed me to move around the United States.  My personal culture, therefore, is made up of several different aspects from around the country.  I've been told before that I sometimes have a very mixed accent and I also sometimes feel like I failed in all those moves to grasp certain informal norms while moving from culture to culture. Since my father was also a chaplain, I also have adopted bits of culture from different religions and love things like Christian rock and Thanksgiving services.

(Picture from Wikipedia)

I have a lot of southern family and we were stationed for long periods in the south.  South.  This South Carolina flag represents my love of the south and the influence of southern culture in my life.  I can speak like a southerner if I want to and I can tell you that real red velvet cake tastes nothing like chocolate.  The meaning behind the flag represents their part in the revolutionary war which ideals of overcoming oppression are a huge part of my personal culture.  Growing up in the south, I had a strong sense of justice and the need to rebel at times.

Wherever we were stationed, we tended to live in the suburbs. Friendly neighbors, nice senses, and green grass seem to be values in the suburbs.  There are also a common things done, like afternoon walks and sitting out on porches in the evening. There are certain rules, some written and some not, that everyone knows to follow in such neighborhoods.  Mowing your lawn is a must, as is picking up dog poop, and sometimes not parking in the wrong places.

(Pricture from ewebdesign)

(Pricture from Facebook)

I live in a world of technology and social media.  Even if I am not a part of many of these sites, I come across content from them regularly and they shape thinking and values.  Self-image, celebrity news, clever ideas, and many more things are valued in the social media culture.  There are also plenty of etiquette rules that are unwritten and vary from country to country.  This includes things like who can message who or what kind of posts are acceptable on what mediums.  Along with social media culture is meme culture where pictures are taken to make statements, amuse people, and poke fun at other bits of culture.  They provide an interesting commentary on society, but can be lost if they are memes that fit into a larger cultural context.

Selfies and self-image are huge parts of my culture.  Some see selfie's as vain while others see it as a convenient way to take pictures.  Associated with this, however, is also a pressure for people to look ideal according to the culture they live in.  For Americans, this usually means being thin and stylish.  There is also a pressure put on me by everyone to dress up and wear make up because that is what my culture expects, and I do it from time to time even though I prefer not to.

Reflection:

From looking at these artifacts, I can see how there are a lot of intricacies to the way I live my life or the way I have been taught to live it by my culture.  Culture also is defined by many things and is different for everyone. I learned that there are lots of expectations and rules associated with cultures.  The cultures that I'm a part of can encourage many great moral behaviors like service and standing up for what I believe in.  My religious culture of compassion will help me to develop unconditional love for my students.  However, other parts of culture can encourage self-centered views or can exclude others. My culture of literacy has given me the insight and knowledge that I need to teach English, but could also blind me to the needs of students who haven't grown up with this kind of culture.  If I'm not careful, this culture of knowledge could also lead me to feelings of superiority. Attending BYU may also have contributed to making me a bit sheltered, even though it is an important part of my qualifying to teach.   My suburban culture has given me lots of experiences with people of young ages so that I know more about working with them, however, there is a culture of cities that I might run into in my jobs as a teacher that I might not know how to handle. Being in the army and moving around has given me a wide range of experiences where I have been able to view many cultures and have a better understanding of them.  As a result of moving around so much though, I might not realize that some students don't have these informing experiences.  I have developed a lot of firm ideas in my culture that could cause me to be close minded.  My use of media will be helpful as I try to find ways to gain my students' interest in the subject matter, but I can't get to caught up in what happens on line so that I neglect more important tasks.  My lack of care in my image will help me be able to see students beyond their images and might help them feel relaxed, but I need to maintain a professional appearance so as to maintain their respect and my authority.

.  I see from this that part of what makes me different from some people and more like others is the culture I am a part of.  For students, being a part of a culture that is different form those around you can be extremely difficult.  There are so many intricacies that they might not understand and rules that they could easily break without knowing it.  Cultures of compassion and reaching out are helpful to outsiders by encouraging them, while other cultures can be cruel.  There has been a lot of social media culture rejection in the form of cyber bullying.

My culture can be helpful in that I have so wide of an influence that I am more aware than some people about a variety of cultures. It is dangerous though if I become too comfortable in my culture that I am not open minded to the cultures of my students.  We can easily get caught up in thinking we know best, especially when our culture values knowledge and coming to truth yourself. As a teacher, I need to sometimes put aside my own culture so that I can understand and teach to students of various cultures in ways that they understand best.  I will need to have an open mind and be willing to learn more about other cultures. 

Me as the "Other"

In order to get a small taste of what students of different background might feel coming into an new environment, I needed to go somewhere that was foreign to me.  I decided that a good place to start would be going to Tuesday Club Night in the Wilkinson Center.  I’d never been to a club night before.  I'd never even been to a non-language oriented club at all.  I was nervous about what it was like and how I would know what to do or where to go.  I couldn’t even find out online what clubs might be there, so I was walking in blind and clueless.  At the front, I was delighted to find that guys were giving out free BYU brownies!  I shyly took a brownie and asked them how things were run, although they seemed to think that it was self-explanatory and didn’t say much. 

I then saw the map got a good idea of where things were and started walking around to the different places.  The ones that seemed most join-able were the dancing clubs.  I saw people country dancing, but it looked pretty normal and there were lots of people there.  It wasn't something super foreign to me. Then, off to the side, I discovered the Hip Hop club.  I know nothing about hip hop and am very uncoordinated.  I rightly guessed that this would be a good place to be the "other."  I took off my coat and kind of just stood in the crowd with the other people of the room.  I felt suddenly terrified.  I had no idea how this club functioned or what to do.   I was sure that I was going to stand out like a sore thumb and look really stupid.  I was also late and had a lot of questions. Were people supposed to sign up for clubs?  Was I supposed come with someone or come prepared?  Did the other people already know what we were doing?  Did I miss anything?    Then, to my further mortification, the person directing the activity reminded everyone that they were supposed to have a partner.  I panicked and decided I would just dance off to the side and hope no one would notice me.  However, someone did notice me and asked to be my partner.  He was super nice and said he’d never danced like this with two people before.  He also could definitely move his feet though, whereas I could not.  As we started learning the steps, I noticed that most people in the room were in comfortable exercise clothing and light shoes while I was still wearing my polo, jeans, and heavy tennis shoes that I'd worn to school.   It made dancing even harder that it might have been - not only because of restricted movement, but also because I was much more conscious of how I appeared (focusing on that instead of performance some of the time). 

Eventually, I started to get it down, sort of. When the fear faded, I started to get excited about doing something new and learning how to move my body more freely.  I was able to at least fake it pretty well - as long as I could see the lead couple, but when they were out of view I got completely lost.  At these moments, I was no longer scared, but on the boarder of past caring.  By the end I was putting a lot less effort into it, feeling a little hopeless. We never mastered the dance.  I’d gone through stages of fear, excitement at a new opportunity, and a sense of futility as I couldn’t seem to get the steps right no matter what.  I felt a little bad for my partner, but he was so nice about it and we had fun.  He let me get a picture of us at the end of it.

The dance involved a lot of foot-work and fast movement.  I could easily imagine that people near me were judging me when I got to close the their dancing space. I also was always worried when my partner was too far away from me that it was my fault. I was worried he'd be annoyed. Here's a sample of the other dancers doing things with their bodies that I couldn't figure out:

(I took these pictures and the video myself, but more professional ones should be available on the BYU Hip Hop Facebook page soon.)

From this experience, I learned a little bit about what it means to be the "other."  I learned that it can be terrifying.  Students who come to a new school probably anticipate running into a lot of school culture that they know nothing about.  Those first few days are probably terrifying when they don't know what is expected of them. I think teachers can help by explicitly explaining some things to classes.  I think it's also important to a student's success that they have a positive attitude.  The hip hop experience would only have been worse if I hadn't come in actually willing to try something new.   I hope to learn what I can do to help students have good attitudes about new experiences.  I also learned that there really can be something exciting and valuable from being in strange surroundings.  It forces you to reach beyond yourself.  There's a lot both students and teachers can learn from each other and their different backgrounds if they are willing to reach out. The most concerning thing about the experience though, was when I started to grow more apathetic towards my progress when it got to difficult and when I knew I wasn't going to fit in. When students come to school with a different level of social and cultural capital than most students, it can be hard for them to have self efficacy.  A lack of efficacy can cause them to give up easily and not give their best because they lose hope for themselves (as I definitely started to lack self efficacy when the lead couple stopped directing.)  I think teachers can be encouraging and positive around students, as well as to check for understanding and give clear instructions, to help students maintain self-efficacy.  A little help and attention goes along way, just as help or support from my partner was really important while I was learning the dance.