Teaching across cultures: A 3010 TA attempts CCP

Teaching across cultures: A 3010 TA attempts CCP

I believe I was destined to be a TA for COMM 3010 at UNT due primarily to my freakish skills in the areas of grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, word choice, capitalization, and, of course, APA formatting and style. My new mantra is “Once a 3010 TA, always a 3010 TA” because once your mind has been transformed by the mysterious powers of APA writing, you can never go back to your old ways.

For example, in just the first sentence of the previous paragraph, I made the following errors:

·      “I believe I was destined to be” sounds too much like a cliché. Academic writing only.

·      “I was destined” uses passive voice AND is an ‘agent of action’ error. If you can add the phrase “by zombies” to the end of a phrase, that signals passive voice. If the phrase lacks a human agent, it’s an agent of action error. Who destined me? The mystical deities of APA?

·      Instead of using the abbreviations “TA” and “COMM 3010”, I should have spelled out the words those abbreviations stand for: “teaching assistant” and “Communication Perspectives”.

·      “due primarily to” is a split infinitive. An infinitive looks like this: to read, to cook, to drive. For my fellow Spanish-speakers who might be reading this, we know infinitives in the following forms: bailar, comer, morir. (I hope y’all can appreciate the multiple reasons I purposely chose those particular words.)

·      “my freakish skills” is a colloquialism. Again, not academic enough to be in an APA paper.

Author’s note: I’d like to take this opportunity to declare myself exempt from writing in APA for the entirety of this blog post. Moving on.

Many people I know are brilliant creative writers who use paper instead of a canvas, words instead of watercolors, and a pen instead of a paintbrush.

…or, if you live in the year 2004 or later…

a word processing program instead of a canvas, words instead of watercolors, and a keyboard instead of a paintbrush.

In contrast, my writing skills shine through in a very different context—the dry, lifeless writing used by researchers of the social sciences who get published in academic periodicals which are read only by other researchers of the social sciences because the majority of the population doesn’t even know these periodicals exist.

There are at least nine prepositions in that sentence.

And here’s a quick meme-type image that shows the movie clip playing in my head right now. Yes, I put the image together and yes, I’m pretty proud of it.

All this is to say that I know my strengths. For the most part, these strengths are pretty straightforward and useful only in certain contexts. For example, when it comes to grading 3010 papers, I only have to look to the 6^th edition of the APA manual to prove what’s right and wrong. However, when it comes to my blog post theme—teaching across cultures—things are not so simple.

When I think about my experiences an instructor this semester, I recall often feeling defeated. When I first envisioned my classroom, I pictured something like this:

Or this:

But at the end of the semester, I feel more like this:

Or, more accurately, this:

I care deeply about my students, but I believe that as their instructor, I haven’t entirely done them justice. (get it? critical communication pedagogy is dedicated to social justice… you get it.)

Today in my COMM 1010 classes, my students and I discussed topics like hegemony, power, oppression, privilege, mediated representations of cultural groups, and stereotypes. Nothing particularly catastrophic happened, but still, these class meetings did not go as I had hoped. Over the course of the day, I have replayed those conversations over and over again in my mind, trying to figure out where I went wrong and what I could have done better. I fear that as a heterosexual white woman, my undeniable privilege got in the way of my ability to talk openly with my students about these seemingly abstract topics that necessarily involve touchy subjects.

Bell & Golombisky (2004) noted the inherent risks involved in entering these kinds of dialogues.

“To discuss women, race, class, and voice is to ‘enter a difficult conversation’…We do so with much trepidation and, again, much potential for misunderstanding” (Bell & Golombisky, 2004, p. 295-304).

Increasing my emotions this morning was the absence of a specific student. A few weeks ago, this student told another TA in our department that she thinks I’m hilarious, but she notices that when I make jokes in class, no one laughs. She said that even though our class is a tough crowd, she can tell I try hard to be a good teacher and how much I love comm studies. I can’t explain how joyful it made me feel to hear this report. In this casual conversation which she probably hasn’t thought twice about, this student unknowingly became my classroom ally. To my dismay, she wasn’t in class today. When I surveyed the room, my trusty ally wasn’t there. And I felt anxious.

I navigated today’s discussions on hegemony and privilege attempting to expose these painful realities so as to increase my students’ understanding of their world. We talked about the difference between individual and systemic discrimination, how one person can be simultaneously awarded and refused privilege based on the intersectionality of their different cultural identities, and how barriers to communication perpetuate oppressive hegemonic systems. I hoped to embody my idealistic vision of “teaching across cultures” as I tried to allow space for everyone’s voice without essentializing or tokenizing. I attempted a dynamic discussion balanced by a respect for the seriousness of these topics as well as lighthearted moments to ease the tension. I hoped to communicate the very real operation of hegemony and privilege in our everyday lives.

It’s probably important to note that these goals are at about Pedagogy Level 7 and I’m currently sitting closer to Pedagogy Level 2. I know I’m sounding forlorn here, so I’ll take a cue from another pop culture gem—Bridesmaids—and remember that at this point, I’ve got "nowhere to go but up!"

"Positive message!"

As I wrap up this blog post, I have to hearken back to the wisdom of my pedagogy idol, bell hooks, who reminds us that, while difficult, learning to enact critical, transformative pedagogy that values a culturally diverse classroom is essential in order to provide a liberatory education.

  

“Nor should our collective commitment to cultural diversity change because we have not yet devised and implemented perfect strategies for them. To create a culturally diverse academy we must commit ourselves fully. 

Learning from other movements for social change, from civil rights and feminist liberation efforts, we must accept the protracted nature of our struggle and be willing to remain both patient and vigilant. To commit ourselves to the work of transforming the academy so that it will be a place where cultural diversity informs every aspect of our learning, we must embrace struggle and sacrifice. We cannot be easily discouraged. We cannot despair when there is conflict. 

Our solidarity must be affirmed by shared belief in a spirit of intellectual openness that celebrates diversity, welcomes dissent, and rejoices in collective dedication to truth.” (hooks, 1994, p. 33)

(LLP)

#teachingacrosscultures

Bell, E., & Golombisky, K. (2004). Voices and silences in our classrooms: Strategies for mapping trails among sex/gender, race, and class. Women’s Studies in Communication, 27(3), 294-329. doi:10.1080/07491409.2004.10162478

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York:

Routledge.