Changing Awareness About Other Cultures Means Changing Attitudes
The task of leading children into a world their parents never had to face is a major adaptive challenge for classroom teachers serving students in northern Maine mill towns. I teach Spanish in Millinocket and East Millinocket, Maine. The families here are the descendants of paper mill manufacturers. Immigrants, largely Franco-Americans and Irish, who came to this bustling town for the good paying paper mill jobs which could be had with limited education. These immigrants came and quickly assimilated into the culture and language of northern Maine by acquiring “the language of their host county as a second language” (Wobak, 4). Today, the paper mills have packed up and gone, but the families–fully acculturated into the American mainstream–have remained. For many of the children of these families, they will need to emigrate out of region to face a global economy which is ethnically and linguistically diverse from the one into which their ancestors assimilated. Getting these children to prepare for their futures elsewhere is challenging because the life here is so idyllic, but this issue “ripens” (Heifetz, 116) as the local economy evaporates year after year and families leave the region.
Leading my northern Maine teenagers to a fuller appreciation for foreign languages and other cultures will require both technical and adaptive skills on my part. At face value, the task seems insurmountable. At issue are the current attitudes dismissing anything not immediately applicable to their young lives versus creating space within their belief structures to understand that tomorrow will hold global opportunities and challenges which will become very relevant to their futures. Additionally, most of my students have safely attended school with the same group of students throughout their education. The adaptive work which is necessary to appreciate “otherness” is as foreign to them as Spanish itself. Faced with the task of informally leading my “kids” into this future, I plan to utilize strategies developed by change leadership specialist, Ron Heifetz, to help me frame the issues.
1. “Authority identifies the adaptive challenge, provides diagnosis of condition, and produces questions about problems definitions and solution” (Heifetz, 127).
The evidence of the conflict between values and reality are ever-present in my Spanish class. I realize the distress almost daily. I recently asked my students during a Hispanic culture trivia game: “In which South American country are there currently 33 miners trapped underground and fighting for their lives?” The correct answer, Chile, had been a constant news report that week, and I thought some of my students would know the answer. At least I could pre-assess my new students’ geographical awareness. Not only did nobody get the correct answer, but I had several answers “Spain”, “Afghanistan”, and even the continent, “Asia”. I had emphasized “South American” in my question. My students’ lack of cultural and geographic awareness didn’t shock me. In my three years teaching in this culturally uniform and geographically isolated part of the U.S., I’ve come to realize that students are not proficient in the Maine Learning Results standards when it comes to other cultures, their languages, geographies, histories, or cultural products and perspectives. Students and their families have lulled themselves into believing there is false security in their sameness. Getting students and families to consider a world “lying outside” their “perceived boundaries” may create a “sense of danger” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 101) which threatens their deeply held beliefs about who they are and their importance in this world.
2. “Authority discloses external threat[s]” (Heifetz, 127).
The root of the change that must be made represents a tough, but necessary, shift in how my students understand their place in the world they are to create. Bloom describes the globally-limited framework with which my students filter their place in the universe:
“Country, religion, family, ideas of civilization, all the sentimental and historical forces that stood between cosmic infinity and the individual, providing some notion of a place within the whole, have been rationalized or have lost their compelling force. America is experienced not as a common project but as a framework within which people are only individuals, where they are left alone”(Bloom, 85).
This world moves forward with a complexity of issues at the global, national, and state levels. Children reflect the values of their communities, schools, and home. When cultural values are not aligned between these influential places, teachers will need more than the technical solutions of simply changing the curriculum. Teachers must use adaptive leadership to work through a change in mindset and attitude. Ethnocentrism, the value of one’s culture over all others, isn’t unique to Millinocket, Maine, nor is the geo-cultural ignorance derived from our American sentiment of superiority over all other cultures. Change has to come through vision and not just curriculum. Schools can’t just add more foreign language and geography classes to the graduation requirements. Here in Maine, we’ve tried that and come up short. Foreign language was a beast which could not be tackled when we first legislated the Maine Learning Results. MLR mandated the impossibility of graduating students proficient in a secondary language, even though most school districts only supplied two or three years of foreign language at the high school level. Budgeting for primary and middle school foreign language programs were not a priority. Even guidance counselors were more likely to steer students towards math and science rather than languages. The adaptive challenge for me will be to convert the beliefs espoused by my teenagers about Hispanic culture and its importance to them.
3. “Authority disorients current roles, or resists pressure to orient people in new roles too quickly” (Heifetz, 127).
At face value it doesn’t seem like such a great issue. Spanish is just one of those foreign language electives students need to get into college, right? We’ve been teaching foreign language in American high schools for over a century, haven’t we? A deeper look into the objectives of foreign language programs demonstrates essential social issues and values– a country where foreign language IS the norm in many cities, a generation of soldiers returning from foreign wars, national security threats, an emerging global economy. Foreign language teachers who attempt to raise questions about the importance of foreign language “risk getting marginalized, diverted, attacked, or seduced” (Heifetz & Linsky, 31). Math, science, English, and social studies departments have commanded their importance within the curriculum, over the budget, and upon students’ attention spans. There is little room for sharing, so foreign language departments tend to get relegated to secondary status.
Whenever people find themselves in the thrusts of cultural and linguistic change, there is resistance and resentment. History is the story of one culture overtaking another. Countries become conquered, enslaved, overpowered by other countries. The dominant country always imposes its language and culture onto the subjugated one. Spain at one time was conquered by Rome and the language that evolved was rooted in Latin. Later, Spain subjugated South America and large tracts of North America. The indigenous people were forced to speak Spanish and adopt Roman Catholicism as a religion. There is never a complete transition. The dominated culture always resists, pushes back. The dominant language is infused with new words. The art, music, and religion of the colonized permeate the conquering ones. (paraphrased from Soto, & Kharem) Often the change process is painful for both cultures. It will help me to understand the pressure cooker effects that change brings.
The English language and American culture have dominated the globe since the mid-20th century. We did not exert ourselves over conquered nations. In fact, countries that we went to war with–Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, USSR (Cold War)–all retained their own cultural linguistic heritages after we fought. But today English has spread like a wildfire across the globe as the United States has dominated world economies, technologies, education, mass communication, and political agendas. As America pushed itself onto the global highway, other citizens needed to learn our language and culture in order to join the ride. My students didn’t need to learn other languages to be successful because the world was trying to learn our language.
4. “Authority exposes conflict, or lets it emerge” (Heifetz, 127).
As I consider the enormous task that confronts me, it’s important that I assess the technical and adaptive resources available to me for creating a “holding environment”, ie, “a space formed by a network of relationships within which people can tackle tough . . . questions” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 102). My classroom will become that space because with its “structural, procedural, or virtual boundaries” born out of a positive school culture and climate, my students have learned to “feel safe enough to address problems that are difficult” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 103). The financial realities of my classroom are that I’m teaching in extremely budget-distressed schools in which, so far this year, I’ve been allowed to spend $10 of my $2000 classroom budget. Obvious culturally-enriching options such as field trips and exchange programs are not feasible. In addition, a plethora of social networking and technology options such as Facebook, Skype, e-mail exist but are blocked out of use by acceptable use policies. Despite these drawbacks, the adaptive work can progress because of the positive “social relationships” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 103) formed which can transcend the financial limitations.
As I consider the curriculum options available to me, I also want to be cognizant of the (lack of) skill levels my students possess. Because most of my students are reading and understanding English at elementary levels, my technical changes should reduce the English reading level required and promote either high skill reinforcement or high-level adolescent interest. Isn’t that “dumbing down” the curriculum? How can I be “dumbing down” the curriculum if that’s what engages and challenges my students to learn? Also, Heifetz and Linksy (107-8) suggest that leaders attempting to challenge the “status quo” will “generate tension and produce heat by surfacing hidden conflicts”; therefore, they should attempt to reduce stressors and “lower the temperature when necessary to reduce a counterproductive level of tension.”
To lower the “pressure cooker” created by reading level stress, I garner worksheets and blackline masters from middle school level sources. I find a middle school textbook for Spanish 1 instead of the high school one which uses more skill and drill activities to build vocabulary. I return to the Spanish 1 book for my Spanish 2 class. I introduce map skill worksheets over South America; I find a 7th grade reading level blackline master book over Spanish conquest and the 3 major native civilizations which I plan to introduce as an independent reading project. There are 1-2 pages of “easy” reading about Mayan, Incan, or Aztec culture followed by a page of “easy” questions over the material and some kind of “fun” puzzle or art activity over the cultural aspect.
To promote interest in Latina culture, I search for elements of Latina pop culture. I learn what is important to my students, even when it may not reflect my tastes. Let’s face it, most teenagers aren’t interested in poetry and opera and theater. They are not interested in old, dead people. On the other hand, teenagers are very socially conscious about how they fit in with other teenagers. Pop culture is a good starting off point which can open doors to more classical forms of artistic expression. Pop songs and videos can lead to poetry, history, and art.
Not only do I begin with assessing the resources available to me, but it’s also important that I assess the previous experiences of my students and of myself in relation to foreign language and culture. This assessment will lead me to “pace the work” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 116-8) by “preparing” my students “for the work that lies ahead” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 120) and understanding my own level of commitment and enthusiasm (Heifetz, & Linsky, 119) to handle the strain. Three years ago, when I had stepped into my Spanish teaching job, I had classes of students who had been “taught “ by Rosetta Stone, a computer-assisted language program. At that time, the two high schools were connected through the same administrative leadership under different school boards. The decision to adopt the Rosetta Stone was a technical solution to budget issues. Neither school could afford a full-time Spanish teacher and could not locate a teacher willing to move to northern Maine to teach half-time between both schools. The experiment was a disaster. Not only had students NOT learned Spanish or been exposed to any cultural perspectives, but they had gained more negative attitudes towards the Spanish language. Students seemed to think that Spanish was a joke because they could get academic credit for doing nothing. Furthermore, when I began as the Spanish teacher, I was confronted by extra large classes of students who resented being challenged to learn or do anything at all. I found myself with two classes of Spanish 2 students who hated me just because I wanted to teach them Spanish. When I began teaching, I was so enthusiastic about integrating the Mexican pop culture I had learned about from my previous years of having taught English in Mexico and Florida, but I soon realized that my enthusiasm would be met with disdain through no fault of my own. During my first two years, I have worked to changed attitudes towards the Spanish classroom itself. It has only been this, my third year, that I have begun to sense the classroom attitude becoming ripe for any change beyond the four classroom walls. I find myself eagerly reinventing new lessons which I can adopt to “show them how the future might look” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 121). At the same time, under tight budget constraints, I try to keep myself pumped up to remind myself what I’m “fighting for” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 121). I get easily discouraged when I realize how many social, economic, and political decisions within my community already so negatively affect my chances of success. Heifetz & Linksky describe this leader’s challenge as a “loss of innocence”:
When you lead people, you often begin with a desire to contribute to . . . a community, to help people. . . improve the quality of their lives. . . . [Y]ou begin with hope and concern for people. Along the way, however, it becomes difficult to sustain those feelings when so many people reject your aspirations. . . Results arrive slowly. You become hardened to the discouraging reality. Your heart closes up. (231)
I want to succeed but don’t know how.
To do this adaptive work,’ I need to assess my own readiness for leading change in students, to take stock in my formal and informal leadership skills. I think of all the personal, adaptive challenges I have faced to become a Spanish teacher: attending college as a non-traditional student; being hired to teach Spanish when I didn’t know Spanish; spending weeks and months alone in Mexico learning Spanish; realizing that all my excitement and passion for the work I’d done didn’t mean anything to my students, my school, my family, or my community. Everything I had personally changed myself into through my experiences learning Spanish language and Mexican culture, all of my “habits, pride, and sense of competence” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 123 ) had been “thrown out of kilter” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 123) because I I could only share the technical changes–knowledge, skill, proficiency–I had gained. I couldn’t give my students, school, family, or community the journey I had undertaken, the adaptive work inside myself, that had led me back home to eastern Maine anxious to teach the people I loved the most how to be successful in the promised land.
As a teacher, I am formally hired by the two school districts in which I work to teach the Spanish language and Hispanic cultures to my students. Having over 15 years of experience in teaching foreign language to northeastern Maine high school students, I am very qualified to undertake this task. In addition, I have lived and worked in the three largest cities in Mexico, our closest Hispanic neighbor. Having lived in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey has given me the opportunity to meet Latinos, learn their history and culture, taste their food, sing and dance to their music, and to know their joys and hardships. I am constantly torn between my love of two diverse cultures: my northeastern Maine/American family and my urban Latina one. My heart always wants to be in both places in order to learn from and teach to both cultures. The inability to live and work in both countries creates a schism inside me that seems to make me more passionate in finding ways to share my two worlds with people from both sides of the border with one another. This quality will qualify me for the informal leadership that I hope to undertake.
I accept at the outset that what I want to accomplish will involve evolution, as all adaptation does. Where do I start this evolution? I cannot do the work for them. Indeed the people who must evolve don’t even know that they want or need to change. There is no “widespread feeling of urgency” (Heifetz, 116) when it comes to cultural awareness. For them, the issue is couched within the framework of structural unemployment, ie, “joblessness caused not by lack of demand, but by changes in demand patterns or obsolescence of technology, and requiring retraining of workers and large investment in new capital equipment” (BusinessDictionary.com). According to Heifetz, “people are more likely to pay attention to arguments and perspectives about which they feel some urgency” (116). How will changing their attitudes, beliefs, and values about other cultures solve the technical problem of loss of the town’s major employer? How can the community return to the lifestyle they had before the paper mill shut down? By looking backwards to frame the issue, the community sacrifices an opportunity to move into a global future. My students will not have the luxury of nostalgia, so I feel it is imperative that I begin to re-frame the issue. Where do I want my students to evolve to? The curious thing about evolution is that it has to come from within each student. I can only begin to open doors of possibilities. They will find their own doors to continue opening. “The evolution “must change their hearts as well as their behaviors” (Heifetz, & Linsky, 127), just as my own journey has changed my heart and behaviors. In some sense, the end of the evolution is unpredictable. The wonder and miracle–along with the frustration and stress– I feel everyday as an American high school teacher is that I know I can only begin the journey with them and hopefully get them on the best road map for their own best futures. For now, I frequently feel like I’m dragging them kicking and screaming, and I have become aware that I have to stop shouldering the work and give it to them (Heifetz, 142).
3. “Authority disorients current roles, or resists the pressure to orient people in new roles too quickly” (Heifetz, 127).
As I continue my own self-assessment I ask myself, Why would I choose language and culture over addressing more pressing issues of literacy or numeracy? Don’t high school students have enough stressors with drugs, alcohol, peer pressure, teen pregnancy, self-esteem? Teenagers are inherently in a state of constant flux, but ironically, they really don’t like to work outside of their comfort zones. They really don’t like change much. And when you add to this fact the special learning needs of most of my students, I can anticipate any slight change in their ways of knowing and understanding the world to be very stressful on both them and me.
In order to keep distress to a minimum, I can work with my curriculum to assure that my topics are relevant to their needs and lives. Students are barely understanding Shakespeare or Hemingway in their own language, so why would I want to give them literature and poetry in Spanish? I can ease teenagers into change by connecting my curriculum with familiar topics like pop music or Spanish dubbed videos. If students can find their way into the material, eventually I know that the more academic “stuff” will be more accessible to them. As I work with the adults, colleagues and families, I will want to assure them that language and cultural awareness do improve literacy and numeracy; that art always reflects socio-politico-economic issues; we can find a way to talk about the our own issues by discussing the problems other teens face in other cultures. For example, in a recent episode of Rebelde, a Mexican telenovela (soap opera), which my Spanish 1 students view during the course of the year, the most popular girl, Mia, in the private Mexican high school is being pressured to have sex for the first time by a handsome, wealthy new student, Joaquin Mascara, who always has multiple girlfriends. I ask students to reflect on the advice her friend gives her and the advice an adult gives her about her decision. I do not ask students their opinions or to give personal examples of a time when they were (or might be) faced with this issue because I don’t sense their (or their families’) readiness to move into the topic of teen sexuality. By watching characters in a soap opera face this issue, I set an important social issue on the table but keep the pressure to a minimum by allowing them to reflect about somebody else’s problem. For my more advanced students, I encourage them to also weigh in on the pressure Mia has to maintain her status as the most popular girl and how her decision pressures her to do something she’s not ready for in order to keep that status. By the end of the scene, Mia discovers Joaquin’s true character and is saved from making a poor choice. I know my students have connected at a personal level with the character. My belief is that by adopting culturally relevant curriculum materials that I will be able to break into the relevant socio-economic- political topics for teens in an appropriate manner that is also consistent with my curriculum’s goals.
As I work with my high school students, I have found that I have to continuously teach them “how” to be “students”. My teenagers have very low reading levels in English. Many have poor organization and study skills. Many have never done homework. These problems will continue to disrupt my students’ ability to focus their attention on their work. It’s easy for me to get bogged down in their daily complaining about keeping notebooks or doing homework. It’s important that I don’t let these issues distract us from where I’m attempting to lead them. I can usually discern when I’ve pushed them beyond what they know how to do already because some will either “tune out”, “act out”, or “drop out”. If I demand too much before they are ready, they run from my class to study hall. When other teachers demand too much from them, they drop Spanish to give themselves more time to succeed in required courses. As I introduce culture and second language, I have to push just hard enough to keep the pressure on them without giving them “good reasons to avoid or delay the the distress, conflict, and learning required to do adaptive work” (Heifetz, 163). For example, Fridays in Spanish are always movie days. This gives students something “fun” and “relaxing” to look forward to. I play current movies in Spanish with English subtitles. I know Spanish teachers who always make their students listen to videos dubbed in Spanish and do not use sub-titles. This is the same idea as second language teachers who never speak English in their classes. The students who stay with the course probably do learn Spanish much quicker that way. But students who act out or sleep through a video because they don’t understand anything are not learning anything. If they drop out of class, they aren’t learning anything either. My students are challenged when they have to listen to Spanish with English subtitles for 60 minutes. There is always some complaining, “Why do we have to do this in Spanish?” The English subtitles, for many, is the most reading they do all week. And because it goes quickly (like in those old SAR readers), they have to adapt to the movie speed which increases their paying attention time.
I use to try to follow the lead of math and English teachers who worked with college-prep high school students. I too demanded “rigor” only to find out that you can’t push students in elective courses the same way teachers can in required courses. By listening to the “song beneath the words” (Heifetz, 64), I began to understand that “beneath the surface” was the attitude that low grades and a lot of work for an elective class were not acceptable to my students and their families. As I result, I turn down the pressure and try to make Spanish more fun, more entertaining, while at the same time, accepting the serious nature of educational policies I am adopting within my classroom. Auerbach expresses the political nature of the language choices we make in our schools and classrooms:
“Pedagogical choices about curriculum development, content, materials, classroom processes, and language use, although appearing to be informed by apolitical professional considerations, are, in fact, inherently ideological in nature, with significant implications for learners’ socio-economic roles. . . the classroom functions as a kind of microcosm of the broader social order, that is to say that the political relationships in the world outside the classroom are reproduced within the classroom” (9).
In the community beyond my classroom, other languages and cultures are viewed as individual electives which do not affect the community at large. It will take a community crisis to begin the work of re-framing this attitude.
4. “Authority exposes conflict, or lets it emerge” (Heifetz, 127).
Through understanding the complexity of this adaptive leadership task, I can prepare myself for the “razor’s edge” (Heifetz, chap 6). On the one hand, I AM a Spanish teacher. On the other hand, I’m an American who has not escaped the adoption of the values, attitudes, and beliefs of my culture. The world exists largely through my linguistic beliefs and its metaphors. I used to believe the United States was invincible against foreign intrusions. The morning of September 11, 2001 changed my beliefs forever. I used to believe that my family and community themselves were so far removed from worldly issues because we are just a small, insignificant blip on the map. The afternoon of June 23, 2007–the day my youngest son was killed on foreign soil in an act of war–changed my beliefs forever. I don’t think I can ever trust my beliefs again. How can I lead my community then? I’ve fallen long and hard from the razor’s edge this time.
I’ve fallen from the razor’s edge professionally before. I’m not too enthusiastic to try again. I know that if I push students too much or too little, they will drop out of Spanish. I have to deal with my own emotional readiness to lead again. The past has taught me valuable lessons about asking students and their communities to accept more than they were ready to accept. I’ve tried this adaptive work before, even though I didn’t know what it was called, I did know that I was attempting to build an acceptance of foreign languages and cultures in an eastern Maine academic environment. In the late 90’s, I was on the faculty of Lee Academy as their English/Spanish teacher when it was originally decided to expand their international boarding program. Their plan was a technical fix to decreasing enrollments and dwindling budgets. The school decided to spend money from their sizable endowment, the Cobb Fund, to renovate a dormitory and increase the academic offerings to attract foreign students. Concurrently, I brought in small groups of Mexican high school students from UNIVA, a large university in Guadalajara, Mexico. I hoped that by building a friendly climate, Mexican families would desire to send their teenagers to our school on a full-time basis. The Mexican students came in May for three weeks and attended classes by shadowing a student volunteer from Spanish class. This created small, friendship groups beyond Spanish classes. The Mexican students lived in local homes. Each week, there would be a field trip for BOTH the local kids and exchange students to share during a school day. Various teachers volunteered to chaperone. There was always an excitement in the air, and we could witness our kids’ values, attitudes, and beliefs change right in front of our eyes.
As valuable an experience as this was for so many stakeholders, I was too naive, too inexperienced to see a host of issues that arose those days. The Mexican students wanted to hang out together during and after school rather than learn from their hosts or make new American friends. The American families weren’t too interested in learning about Mexican culture. American families couldn’t speak Spanish and Mexican teenagers didn’t want to communicate in English. Cultures collided. Imagine our surprise when one lit up a cigarette after stepping off the school bus or when it was reported to me that the parents in one of my host homes smoked pot and invited their exchange student to do so. In my innocence, I believed everything would take care of itself and, by the end of the exchange, it would all be balanced out. All I could see was how much fun everyone was having.
But when my headmaster left and another one took his place, everything unravelled quickly because he did not use his authority to support the efforts of my colleagues and myself. So when two administrators from the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac de Guadalajara, UNIVA, came to discuss a formal agreement between our schools, I was unable to capture the interest of either the administration or the Board of Directors. I threw my hands in the air in defeat, however, after my first short-term Mexican student returned the following year as a full-time student, and the headmaster would not work with him to get a student visa for him so he could finish out the year. I was angry and felt personally responsible for encouraging this exchange student to attend Lee Academy, only to have him drop out before Christmas and return to Mexico, ineligible to graduate either here or there. It took him years to get his diploma and enter medical school.
5. “Authority challenges norms, or allows them to be challenged” (Heifetz, 127).
Unlike my experiences before, this time some things have changed. I’m not as naive as I once was about what motivates people. There must be something people value in order to do the hard work of changing values. Historically, conquered peoples valued their lives and their livelihood. People from eastern Maine are caught up in financial distress. They are going to value the adaptive work of joining the global economy when they understand how other languages and cultures can help them economically. Fortunately, the new superintendent in the area has arrived with a plan to do just that. Ken Smith has been working to save Stearns High School from budget shortfalls. His plan is to bring over 200 tuition-paying, room and board-paying Chinese students to Millinocket. I’m wondering if the School Board and Superintendent have plans to help stakeholders deal with this influx of culturally diverse children? When these students arrive, the community, school, and homes of the area will be faced with huge language and cultural changes. I hear a lot of uncertainty from faculty already about integrating non-English proficient learners into their classrooms. The school leadership needs to be aware of these concerns and address values and beliefs of the community, school, and homes in our area.
I interviewed Dr. Smith to find out that he is working with leaders from our government. As superintendent, he has the authority to create district-wide interest in the Chinese language and culture. To prepare the school and community, he has arranged for the library to display books and artifacts from China. His connections beyond the community enabled him to connect the New York Times with his plan. There were reporters at school all week, creating an atmosphere of possibility. And Monday, when he scheduled a school-wide assembly at the last minute in conflict with NWEA testing, there were grumbles from the rank and file, but everyone showed up in the auditorium to hear about his upcoming trip to China. After his trip, he had the authority to use three hours of in-service time for a workshop with the international consultants. These are the adaptive strategies that I don’t have available to me because I don’t have the authority. Instead, I think I will try to ride the positive wave that is being created and redirect negative comments when things get stressful. Lee Academy ultimately did achieve its goal of “opening its doors to the world.” But it almost went under financially at first. 9-11 happened the first year of its new plan and the U.S. was not giving the Chinese students Visas. A lot of faculty had been hired and then fired when the enrollments dropped. In 2005, they cut Spanish from their curriculum and I was out of a job. Today there is an excitement in the town when 7 foot Chinese boys come to Lee Academy to play basketball or when the Math Team wins first place. Local stores have seen a steady increase in sales. When a person with authority has a vision, it can help a dying community. I hope to encourage the superintendent’s vision because I know that it will change my students for the better. I hope to ally with the new superintendent in order to learn from him, “build political power”, and “increase the probability” (Heifetz, & Linsky, ASCD) that both of us will succeed.
5. “Authority challenges norms, or allows them to be challenged” (Heifetz, 127).
Joining, understanding, or appreciating “otherness” is an adaptive challenge from which most of us would prefer to not have to deal with because it signals a loss, and I not only acknowledge it, I completely understand it (Heifetz, & Linsky 93). It takes hard work to integrate oneself into another culture. My father was in the Navy until my senior year of high school. I never went to the same school for an entire year until I was in 5th grade. I didn’t graduate from the same middle school or high school I started from. I understand the effects of environmental and social change on children. Before we start pointing fingers towards China or Mexico and the flood of immigrants to our country, let’s acknowledge the adaptive challenge we face right here in eastern Maine. Isn’t the attitude which resists change and acceptance of other cultures basically at the bottom of “school consolidation”? Students, schools, and communities adamantly resist sending their students to other communities or receiving students from other communities because there is a fear of what will be lost rather than an excitement about what might be gained. Parents don’t want to expose their children to neighboring systems because they represent a change in culture. Many school systems would be delighted to receive other students as long as they do not have to adapt their structures for the “others”. How is such fear of difference possible when we’re only talking about two geographically adjacent towns? If it’s this hard to adapt to people with the same language, norms, and mores as we have, just imagine the road ahead of our children as they enter the global workforce. It will take more skill than simply speaking the language and having spent time in Mexico to change attitudes. I know it can be done. Twice a week for the past year, I have attended various local Zumba classes which are full of eastern Maine adult women exercising, dancing, a partying to Latina music. It doesn’t matter that they don’t understand the lyrics and have an understanding about the cultural roots of latin music styles. What matters is that they have found something useful and fun for their lives.
It’s taken me over a decade to learn to lead adolescents with any inclination that I’ve been successful. Teachers don’t usually get to see how their students’ journeys unfold after leaving high school. Thanks to social networking sites such as FaceBook, I do get a small glimpse into the lives my former students are living. They go all over the country and even out into the world. Sometimes they come back and tell me thank you. Most of the time they don’t. I recently found a former Orange Park High School English teacher and my literary anthology advisor (I was editor) on Facebook. I wrote to tell her thank you for getting me excited about creative writing. She didn’t remember me, of course, but she was so happy that I had “stopped back in” for a visit. Leading teenagers is something I’ve learned I’m good at and I enjoy it.
When I think of leading adults, I’m not as confident in myself. I just need some practice. Like most teachers, my days are filled with teenagers. I work in isolation from finding allies or confidants (Heifetz, & Linsky 199). I started out teaching English/Spanish with over 80 college English credits and 0 Spanish language credits. I was confident that I could learn enough Spanish to teach teenagers, but I didn’t realize how embarrassed I would be all these years to be introduced as a Spanish teacher who didn’t speak or understand Spanish very well. I’m afraid of the embarrassment of being a public leader who isn’t very good at it. I don’t want to fall from the “razor’s edge” again. I look to the end of my graduate studies to mark some kind of change in how I view my readiness for school leadership. I know that I will have the ability to lead when my heart is ready for it. I have plenty of evidence that encourages me. Three years ago my family initiated the Sgt. Joel A. House Summer Camp Fund to help financially needy Maine children attend a summer camp of their choice. As an educator, I wanted to encourage children to develop essential academic, physical, social, and/or spiritual skills during the summer months. I also provide important leadership creating, organizing, and developing the House in the Woods Military and Family Retreat. The goal of this 501c3 is to “use the great Maine outdoors as a milieu for bringing military and their family members together to share common experiences and challenges created by their service to the U.S. armed forces’ (House in the Woods). I’m not sure how many times people or news reporters have expressed appreciation for my moral leadership within the community. It took a lot of guts and a lifetime of habit formation to move beyond my son’s death in a way that attempts to help others.
My most recent project involves assisting the director of a Mombassa, Kenya orphanage and school to increase their public relations and development capacity. As we enter our second year together, we are attempting to incorporate their non-profit business structure, acquire school laptops, and host a Kenya educators’ conference in the beautiful coastal district. I’ve never been to Kenya and I don’t speak Swahili but with patience, persistence, and the Internet I’ve encouraged the director and developed his leadership skills. I had experienced first-hand from a little town in Maine how much hatred could be generated in these African orphanages on the other side of the world. They had taught their children to hate Americans and the American way of life. These children had been raised to sacrifice themselves to suicide bombs in order to destroy the lives of people who had not hurt them, but who had not cared about them, who didn’t even know they existed. As Americans, we cannot continue ignoring other cultural perspectives. We can’t continue to let our children not care about whether Asia is a city, state, or country? I have been given a small opportunity to learn how to make the world a better place. Everyday I will try to positively change the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the children and families within my sphere of influence.
References
Auerbach, E. (1995). The politics of the ESL classroom: issues of power in pedagogical choices, In J. Tollefson (ed.), Power and Inequality in Language Education, Cambridge University Press, New York, 9-33.
Bloom, A.D. (1987). The closing of the American mind [Simon & Schuster ]. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=cfr2ePZfFC4C&lpg= PP1&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q&f=false
Goodnough, A. (2010, October 26). Needing students, maine high school hunts in china. New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/ education/27students.html
Heifetz, R.A., (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University.
Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2002). Leadership on the line: Staying alive through the dangers of leading. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Heifetz, R.A., & Linsky, M. (2004). When leadership spells danger. Educational Leadership, 61(7), Retrieved from http://sbruzzese.org/edem628/readings/unit3b.pdf
Soto, L.D., & Kharem, H. (2006). A post-monolingual education. International Journal of Educational Policy, Research and Practice, Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0RTQ/is_7/ai_n25000852/?tag=content;col1
Structural, Unemployment. (2010). Businessdictionary.com. Retrieved December 2, 2010, from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/structural-unemployment.html
Wodak,, R., & Corson, D. (eds.).(1997). Language policy and political issues in education. Encyclopedia of language and education. vol. 1, Kluer Academic Publishers, Netherlands. Retrieved December 2, 2010, from http://books.google.com/books?id= N12qlNRFuyAC&lpg= PA23&dq=cultural%20%20linguistics %20%26%20education&pg= PR4#v=onepage&q=cultural%20%20linguistics %20&%20education&f=false
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