Have Confidence!

This is a post for all of my peers departing for their first field experiences! I will not be joining you (I'm enrolled in a chemistry lab that conflicts with the time I'd have to spend at the school; I'll be doing my fieldwork in the spring). But I hope everyone who is going will have a wonderful time.

Here is a video from one of my favorite musicals to see you off! For those who are not familiar with The Sound of Music, simply know that in this scene Maria (played here by Julie Andrews) is in much the same situation as you are in now. She is on her way to teach for the first time, nervous but excited, inexperienced but confident.

So have confidence! Have fun!

Through the Looking Glass, Part 1/3: Orange You Glad I Split This Essay into 3 Parts?

It is amazing that I have been able to hold out this long without thrusting some of my subject matter onto the Reader. But when Cooley’s ‘looking glass’ theory came up in our readings… well, how can I resist the temptation to discuss the chemistry of enantiomers? Impossible! It is too perfect an opportunity to ignore!

Bear with me, Reader, if you think you do not like chemistry. This is a fascinating topic, and we will have some fun with it, and then I promise to show you why it is even relevant to our discussion at all.

First, a flight of fancy. Imagine yourself peeling a plump, fresh orange. You dig your nail under the rind and pull back, tearing it open. Some juice trickles over your finger, a fine mist forms in the air. Do you smell it? That happy, fresh burst of citrus? Yes, that is the smell of chemistry!

Actually, it is the smell of myriad different compounds wafting through the air, from the orange peel to the receptors in your nose. Each receptor is designed to recognize a different kind of compound, and in the case of the orange, the specific molecule your nose is detecting is a hydrocarbon called D-limonene. (By hydrocarbon, I mean to say, a compound made of the elements hydrogen and carbon.)

But it gets much more interesting, because now we are going to do some house work. Yes, that’s right, we’re going to polish a beautiful wooden desk, and because it is made of wood we are going to use a furniture polish that smells like pine (it is only polite to make the dead tree feel at home). Naturally, the piny fragrance of the polish is completely different from the scent of the orange, and with your new knowledge of chemistry you can now readily attribute this phenomenon to the different chemical compounds which are present in the furniture polish stimulating a different set of receptors in your nose. Quite simple. There is nothing remarkable about that!

But we are not giving our noses enough credit, because the compound in the furniture polish which our noses recognize as completely different from the one in the orange is, in fact, L-limonene. It is the mirror image, or enantiomer, of the D-limonene in the orange. The two molecules are exactly the same in every way, except for their geometry in 3-D space. To help you see the difference, I have produced an image of the D-limonene and L-limonene, facing one another as if in a reflection. If you were to construct physical models of each of these images, you would find you would not be able to superimpose them. They are fundamentally different in shape.

(A note for interpreting this kind of diagram: the ‘sticks’ represent chemical bonds. Notice in some places there are double bonds. At each ‘corner,’ where the bonds meet, there is an atom. The black corners represent carbon atoms; the white ones are hydrogen. Also notice how carbon always forms four bonds, and hydrogen can only make one.)


Do not be discouraged if you have trouble realizing the difference between these two molecules. In fact, it is a difference that many organic chemistry students find difficult to appreciate. During a test they will sit at their desks and construct models of the molecules using pencils as bonds and erasers as atoms. Or they will turn their papers upside-down and cock their heads to the side. I’ve seen some try to use their hands and fingers to illustrate the geometry, like some kind of strange chemistry shadow-puppeteering. Obviously, people’s noses are much smarter than they are!

The lack of equivalence between an object and its reflection is not a novel concept for most people. For example, it is immediately apparent when we look into a mirror while wearing a T-shirt that has something written on it - the lettering is all wrong. But in fact, every time we look in the mirror, no matter what we are wearing, an inaccurate image is reflected back to us. The subtle asymmetries of our facial features – the kinds of subtle asymmetries that our brains have evolved to notice - are all inverted. So in fact, most of the time, we don’t really know what we look like. Lest you think the inaccuracy trivial, I’ll remind you of the two limonenes. If somehow it were possible for D-limonene to look into the mirror and see his reflection, he would surely mistake himself for L-limonene, and probably end up applying for a job at the Pine-Sol factory. Imagine his embarrassment when the boss declares, “You smell like an orange, you ridiculous thing! What are we supposed to do with you?”

(It makes you wonder if the company hasn’t developed its new ‘Orange Energy’ formulation to accommodate all the misguided applicants.)

Through the Looking Glass, Part 2/3: Tatum and Teaching

But I am being silly when there is a serious question looming here. Is it possible we’re all just as deluded as the D-limonene who looks into the mirror and thinks he’s someone else? And, as in his case, does this delusion go beyond merely what we look like (a big enough concern for most of us), extending to the crux of who we really, truly are?

Most of us can relate to the young lady in Norman Rockwell’s painting, Girl at the Mirror, shown below. She stares longingly into the glass, dissatisfied and insecure in a moment of introspection. At her feet, a paraphernalia of beauty products. Farther off sits a doll, carelessly tossed on its side, discarded, an artifact of the girlhood that the subject hasn’t quite grown out of, though we get the impression she’d like to. The magazine in her lap advertises an ideal of mature, feminine beauty.


There are two reflections here. One is in the mirror. The other is in the girl’s mind as she looks at the magazine. What is she seeing? Tatum would probably argue that she is seeing the differences between herself and this ideal: she is flat-chested, round-faced, childish, homely. It is as wildly distorted an image as her vanity mirror would produce of a molecule like limonene.

When discussing the aesthetics of race (and of racism), Tatum recalls,

I grew up with the expression “good hair.” Though no one in my household used that phrase often, I knew what it meant when I heard it. “Good hair” was straight hair, and the straighter the better. I still remember the oohs and ahs of my White elementary classmates when I arrived at school for “picture day” with my long mane of dark hair resting on my shoulders. With the miracle of a hot comb, my mother had transformed my ordinary braids into what I thought was a glamorous cascade of curls. I received many compliments that day. “How pretty you look,” the White teacher said. The truth was I looked pretty every day, but a clear message was being sent both at home and at school about what real beauty was. (45)

Rockwell’s girl at the mirror could easily be a young African American woman with a straightening iron in her hand. It could easily be one of my future students, scrutinizing herself with one of those terrible, or Terrible, or TERRIBLE beauty magazines in her lap (with a pile of untouched chemistry homework tossed to the side, no doubt!). So the question that I ask is, What could I, as a teacher do to steer my students away from embracing the worst examples of media-endorsed idols at the expense of their self-esteem? How can I convince an insecure teenager that different does not translate to ugly?

Well, after writing the essay on enantiomerism, I am seriously considering including it in the general chemistry course I might one day teach. But to turn it into a lesson about self-image and the evils of Vanity Fair magazine might come off as preaching, and students hate that (rightfully so!). This is why I prefer to stick to my subject matter. Teaching students to think scientifically will by definition teach them to think critically, rationally, independently. A teacher can only hope that her students’ brains do not turn off when they leave the classroom.

The other strategy is to lead by example. All the teachers I have ever loved had three things in common: they knew their subject matter, they taught it with rigour and passion, and they were fearlessly, totally, completely themselves. Although students might make fun of the nonconformist teacher (who can blame them? It’s just so easy!), the jokes are usually delivered with affection, and maybe with some genuine appreciation for the daily dose of honesty. More than that, a student who sees himself as different will probably enjoy not being the oddest person in the room!

Through the Looking Glass, Part 3/3: Pink goes good with Green!

There is one last question I have not yet asked and answered. That question is, where is the musical? In all honesty, Reader, I do not know how long I will be able to keep this theme going… there are only so many bootlegged videos on YouTube. But today I will not disappoint. No Broadway lover’s blog on multiculturalism would be complete without a tribute to Elphaba Thropp.

Most people know Elphaba as the Wicked Witch of the West, the terrifying villain in Lyman Frank Baum’s classic novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (his book was made into the film, The Wizard of Oz, in 1939). Well, you can’t keep a good story down – it has a life of its own! In 1995, Gregory Maguire invited his readers to relive the magic of Oz once again with his novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. As the title implies, Maguire tells the tale from the Witch’s point of view, and in doing so turns all of his readers’ previous notions of Good and Evil upside down.

(Imagine a house lands on your sister, and then a girl from Kansas, who just happens to have been inside the house at the time, steals your dead sister’s ruby-red shoes - the last surviving memory of her! Wouldn’t you be a little upset? Wouldn't you try to get them back!?)

The video I have embedded below is from Wicked the Musical, the Tony-award winning show based on Maguire’s novel. Here we see a teenaged Elphaba – shy, uncertain, green - and her effusive college roomate, Glinda (whom the Reader might remember by her honorific, the Good Witch of the North). But this is long before Dorothy and Toto ever arrived in Oz, and these two fated sorcery students have forged an unlikely friendship. Adorably, innocently, but not too-innocently, Glinda decides to give 'Elphie' a makeover.

The scene is reminiscent of Tatum’s 'picture day' experience, where she was praised by a well-meaning teacher for conforming to the mainstream aesthetic. But in this case, it isn’t just ‘pretty’ Glinda is aiming for, but the biggest P-word of them all, Popular. Maybe in the school hierarchy, the Popular students - whatever ethnicity they happen to belong to - could be considered the mythical norm. These seem to be the students to which the others will compare themselves, and with the status of Popular tends to come the illusion of power, and maybe a little bit of genuine power, too. (Think of being able to control the social status of your peers simply by making a decision to sit with them at lunch or not!)

What I like about Maguire's verion of Oz is that we do indeed discover that the norm is mythical. Glinda is not all that she appears, and neither is Elphaba. Moral ambiguities abound in the Wicked story, and the enduring friendship between the two women despite their nearly opposite personalities reminds us that, under it all, we are more alike than we are different.

Since Deciding to Teach Science, I Have Been Working on My Hungarian Accent…

Because nobody will take me seriously otherwise! Or so I sometimes say to my friends, who, being educated in the sciences in Montreal, fully appreciate the joke. Somehow, the lectures just seem so much more scientific when you can barely understand them through the professor’s thick, unapologetic accent. (Eastern- and Central-European accents seem to be the most well-regarded. Indian is also excellent, especially for math and engineering.)

The root of this prejudice is probably a mixture of personal experience (the majority of my science professors have been immigrants from the aforementioned regions), and a media-projected stereotype of the frizzy-haired, foreign-tongued, wildly eccentric scientist, who may or may not be insane, but probably is so you’d better stay away...

"Gaa! Children! Give me the answer in torr!"

Now, those who know me will claim that I’ve got the ‘insane’ requirement down to a fine art. But the problem remains with my hair: not nearly as suggestive of recent electrocution as the preferred aesthetic. And my voice is all wrong: the intonation is too ordinary, too dull, too intelligible. I will have no credibility, and the students will be bored before I’ve even begun, and there goes my career. Ruined!

I write all of this half-seriously, not quite sure if it is an example of a brilliant sense of humour or a deep-seeded self-loathing. Certainly, it betrays the sense of cultural impoverishment I’ve developed since leaving my mostly-White, mostly-Catholic, mostly-Francophone off-island suburb to attend secondary school in the gloriously diverse hoi polloi of Montreal. Everyone seemed to have a story, an identity, a unique heritage which distinguished them, but also gifted them with membership to one of the closely-knit communities that are, collectively, a great source of pride for this city, and for Canada.

In brief, I felt I had nothing to contribute. I also felt I had nowhere to belong. I was apathetically Catholic at the time, and my mother’s side of the family had, at some point, been Welsh. My father’s family, at some point, had been German. But this heritage was never mentioned at home. In fact, it was a Transylvanian calculus professor who first taught me the original Germanic pronunciation of my surname, claiming that the Anglicised version I was using was ‘wrong.’ I thanked him for the lesson but then asked, a little brusquely, how anyone could be accused of pronouncing his or her own name incorrectly. (Such a claim seemed like an error in logic unbecoming of a mathematics teacher!)

Clearly, I had no personal connection with the historical roots of my family. My brother, who has just begun his first year of college, has had much more success in cultivating such a connection, taking a German language class his first semester, and touting his pride in German engineering (he is an aviation buff), and filling his iPod with German industrial-metal. I sometimes tease him that he is retroactively selecting a particular part of our genetic inheritance and exploiting it for the purpose of being ‘cool,’ but the truth is, I am a little envious.

And so when reading Beverly Tatum’s book, ‘Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?,' I was immediately struck by the nearly opposite experiences the author and I have had with race. She, feeling apartness because of her association with a cultural minority, and I, feeling apartness because of my lack of association with one. Tatum quotes Audre Lorde on page 22:

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows “that is not me.” In america, this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within society. Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practicing.

After reading this, I knew that my perception of the mythical norm was very different from the one described here. Except for my being a woman, I fit the mold perfectly, and yet I have never felt that I was ‘the norm.’ From my point of view, the norm is, ironically, diversity itself. And so I presented this question to our class: What is the mythical norm in Canada? Is there one at all?

My classmates’ answers made me realize that I was being too self-centric in my analysis. That is, the level of diversity in Montreal is not representative of other parts of Canada, where the mythical norm illustrated by Lorde might be very appropriate. Samantha raised the excellent point that in Quebec, the norm might not be as defined by ethnicity as much as it is by language. That is, the political power lies largely with the Francophone community, and this is often very present in the minds of Anglophones and Allophones. Being Anglophone myself, I was surprised that I hadn’t thought of this right away.

Perhaps my history of being educated in English-speaking private schools, and my tendency to immerse myself in the school community completely, has made me less aware of what is going on off campus. Perhaps, too, my envy of my peers’ cultural distinctiveness has blinded me to the possibility that this distinctiveness might be the target of bigotry. I have always considered myself a culturally aware person simply by virtue of having lived in Montreal, but perhaps this is naïve on my part. The cultural dynamics as they exist in a school (especially a private school) are probably not representative of the larger society in which that school is located.

In Blatant Violation of Course Rules (and International Copyright Law), I Bring You Muppet Hate Speech.

To set the tone for my blog, and to reinforce my thesis that musicals can be especially helpful to our discussion, I provide you with a sampling of the Tony-award winning hit, ‘Avenue Q.’ The show is inspired by, and is in the style of, the children’s educational program Sesame Street, but instead of pre-schoolers chanting the alphabet, the characters are in their early-to-mid twenties, and they face very adult problems. The result is spectacular satire, if not a complete perversion of everything we remember and loved about Big Bird and Kermit the Frog.

This song is one of my favorites, though the validity of the message is dubious. Is it true that ‘everyone’s a little bit racist’? Should we tolerate ‘ethnic jokes’ in the interests of good humour? Has political correctness gotten out of control in today’s society? We all have our boundaries. As teachers, is it wiser for us to play it safe by being conservative in these boundaries, or should we be flexible depending on the situation and the student? For instance, most of us would chastise a student for a harsh racial slur, but do we also ban all those banal jokes that begin with "So a priest walks into a bar and..."? While we're at it, do we ban blonde jokes, too? At what point are we oppressing students' rights to self-expression more than we're protecting them from discrimination?

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Please comment! Discuss!

Everything I Know About Multiculturalism in the Classroom I Learned from Rodgers & Hammerstein's 'The King and I.'

I want to be clear: I say this with absolutely no shame. There are few sorrows in life that cannot be soothed by a good musical. And there are few Great, Universal Wisdoms that have not already been belted from center stage as a mighty ballad, or twittered by the chorus in the form of a pithy, merry little rhyme. If that weren't enough, often there is dancing, too.

When done properly, the audience is rapt, destined to be humming the melodies and reciting the lyrics for days afterwards (whether they would like to or not). Teachers can only dream of such assimilation! Imagine students being punished at home for singing about the Oka Crisis at the dinner table. Or hearing on a city bus: “Oh, was I doing it again? I’m sorry; I just can’t get the damn parabola song out of my head! Would that I could somehow forget that y equals the square of x!”

(A notice to Mr. Instructor: in no way do I mean this to be a suggestion for, or critique of, your pedagogy. Your non-musical, non-rhyming, non-dancing lecture style is gripping, in its own way.)

But I’ll be serious now - I want to explain the title of my blog for those who are not familiar with the reference. ‘The King and I’ is the (liberally dramatized) story of Anna Leonowens, an English widow who traveled to Thailand to teach English to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in the early 1860s. The show entertains with a comical and often touching clash of cultures; some of the misunderstandings are delicious. Others are devastating.

‘Etcetera’ is the first word that Anna teaches the King, who is of the kingly opinion that he is not in need of any instruction. Especially not from a westerner. Certainly not from a woman. And yet what fun he has with his new knowledge! Throughout the musical the King uses the word at every opportunity, haughtily repeating it with the kind of grandiose gesticulation that merits my use of capital letters – “Etcetera… Etcetera… Etcetera!”

Such joyous student triumph is the teacher’s Grail. It is the students’ too, though some of them may not realize it until the prize accidentally lands in their insolent little laps. I selected this quotation to remind us all of the elation that comes with learning something new. I selected it because I believe that the joy of learning is a powerful tool for bridging the gaps between us.

But I do not mean to imply that the differences, and even misunderstandings, are exclusively obstacles to be overcome. Perhaps, too, it is the differences between us that galvanize the leaning process. Anna might well argue that she learned as much from her students than they did from her. Her students might say they learned more from her than they ever could have from a local teacher. (At least, this is the happy gist of the musical.)

In this sense, the diverse nature of Canada's schools should be seen as an issue to be managed but not over-managed, so as not to squander the opportunity for leaning. Striking the ideal balance is, I'm sure, not easy. And so I will conclude this post with the hope that this course sets us in the direction of success, and that by the end, if we are not humming, skipping, or singing, we are at least in possession of knowledge and perspective which will serve us well in practice.

I welcome comments & discussion. Extra imaginary super bonus points if you can make them rhyme.

Cultural Identity Assignment

This commentary on cultural identity did not appear on the message boards, and because I am late registering for the class, I now have the unfair advantage of being able to read the class’ responses before composing my own. Mea culpa; I will not cheat like this again. But while I am being guilty, I might as well discuss my perspective in earnest by responding to what I have read and then, hopefully, contributing something unique.

As is to be expected from a class of over sixty student teachers being asked the same question, there was a general homogeneity to the answers to the first part of the assignment – that is, define ‘cultural identity.’ And why shouldn’t there be? There are only so many ways to define a term that everyone already understands. I think that one of the best definitions on our message board came from an anonymous anthropology student. As a mere science buff I could not aspire to phrase it more expertly myself, so I will quote him or her here, for the purpose of establishing a solid launching pad for my own ideas.

Culture (at least from an anthropological perspective) is a combination of abstract values, beliefs, and perceptions that manifest and reflect themselves in people’s behaviours. There are four specific characteristics of culture;

1) Culture is shared. Culture is something unique that binds people together and is intelligible to other members of that culture. Specifically, culture is a means by which groups of people become able to predict one another’s behaviour and know how to react accordingly. It is important to note that the concept of culture differs from that of society. Society refers to geographic groups of people, and often a society can have within it a wide array of cultural groups (like Quebec). In addition, while it is shared, culture is not uniform! No two members of a culture will have identical interpretations of their culture. Smaller subculture groups exist within larger cultural groups.

2) Culture is learned. Culture is NOT BIOLOGICALLY INHERITED! Culture is learned and transmitted from one generation to the next through the process of enculturation. The color of your skin DOES NOT determine your culture, the environment you grew up in, the groups you belong to, and the resulting values, customs, beliefs, and norms that you learn determine your culture.

3) Culture is based on symbols. Art and religion are both parts of culture that involve symbols. Take, for example, a Christian cross, an Islamic crescent, a Jewish Star of David, these symbols mean something to the cultures that use them; they are symbolic of a specific cultures philosophy or creed. At the heart of the symbolic aspect of culture is language, the shared use of words (symbols) to describe the world around oneself.

4) Culture is integrated. I don’t want to get into this point too much since I could go on for pages, and this isn’t an anthropology class, but generally speaking, it refers to the fact that all parts of a culture function together in an interrelated whole.

Source:
Crawford, G., Fedorak, S., Haviland, W., & Lee, R. (2002). Cultural Anthropology. Toronto: Nelson.

What I like about this description of culture - and by extension cultural identity - is that it takes the focus away from the physical and geographical and onto the psychological and social. This distinction is especially important when considering Canada, a nation of immigrants. Imagine, for example, a first-generation Canadian born to parents who lived most of their lives in India, or China, or Hungary. Immediately apparent to us is that this child will likely have a very different cultural experience and therefore a very different notion of cultural identity than his parents. Where and how he is educated will have a tremendous influence. In an urban setting like Montreal or Toronto, he is likely to find a circle of friends who share his family’s background. Then again, he might not. Or he might find such a circle and decide he prefers the company of a different group. Especially in high school, when the need for identity and belonging is most urgent, our first-generation Canadian might form close bonds with friends who have nothing in common with his parents’ history and values, but everything in common with his interests and passions.

I am speaking of the high school clique or ‘peer group.’ It seems to me that in the secondary school setting (and to a lesser degree in elementary school), there is a synthesis of a new layer of culture atop the one that the child has already assimilated at home and in the community. The old culture is not erased, but it will often take a back seat to the new and exciting culture of the peer group. And very rarely are these groups defined by traditional boundaries of cultural identity. In the school cafeteria, the students do not segregate themselves racially, or at least this is a very secondary concern for them. Rather, you are likely to find (if you will excuse my stereotypical language) ‘debaters,’ ‘jocks & cheerleaders,’ ‘stoners,’ ‘geeks,’ ‘skaters,’ ‘emos’… of course, we could have a valid discussion about how segregated peer groups really are in high school, and how much of the ‘clique problem’ is an exaggeration of the media. But let us make the safe assumption that these groups are often present in some capacity at a school, and that they can be vaguely defined by labels like the ones I have used.

Each of these groups develops its own subculture. In high school, the subculture of the peer group might influence a student’s idea of self-identity much more than his racial roots do. Therefore, it is unwise for us as aspiring educators to ignore the subculture, which could possibly be a greater source of social tension in the classroom than ethnicity. A boy who shaves his head, puts a studded collar around his neck and does his face up with white powder and black lipstick might not be cause for concern. On the other hand, his three-time-math-camp-champion lab partner might disagree with you. What prejudices are at work here? How might the issue be managed with sensitivity to both students?

It is a difficult question, though in many ways it is parallel to the question of how to manage students with prejudices against, or misconceptions regarding, race.

Below I have embedded the YouTube video I selected showing my preferred subculture, of which I still consider myself a proud card-carrying member, the geeks. If there were ever a peer group in secondary school in need of a pep-song... well, let's just say they're not always the most celebrated subculture. In this video, the label and the stereotypes are celebrated - and by extension the identity is celebrated - which I find refreshing. Rock on...





EDIT SEPT15: The anonymous anthropologist unmasked!