Publications:
GTP Handbook / The Tutor / National Teaching and Learning Forum
The Tutor - Vol. 5, No. 3, 1989
Teachers are the Key:
What is Good for Minority Students is Good for Allby Laura L. B. Border
David A. Hamburg, president of the Carnegie, Corporation, was invited to give the Tomas Riviera Lecture at the American Association of Higher Education National Conference in April 1989. His talk is Disadvantaged Minority Education Free at Last highlights the most urgent issue facing education in the United States, today. Hamburg states that
Minorities constitute the majority of school enrollments in twenty three of the twenty-five largest cities will have a majority of minorities. If we fail to fulfill their educational potential, their inadequate preparation will undermine the competitive position of the industries and state in which they work. And of the nation as a whole. What motivates us is not only the decency which ought to be enough but unfortunately isn't but also national interest. Decency, plus national interest gives us a basis for advocating and perusing disadvantaged minority education on a scale and level of quality that should far exceed anything we've done beforeHamburgsís talk inspired me to interview several representative minority professors on the Boulder campus and ask them how teachers at CU-Boulder can help to assure the success of minority students in particular and students in general. My discussions with Suzanne Benally, Ward Churchill, Bill Kind, Maria Reyes, Kumiko Takahara, and William Wei brought to light some of the issues involved with being sensitive to and able to respond to the needs of an increasingly diverse student body and suggestions on how to go about developing teachers who meet these qualifications.
Two common themes emerged from the interviews: 1)there really is not difference in what minority students and other students need to help them succeed in school they all need teachers who are sensitive, well informed, open, and willing to pursue their own personal growth, and 2) excellence and excitement about learning flourish in a setting that truly respects and values each individual within the system, and encourages faculty and students to pursue and express their individuality, be it as students, teachers, or researchers. The individual interviews have been transcribed separately to maintain the integrity of individual voices.
SUZZANE BENALLY,
currently the director of College Programs with the American Indian Science and Engineering Society coordinated the University Learning Center's Writing Program and is active in multicultural education curriculum design and critical pedagogy. Ms Banally is pursuing a doctorate in English Education.In a typical class, students come from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. When teacher view all of these students as individuals who bring a richness of personal experience and special needs to classroom interactions, there is an immediate impact on curriculum design and on teaching styles. On a campus such as ours, instructors need to be aware of the demographics of our minority population and the diversity within in it. They should beware that some students are the children of immigrants, some are refugees, some are foreign students, but most of the minority population is made of the second, third, fourth generation Americans or of Native Americans.
Although there are lots of minority students on campus in the summer, during the regular school year there really are very few. Typically the university environment is very different from the environment the students come from. When minority students come to campus, they work hard toward being a part of the academic and social consciousness of the University, but they eventually run into barriers that make them more critically aware of their educational and social diversity. They realize that people on campus have certain attitudes and demonstrate certain behaviors that they must begin to cope with as minority students.
This same phenomenon happiness with all students, but for the minority student there is a different layer of complexity that encompasses racism, exclusion, personal identity, and expectation. Teachers need to understand the social/cultural context these students face at University and they need to be aware of their own attitudes.
Teachers should also develop some sense of the majors various groups of minority students select and of how the students perform. For example, many English as a Second Language students go into engineering or math because of the language barrier they face in Arts and Sciences courses. If the instructors cognizant of the student's problems relation t the class, the teaching format can be adjusting to meet the student's needs. It ís particularly important for faculty to know and to actually interface with the resource units available on campus to help these students. For example, if a student needs a tutor, it ís much better for the instructor to call Tutorial Services personally and facilitate the students efforts to get help. On the other hand, minority students who are very successful should not be looked at as model minorities, but rather as the individuals that they are.
In classroom discussions, teachers need to be sensitive to each student as an individual. One mistake that many teachers make is assuming that a black student experiences or than an American Indian student can speak for all tribes. Teachers should allow each student to have a voice, a voice that expresses his or her difference and individually- and be ware that it may not necessarily be the expected voice. Developing a critical awareness of the diversity of the classroom and the individuality of minority students allows the teacher to cultivate the habit of looking at single issues from many different perspectives, and this fosters respect among all students for multiple voices.
WARD CHURCHILL,
director of the Educational Development Program is also on the staff of the center for Studies for Ethnicity and Race in America.There is no difference in what minority students and others need. Teachers should make sure that they personalize examples, that they pay attention to what the students are doing, what they are thinking. They should learn to be good listeners-students have something to say as well as something to learn. As much individualization as possible should be put into the process. Graduate teacher should develop some degree of sensitivity, sensitize themselves to the students circumstances and backgrounds, the peculiarities of the context on a continuum from rural isolation to urban settings like Harlem or Detroit. Even in our TRIBES and American Indian classes where there is some homogeneity in class, there are students who come from Wisconsin to Arizona, so there are differences in their experiences. An instructors broader knowledge can always help him or her to relate something backs to the students.
Part of the process of making oneself a good teacher is to develop a broad range of knowledge, an infrastructure of skills. Graduate students should realize from the beginning that if they want to be good teachers, they have to be willing to learn. If they want to be bad, they better find another job. People who aspire to be teachers discover that even teaching a couple of classes is a lot of work if approached with commitment and grounding. Teacher need to learn enough about either cultures not make stupid mistakes. People aren't interchangeable cogs. They need to be treated with respect. Teachers need enough familiarity with their backgrounds to be able to give good examples in class. Let me say though that the way your question is couched basically means ì how can we make white graduate teachers more able to help minority students The basic problems really the need to have more minority students in graduate school functioning as graduate teachers.
You asked me to comment on the kind of feedback I hear from minority students about teachers. I hear more negative than positive. Most of the commentary is as a result of cultural insensitivity. And racism that come from abject ignorance. For example, when professors treat Indian spiritual practices such as the Sun Dance as common property, Indian students have reason to feel alienated because of the offensive behavior-even though it may be well intentioned. The arrogance of some faculty is bothersome, e.g., faculty who argue with Navajo students about interpretations of Navajo culture. Faculty need to understand the present hegemony of Eurocentrism prevailing in academe. The perception that Eurocentrism is synonymous with truth, yet it results in the marginalization of whole cultures world views.
Teachers need to recognize their own academic racism, and that in the Academy racism is treated as something to celebrate. Academic racism teaching math as if pi were invented in Greece, as if Germany form 1939-45 were isolated aberrant incident, as if the steel industry were invented in Europe, as if Renaissance arches came from Europe, as if the smallpox vaccine didn't come from Turkey, as if the concepts of zero and infinity came from the European tradition. Racism is pretending than an Indian student who speaks English hasn't already learned a foreign language.
BILL KING
associate professor of Black Studies, has taught at the University of Colorado since 1972. At present, Professor King is on the staff of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America.Teachers should help students come into the system, transit the system, and see that they leave with their identities in tact. To do this, they need to examine the meaning of the words schooling and education. Schooling is about replicating the social order, while education is about development. The former works from the outside in, the latter form the inside out. As student learn about themselves they learn about the world.
The ancient African schools taught that to know yourself is basic, since self-knowledge is the genesis of all knowledge. I see self knowledge as the basic need of the teacher. Graduate teachers need to learn about their own strengths and weaknesses. They need to examine their prejudices, their insecurities, what is important to them and what they are willing to do to get what they want. We need to develop a different reward system for graduate teachers, one that is predicated on their human interactions, their own human development.
Teachers must become more comfortable with feelings, since feelings matter more than the intellectual stuff. They help us make decisions about priorities and, once those are established, assist us in the creation of a sense of purpose. Curiosity is about feeling; the quest for knowledge begins at the feeling level. This is difficult to do in the university because the Academy has a way of discounting feelings, and saying that logic is reliable. We spend to much time accepting conventional wisdom and not enough time examining the limitations of logic. Teachers and students should be aware that feelings are reliable. The major shortcoming of the scientific method is that it has been purged of emotion-i.e., it is applied after the problems for investigation have already been selected. As, such science doesn't deal with fundamental problems, but with the filling out of new paradigms. Too much teaching in the Academy tends to be a paint by the numbers system, whereas, scholarship is guided by what you believe and what you feel. Thus the question, To what extent do we have our graduate teachers study their won belief systems and how those belief systems shape the real worlds they perceive?
I frequently tell my own students, "You can learn from anybody, but you are your own teacher." Students need to be shown how to take the information they acquire and use it to enhance their own development. Students need to be make ware that understand flows through and out of them, that they are meaning and what the consequences of that are. Before sending them off to do library or field research, we need to counter student tendencies not to see themselves as fundamental resource. Success is something that enhances each individual in the sense of himself or herself, not in terms of external criteria especially material criteria. The most useless indices of success are material, because they are transitory and can be taken from you.
And finally, we need to remember that teaching is a form of entertainment. As we learn folks how to sing and dance, we'll help them know that they already know what they need to know. They just don't know they know it.
KUMIKO TAKAHARA,
an associate professor of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature's, has taught Japanese and Linguistics at CU for fifteen years and has served on the Boulder Faculty Assembly Minority Affairs Committee. Takahara is committed to advocating more hiring of minority faculty and to equitable treatment of minority faculty. She was recently awarded a grant form the Chancellor's Fund for Expanding the Undergraduate curriculum in the areas of Ethnic and Gender Diversity to develop a course on Ethnic Semantics. She believes that the sensitization toward ethnic and cultural diversity is best achieved through education, and hopes that the proposed course may bring students to understand the experience of being an ethnic minority in American society form a sociocultural and linguistic viewpoint.Faculty and graduate teachers can do a lot to raise awareness of minority studentsí concerns. In fact, even minor efforts by faculty can have great impact on all the students in a class. For example, at the beginning of each course an instructor could take five minutes to discuss the University's non-discrimination policy, and tell students that the University view cultural diversity and multi-cultural values as an educational priority. This commitment to diversity should be evident in the way instructors organize their courses. Faculty should encourage the development of mutual trust, confidence, and understanding. In the selection of course materials, faculty can be sensitive toward minority students in their classes by being aware of what they are teaching, by choosing material that reflects diversity. If an American literature teacher selects books written only by white authors, students will wonder why, for example, no black authors have been included. They may question the extent of the professors experience and knowledge; they may have strong reactions. When lecturing, faculty can show their awareness by never excluding the achievements of minority Americans. In discussion sections, teachers should encourage all students to speak up, to have a voice. All students should feel that they are important and they will be listened to.
Faculty should also be ware of how they communicate to students because racial discrimination is very much verbal discrimination. Linguistic discrimination is obvious, it is there we can study its reality and its history, it's global problem. Faculty and students should understand why linguistic discrimination exists and how to go about correcting it.
Faculty can also help minority students succeed by encouraging them to participate in undergraduate research programs. It would be a big help if all faculty would sponsor a minority student at some time during their career. In particular, it would help if faculty in the Arts and Sciences would encourage minority students to do research in the liberal arts, because there are so few minority students in those areas.
WILLIAM WEI,
an associate professor of Chinese and Asian American History, has been at UCB 1980. He is the principal person responsible for developing the Colors of Colorado Project, a program for the integration of minority studies into the undergraduate curriculum.
To function effectively with a diverse student body, graduate teachers have to learn what has been omitted and to correct what has been dissected in the course of their own education. And they will have to learn it on their own; they will have to seek out ethnic minority scholarship.
Teaching assistants need to broaden their knowledge base by becoming familiar with the facts and figures on minority groups. They can go about doing this in several ways: 1) they can register for courses in ethnic studies themselves; 2) they can contact minority agencies on campus that deal with ethnic studies; 3) they can contact professors and ask for reading lists and information on available audiovisual material. In the not too distant future Deborah Fink, the instructional Services Liberian in Norlin, will be establishing an Equity Clearinghouse, a collection of print and non-print material on minorities that includes a bibliography on minority scholarship. Because the demographics of the American population are changing so rapidly, graduate students who expand their knowledge base to include diversity will be in the vanguard.
Graduate teachers need to go the extra mile and develop the kind of empathy for minority students that will make their teaching effective. For example, they need to understand the issues facing the poor students from the ghettos, the barrios, and Chinatowns. They need to understand that these students attending college maybe a heavy burden- especially if they are the first of their families to pursue and undergraduate degree. Dealing with the pressure to achieve, to succeed in an unfamiliar environment is difficult for students in general and minority student in particular. Depending on their background, they may feel quite alienated from whites, even hostile toward them. White teachers may be viewed as enemies. Needless to say, this kind of psychological baggage can interfere with their education. An adjustment-sensitivity to diversity-is necessary on both sides.
Humor is tied into the power relationship of the teacher to the student-usually white male faculty talking to students. Teachers should conscientiously avoid all racist and sexist humor, that is, any humor that is funny at the expense of other people. What we teach and we hope will be passed on; we need to be aware that we are also passing on what we teach inadvertently.
Id like to respond specifically to your question about what graduate teachers can do to facilitate a positive environment for Asian American students- the following things are crucial:
1. It's important for graduate teachers to realize that Asian American student are not foreign students.
2. Graduate teachers should realize that even though they are of Asian ancestry, Asian American students are not spokespersons for their ancestral culture.
3. Graduate teachers should not expect Asian American students to speak their ancestral language since many are fourth generation Americans.
4. Teachers should be ware that Asian Americans are not necessarily predisposed to science and math. In fact, countries like China had a strong humanistic tradition and sent their young people abroad to study math and science, that is what the culture was not strong in. If all things were equal we would see a board range of majors among Asian American students.
5. Graduate teachers will have to be very creative to get Asian American students to participate in class. Culturally they have learned to defer to authority. They will wait for cues to interact. As most undergraduates are reluctant to interact in the classroom, graduate teachers should structure the environment to make them feel comfortable. For example, give all the students the discussion questions ahead of time so that they have time to prepare. And tell them they will be asked to take part in discussion.
6. Graduate teachers should have high expectations for their students and work to facilitate their achievement. If they've got the will and the resources, they can be better than they are.
7. Finally, instructors should realize that the Asian American population is quite diverse, with first generation Chinese Americans to fourth generation Japanese Americans, Vietnamese and Hmong refugees, Korean, and Filipino foreign students as well as many others. These students come from poor families, middle-class families, and rich families. Stereotyping is very limiting- what we should be about is developing the potential of all our young people.
MARIA REYES,
an assistant professor in the School of Education, teaches languages arts and bilingual/multicultural education courses.My helpful hints for graduate teachers center around three main points: teachers expectations, mediation, and breadth of teacher knowledge. A teacher's expectation has enormous impact on minority students, especially given the negative press about minority students being behind, and needing remediation. The best advice I would give to new teachers is to have high expectations of their students, which really is a key to success for minority students. Teachers who have high expectations for student performance try harder, put forth more effort, and challenger their students to higher levels of learning. Teachers actually guide what and how they teach. Students respond to high teacher expectations-in fact, many students drop out of school because they are bored. The film ì Stand and Deliver really portrays how important teacher expectations are. TA's need to realize that the minority students in their classes are those who have made it in spite of all the obstacles encountered in the educational pipeline. Those student's who make it to college have survived when the 50-60 percent of their peers have dropped out. Students can tell if teachers are being helpful, tough, or condescending. Teachers should let students know when they are doing well, this goes a long way for minority student who is new to the system. A word of praise will be remembered and will serve as motivation when the going gets tough.
Mediation is an essential concept to introduce to beginning teachers. Mediation means simply explaining the system to a novice who has never been through it before. May Hispanic students are the first in their families to enter a university and peruse a degree. TAs can make things easier for these students by showing them the ropes, showing them how the system operates, by not taking for granted that the student know whom to ask, what to do, how to do it, and when. These students may bring different cultural expectations to the classroom,; for example, if a Hispanic student has a personal problem and needs to miss class, he may think it is too personal a matter to tell the professor. If the instructor thinks the student has missed class because he doesn't care there if there is a misunderstanding. Miscommunications can be avoided if the teacher makes his or her expectations very clear. TA's can really help the student to adjust. Mediation should be confused with the concept of "spoonfeeding," but viewed rather as walking a novice through an initial experience. Mediation actually prevents "redemption."
As for the importance of the teachers breadth of knowledge-TAs should know about, or learn about the various cultural groups in the American school system. This will help them to mediate for their students and to avoid stereo-typing them. The more TA's learn about diverse groups, the more they will recognize the diversity within each group. For example, with the Hispanic group, some are second language learners, but many are dominate English speakers. Their performance in an English compositions class has more to do with their individual preparation than with their cultural heritage.
TA's should learn about an integrate the contributions of minority scholars into their courses. They should include minority authors in literature's classes, so that students are exposed to non-white mainstream perspectives. They should acknowledge the reality that there are minority there are minority academics and that they can provide insights into various fields. This is good for mainstream students as well, it expands their horizons and leads to better interaction between diverse backgrounds.
TA's should receive some cultural sensitivity training like that done by the Multicultural Center for Counseling and Community Development. Developing sensitivity will help them avoid making thoughtless statements like ì Don't be late, we're operating on American time not manana time!î to a student who comes into class late. Id also like to suggest that TAs get out into the community and have some first hand experience with classrooms full of minority children. Here in Boulder, they could visit Boulder High or Columbine Elementary School, which has 40 percent minority enrollment. Knowledge about the community, and about where their students come from, should lead to better understanding and more effective teaching.
