Identity: the Heart of Cross-cultural Dialog

My school has recently launched a new strategic plan. One of the goals of this plan is to "provide targeted professional development to support a student body rich in diversity of thought and life experience." We all know that self-directed professional development  is powerful. This piece is on identity. I hope it will give teachers food for thought both to consider their own identities and the impact they have on supporting their students.

 Acknowledging, exploring, and understanding your identity can be scary, invigorating and reassuring all at the same time. It can be a very personal or public process depending on the journey you take or the reality of the context in which you live.

Identity exploration, both self-identity and community identity, is the “heart” of any effective dialog centered on cultural competency or cross-cultural communication. What is your personal story, that of your family, and of the communities that are the center of your lives? What are the values, perspectives, experiences and traditions that have molded your way of being? Many times it is the secrets that we discover (or keep), the contradictions that we encounter, and the evolving changes of beliefs and practices that occur as history presents itself that can influence our identities. Take the time to listen to your heart and contemplate your identity.

Apart from the need to engage in our own identity exploration is our need to recognize, acknowledge, honor and affirm the identities of our students (and our colleagues). What can we do to get to know our students and their families? The lenses they use as they enter our school community are unique and for some may seem out of focus. Our goal is not to change their lenses, but to understand them, and use that understanding to support and guide our students. Much of this we do, but if each of us were to focus on a particular student under our care this coming year (or even a colleague), one that possibly is struggling with his/her surroundings, and see how we can affirm and support them, what a difference we would make toward enhancing our school community.

Intentionally through my professional studies as well as through school related professional development I have engaged in a variety of identity exploration activities. Every time I engage in this process I learn something new about myself. Unintentionally, I have faced a multitude of identity experiences simply because I married into a family of another cultural background, lived long-term in another country, had children that became half American and half Ecuadorian, and brought them up (wow – they are both adults now!) as a single mother. These unintentional experiences of mine and of my boys, as well as together as a family unit, at times are reassuring; they can be difficult, even painful; they fill us with pride one day and bring us down the next. There is nothing wrong with any of these emotions; this is what happens when you spend a lot of your time navigating between two worlds; or simply, the context around you feels different than what you may expect or are accustomed to. 

It is important for us to recognize that these “unintentional identity pondering experiences” are occurring around us, in our classrooms, at our meetings, in the hallways, with our students, their parents, and with many of our colleagues. Many of our community members experience the “push and pull” of navigating two or more distinct worlds. Our school community at times may feel “foreign” to some no matter how hard we work to provide that sense of belonging. 

For some faculty and staff who have always lived and worked in and/or recognize their position within a majority environment (racially, ethnically, religiously….) it can be hard to imagine or even consider that others feel different or misunderstood, that they have these unintentional experiences, or simply put, that the process they go through to develop their sense of identity may be a bit more complicated than we realize.

By reflecting on our own identities we may extend the pathways that connect us to our students; by going above and beyond to understand and affirm the identities of our students and colleagues we will not only reach their hearts, but will strengthen our whole community.