Community Experience

This class definitely puts me in a lot of awkward situations. For this community assignment, I ended up attending a narcotics anonymous meeting. It was awkward, but very enlightening. In the very beginning, you could tell that the two other girls from the class and I were different from everyone else, so no one sat next to us. I wondered if any of them felt like we shouldn't be there or if they thought we were judging them, or if I was just being overly self-concious and they didn't really care. I hoped it was the later. It's situations like these where you can almost feel prejudice in the air. You try to be open minded and things like that, but you still feel it, either because you feel self-concious, or because your uncounciously making judgements about people. I made a snap judgment that ended up being completely wrong. There was a lady who looked like she could be my grandmother, and a guy who came with her. She looked a little more put together than some of the other people in the room, so I thought she was maybe there to support the younger guy she came with, maybe a relative of sorts. She spoke up in the meeting and I found out that my snap judgment was completely wrong. She was there for herself and had quite a mouth on her. I realized that I've been in Utah way too long if I've forgotten that normal people in the real world swear on a regular basis. This culture of BYU is nice, and I enjoy being able to have inteligent conversations with people, but I had mistakenly assumed that people who swear can't have inteligent conversations. This is completely untrue. I sat in a room full of people who refered to themselves as addicts and swore, but they had some of the most meaningful, deep, and heartfelt comments that I've heard in a long time. They were real, they were inteligent, and my prejiduce almost made it so I couldn't see that. I'm glad I was able to identify the problem in my thinking and fix it before I dismissed the group as having nothing to teach me. 

While listening to the stories of these people, there were hints from many that they were not the first in their family to start using. I thought about how this effected them and their lives. They inherited a culture just like everyone else, but that culture did nothing to privelege them. Instead, it hindered them. However, they were able to find people like them and create a culture within their own broken culture. There was a guy celebrating 40 years of being clean. He attributed his success to sticking with the NA program and coming to the meetings and being involved in the group. This showed me how influencial a place of belonging could be. 

I wondered how much more effective these addicts recoveries could be if they had more places of belonging, if they gained more cultural capitol outside of the using world. This makes me want to create a classroom where kids succeed no matter what they struggle with outside of my room. Once they step in, I want them to know that they belong in my room and they will be successful in my class. Maybe then they can know that they can be successful wherever they go. I just want my students to know that they are loved and they belong. 

Being the "Other"

For my "being the other" experience I decided to go to the Crabtree Building Projects Lab. It's a lab for mechanical engineers that provides equipment to help with any projects. My husband was building a trigger mechanism in the lab, so I came in to help him. I know he was a inside friend, but I thought the opportunity would be a good one since the engineering feilds are not well populated by women and I would still be an ousider even with him there. My guess is that there is a social hegemony going on there, despite "efforts" to encourage women to join the engineering majors. 

How did you feel about being the other? 
I was nervous. So nervous, I questioned everything I did. I was even unsure if I knew how to get there, which resulted in me getting lost in the building for a second. When I did finally make it to the lab, I was really reluctant to go in. I saw my husband and felt a bit better, but the feeling that everyone was staring at me still lingered. It was all in my head, but what's in your head can scare you too. 

How did you cope with otherness?
Looking back on the experience, I should have talked to the people working in there, but in the moment, I wanted to be invisible. I was so self-concious, I forgot to get any cultural artifacts. I was just taking everything in and trying not to be noticed. I was just relieved when it was over. Overall, I didn't cope as well as I could have. I don't cope well with new experiences, especially if I'm isolated. I get nervous and sick to my stomach. People say I need to get over that, and for somethings I will have to suck it up and do hard things so I can move forward in life, but I often wonder if the world just thinks introverts aren't happy in life and the only way to be successful is to be an extrovert.

What are the implications for the students in your classroom who are experiencing school as a "foreign place?" 
While in there, my husband taught me how to use one of the machines to cut a piece of metal. I realized that having someone there who I thought wouldn't judge me if I failed was critical to my success. I was willing to try because someone thought that I could do it and was willing to teach me. Asking for that kind of help from someone I didn't know would have been terrifying. I was too chicken to do it. For students in my class, I can't wait for them to ask me for help. I have to create the relationship that says "I will not judge you, just love you" and set up the classroom as a safe environment for people to ask questions and not feel bad is also key. I will probably have to go to them and personally ask how I can help them in the beginning, but once the relationship is founded, it will hopefully be easier for my students to ask me or their classmates for help. 

There were a few groups of people doing a project for a class. I noticed that among about 20 people, only two of us were female and one of them was me. It was what I expected. That's how the culture of engineering is portrayed. It seemed a shame to me, because metal working would be a cool skill to have. What is stopping me? Lots of sad excuses: like I'm too old to learn it, or I'd have to learn some kind of math that I wouldn't want to do. The real problem is that I don't feel like I belong in the culture, so I don't think I could learn. That's the real skill I want to have. I want to do things I want to do and ignore the fear of not fitting in the culture. That's the skill I need to teach my students. I have to ask them "What would you do if you thought you couldn't fail?" and encourage them to do those things. It would also help to make my classroom a sort of practice area where they can try new things without feeling like they are being judged.