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Schooling / Cultural Autobiography

While I certainly am an individual, my childhood can in some ways be viewed through a lens of

group stereotypes. I grew up in a strong position of power but didn’t know it. I’m a

heterosexual, Christian (mainline Protestant), white, middle-class male. From age five until age

thirty-one I spent majority of my time in a place called Bryan, Ohio. Located an hour west of

Toledo, Ohio, and an hour south of Jackson, Michigan, Bryan is in the heart of the flat

agricultural area of northwest Ohio. The although it was a small town, it had a strong industrial

base and was surrounded by smaller communities that were more rural-based. Wikipedia lists

demographic data: “As of the census[5] of 2000, there were 8,333 people.The racial makeup of

the city was 96.23% White, 0.31% African American, 0.23% Native American, 0.71% Asian,

1.40% fromother races, and 1.12% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were

3.73% of the population.” Anecdotally, I doubt that it was much different during my school years

1975-1988.” As a point of fact, Author James Loewen lists Bryan as a “possible sundown town,”

simply based on such present day demographics.

Bryan was proud of being voted onto one of those “best small towns in Ohio/Midwest/etc.” type

of list. Looking back, it seems that it could have been a little like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry or

Mr. Rogers neighborhood. As a fourth or fifth grader I rode my bike more than a mile to school.

But because the town was so homogeneously white, this experience was filled (or totally

consumed) with white privilege as described by McIntosh (1988). My mom, dad, younger sister

and I lived in just one two-story four-bedroom / two and a half bath home with a two car garage

on a cul-de-sac. All our neighbors were nice to us and if we had moved we would have been

able to buy/rent as we wished and our neighbors would likely also have been friendly to us. I was
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taught about “stranger-danger” but my parents did not have to try to protect me from a general

dislike of others nor did they ever have to discuss systemic racism to protect me. This privilege

extended, of course, to the school as described by Olson (1992). I was never called on by my

teachers to explain my race, or special cultural events or celebrations. I don’t recall ever

discussing or celebrating any holiday other than the standard white Christian or secular

American standards. I don’t remember ever seeing a textbook or film or poster where some other

race was represented predominantly. It could have happened, but the very next instructional

device would again be filled with only White people.

When I was in my first career position, teaching outdoor science to kids for a conservation

agency of the government, we went to a large group training on diversity. The speaker was

African American and I remember him very clearly acknowledging that most of the White

people in the room had very little experience with people of other races. He even suggested that

for most of us, the majority of black faces we saw on television were in one of three types of

popular shows: 1) sports, 2) musicians/entertainers, or 3) on Cops (as usually alleged criminals).

In her paper Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us, author Linda Christensen (2001) focuses on the

genre of children’s literature and film and says that in these media devices “they learn that

women are passive, men are strong, and people of color are either absent or evil.” I connect this

beyond her focus on children’s literature to include the rest the media that are so prevalent and

pervasive in their impact on youth.

I watched the media, I consumed the media. But any serious race-relations issues were always

happening in the big cities far away. The diversity speaker was correct. Practically all of the

people of color I saw were on MTV or playing football, or basketball. I was a media consumer

of Run DMC, Prince, NWA, Michael Jackson, and Public Enemy. I was a consumer of Mean
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Joe Green, Lynn Swan, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan. I was watching television news to

learn about break dancing instead of gang fights, Bush/Dukakis/Willie Horton, David Duke’s run

for Louisiana Governor, Rodney King and O.J. Simpson. The only thing I had that was real in

my childhood was an active church youth group that dealt with (discussed at length) racial issues

sometimes. It’s been many years, but I remember our service visits to a Toledo soup kitchen, two

national youth conferences in Denver / San Antonio, and our many discussions of apartheid in

South Africa. Kirk and Okazawa-Rey (2004) point out that “For White people descended from

European immigrants to this country, the advantages of being White are not always fully

recognized or acknowledged…As a result, White people in the United States tend to think of all

identities as equal.” When I was ten years old I never had a thought about race because I was

immersed in whiteness. As I grew and developed critical thinking skills all of these race

relations issues I was exposed to seemed incongruous with my life experience, again my

privilege showing up. It took many years for me to truly begin to understand the level of

individual, institutional, and structural discrimination present in our system. Looking back, the

L.A. riots after the Rodney King verdict might as well have been happening in the South African

apartheid system. That was how far removed it felt and how powerless I felt to make any kind of

change in my life.

Because of the racially homogeneous nature of this type of upbringing, the groupings in my

school were situated more around issues of class and masculinity. I was middle class. We owned

our home and had two cars but out of financial necessity only took vacations to see family. In all

my years of youth, I remember traveling on three family trips that were more typical week long

vacations (Toronto, Hershey PA, and Orlando.) I spent time at my next door neighbors the

Smith’s house playing Atari and eating Doritos, but we didn’t get video games when they came
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out and at home we always got off-brand chips. Dad had two main jobs through my childhood.

One was as a regional sales representative (read traveling sales) for an agricultural equipment

company, and then later he was general manager for a local farm equipment dealership. Mom

stayed home with us (sister one year younger) then when we were in middle school she went

back to school and worked actively part/full time as a real estate agent. They knew they were at

the edge of working class and through a simple decision helped my sister and I push farther

upward fully into the middle class by getting us to college. Donna Langston (1995) in her piece

Tired of Playing Monopoly writes that “Class is more than just the amount of money you have;

it’s also the presence of economic security. For the working class and poor, working and eating

are matters of survival.” I would say that when I was younger we were closer to the lower edge

of middle class because we didn’t have that economic security she describes. Neither of my

parents went to college, but I never remember a time when that was ever a point of discussion for

my sister or me. They would say that we were going to college. I suppose that had my sister or I

really wanted a career path that didn’t include college, my parents would have been supportive,

they usually were. But I think they believed as Langston wrote that “class is the schools you

attend, the education you attain, class is the very jobs you will work at throughout your adult

life.”

When you are a child you don’t know the reasons why you don’t get to do what the neighbors

do. In elementary school my best friend was the son of one of the local factory presidents.

Every year they would be gone for a summer month on an island in Georgia, every winter they

were in the western U.S. or Canada skiing for a week. His dad drove a Mercedes and a Jaguar.

Although we stayed friends throughout school, during middle school we drifted apart. I don’t
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have anything I can point at as to why we separated, but as I grew old enough to understand, I’ve

always suspected that it was partly due to class distinctions.

The hallways of Bryan High School were filled with examples of classism. As Langston (1995)

says it was “how you think, feel, act, look, dress, talk, move and walk.” Highlighting just dress,

there were right and wrong ways to dress and everybody knew them. There was a time in the

early eighties when all the guys had to have a pair of parachute pants or you weren’t part of the

“in crowd.” I remember high status people wearing clothes from designers like Polo and Izod

and Guess jeans. Stuck in the middle (class), I eventually knew my parents couldn’t afford to pay

$50 for shirts with designer labels when there were $10 versions in other stores. I saw this as an

inequity back then. I rejected the tradition of wearing new clothes the first week of school. I

couldn’t have used the words, but recognized it as a form of identity positioning. I didn’t fall

strongly into any friend groups and moved among multiple. Most everyone can say that they

were picked-on in High School, but I saw the classism between the children of factory workers

versus the children of doctors and attorneys. Lines of friendship and association were clearly

drawn and only broken on infrequent occasions like some team sports (even then tensioned

sometimes).

When I came back home after college to work in the conservation agency, I used to do a lot of

classroom presentations to teach kids about things like the water cycle and forestry. Handling

student comments and discipline, I noticed that in fourth grade the majority of students didn’t yet

segregate themselves by class. But by sixth grade serious distinctions were being made by the

students. Multiple times I witnessed examples of elitism based on how much money their

parents earned and this disturbed me.

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The boy’s groupings in my high school could have been observed Michael Kimmel in order for

him to write Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of

Gender Identity. Just to highlight a few key areas, I don’t think I grew up with any male who

wasn’t called “sissy” or usually one of the more derogatory versions hundreds of times. Get hurt

playing backyard football – sissy. Don’t want to get into a fight – wimp. In fact, kids can make

up hundreds of names to call each other, but males trying to reinforce their own manhood by

questioning someone else’s manhood have created a specific category of insult. For a status

check – I loved sports when we all could play in elementary school. As we started

differentiating ability levels in middle school I phased out. I was the shortest boy in 6th grade

and not very aggressive. This never felt bad until I started understanding girls seemed to like the

athletes more. And it didn’t seem like the athletes got picked-on nearly as much (my limited

perspective). By the time we entered high school the violence level of athletics had increased. I

remember Rusty P, who was also a smaller guy like me, having endless praise heaped on him for

hitting an opposing football player and knocking him out of the rest of a Freshman football

game. Other kids seemed happy that he had possibly hurt someone but I didn’t like the idea at

all.

In considering my identity as an urban educator, this course has helped solidify my

understanding of my positioning as a member of multiple dominant groups. I know where I’ve

come from but the readings this summer have really given me the ability to look critically about

both my background and my current behaviors and personality.

It would be really interesting to hear what a psychiatrist would say about my interest in the

SETS-UP program and urban education. In the paper above I’ve described myself as a person
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who doesn’t feel like he fully fit into either the typical masculine culture society pushed me

toward or the upper middle class status level that so many people seek. I didn’t detail it, but I did

develop a strong idea of service during middle and high school. And especially over the last ten

years, I have come more and more to recognize the inequities in our society. A couple years ago

I took an assessment called Strengths Finder 2.0. One of top five “themes” I exhibit is that of

and Includer. According to my personal report, “people who are especially talented in the

Includer theme are accepting of others. They show awareness of those who feel left out, and

make an effort to include them.” I guess I’ve always been bothered by the idea of leaving people

behind. When you look at my career choices, I’ve tried to do work that was meaningful to me,

meaningful to other people, and meaningful to society. This new role as a multicultural urban

educator is simple a new journey in my life where I am able to combine my love of learning,

skills in teaching, desire for meaningful impact, and aspirations for social justice. I see so many

things coming together to help me become a culturally relevant teacher. I think it’s appropriate to

include my recently completed teaching philosophy because it ties directly into this paper.

As found on my website: I’m a facilitator. My role as a facilitator is to build student’s own

capacity, to help them take charge of their own learning and to help draw out and capitalize on
both their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. I’ll realize this specifically through culturally
relevant teaching that is responsive to individual student needs. It strives to make connections to
their daily lives currently and empowers them to be agents of social change in their future
communities. This demands that my classroom creates a safe space for all students to speak,
interact, challenge, fail and succeed, where they are all valued as human beings deserving of the
utmost respect. In my implementation of culturally relevant teaching, students are viewed as
people whose character is important. This type of classroom necessitates an environment where
we are co-constructing knowledge through effective questioning strategies and a reliance upon
formative assessment. It predicates an environment where students are actively investigating and
socially collaborating.
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I know that even though I’ve faced some challenges in my life, there are many, many people

who have had a considerably tougher life. My dominant position in society has afforded me

privilege that I don’t fully understand and this has made it substantially easier for me to complete

both high school and college, buy homes, develop leadership skills, and succeed professionally.

I realize that my life experiences have been different than the majority of my students at Eastern

High School in Lansing and appreciate that I can’t really know what their lives are truly like.

Each of us has a unique experience. To become a successful beginning teacher, I need to

continue to cultivate spirit of empathy and openness to new experiences and new learning.

References
Bryan, Ohio. (n.d.) Retrieved August 14, 2016 from the Bryan, Ohio Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan,_Ohio
Christensen, L. (2001). Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us. In Bigelow B., Rethinking our
Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice (pages 451-456). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking
Schools
Johnson, A.G. (2006) Privilege, Power and Difference. Boson, MA: McGraw-Hill.
Kimmel M. (2000) Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of
Gender Identity. In Ore, T. The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class,
Gender and Sexuality (pages 403 – 409). New York McGraw Hill
Kirk, G& Okazawa-Rey, M. (2004) Identities and Social Locations (CH 2 PG 8-14) in Adams,
M. Readings for Diversity and Social Justice. New York: Routledge
Langston, D. (1995). “Tired of Playing Monopoly?” In M.L. Andersonand P.H. Collins, eds.,
Race, Class and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study. New York: St. Martin’s.
McIntosh, P. (1988). “White Privilege: Unpacking the invisible Knapsack.” Excerpted from
Working Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See
Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies.” Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College Center
on Research on Women.
Olson, R.A. (1992) Eliminating White Privilege in Schools: An Awesome Challenge for White
Parents and Educators. St. Paul, MN: Supporting Diversity in Schools Through Family and
Community Involvement.