Blog 2

                The article The Making of America: Negotiation of identities at the turn of the Twentieth Century by A. Pavlenko discussed the issues of immigration and identity.  It is kind of silly, when you think about it, that so many different stereotypes actually exist in America on where a person is from.  You can ask anyone, “What are you?” and that person will know that you are talking about their heritage, and respond with, “Oh, I’m Irish, German, and a little bit of Polish.”  However, it seems that when a person actually is a first generation immigrant, there are sudden stereotypes that pop up.  America is such a young country that everyone “seems” to want to be from “somewhere else”, however, why does it suddenly become a negative thing when a person actually “is” from “somewhere else”?

On page 42, Pavlenko stated that first generation immigrants have no choice but to accept the labels forced upon them.  To some sad extent, I find this to be true.  This is why I think there are so many lost languages and cultures once a person immigrates to America, because they feel that they have to conform to be like everyone else.  This reminded me of a story that I have heard about my great-grandfather, who came to the US in the late 1920s.  There were signs posted on a lot of stores reading “No Irishmen Allowed”, and because of this, he changed our family name from O’Fergus to Ferguson in an attempt to try and hide his heritage.  Although there aren’t signs as apparent as this today, there is still a lot of stereotyping found that is related to where a person is from, or where other people think they are from.  As a future educator in an elementary school, I think that it is important to bring out these heritages and backgrounds of my students to show that everyone is different and comes from a unique place.  To do this, I would love for everyone to make a book that discusses their own background, and can use pictures that tells their own story.  This can be beneficial to everyone in the classroom; and will show that even two people who may look alike with the same skin tones can have two completely different backgrounds.

As I’ve stated in pretty much this whole entry, I just think it’s really weird that no Americans actually consider themselves American, but then at the same time think they are allowed to pass judgment on people who actually are from another country.  Everyone knows that they have a different background from each other, but I think that if there is a new student in a classroom from another country, it can be really hard to relate to their peers.  This is why I think that it’s important to let my students know that everyone is different, and there are a lot more different people in the world other than just the ones in the classroom.

Article 1

This article talked about the relationship between culture and teaching English to students of other languages.  This is something that can often be difficult for teachers who have not been experienced with other cultures to understand.  Therefore, since I am an elementary education major, this is something that I find very important because even if I am not planning on working in a specific ESL setting, I want to be able to help and understand ESL students that may be in my classroom.  This article helped me reflect on my own ideas of different cultures and how I may use it in my future classroom.

As I read the article, I tried to think of what my own interpretation of culture is.  I think is can be based on “where you’re from”; whether that includes geography, like different states or even different countries, or it could be looked at as generational.  As the article stated, culture is not “neatly bound”, and can be highly individualized.  To go deeper, although I was raised in the same house by the same parents as my sisters, the three of us have been exposed to such different things in our lives that our culture backgrounds are extremely different.  They have lived places such as Mexico, Argentina, Spain, and Taiwan, while I have never been exposed to any of those places.  From a generation standpoint, I would consider my culture of learning far more different than that of my parents, for they did not have the ways of technology in which I have.  However, this can be looked at as a geographical issue as well.  People from less-technological parts of the world would not research a paper the same way as I would, which usually consists of simply typing my topic into Google and reading about it there. 

This made me think of a whole other issue, which is, when I have a student from another culture in my classroom, the issue in learning may not JUST be able a language barrier, instead, that this student may very well not be familiar with the American education system and all that comes with it.  I can relate: this past year, I studied abroad in Scotland.  Here, they spoke English (which still included a large language barrier), but when taking my courses, there were things that I had never heard of before but was expected to know.  This was not just limited to school work either, and included things like what they consider polite manners, such as word choice or tipping at a restaurant.  This helped me to think that when one is introduced to a new culture, there are a whole group of issues that can arise, aside from just the language issue.  Through this course, I hope to look further into these differences so that in my future classroom I can relate to my students as much as possible, for although I will not know every culture, I will want my students to know that I am interested.