Being Honest to One’s Students and One’s Self

This is a topic that has plagued my mind and my pedagogical experiences for as long as I’ve been teaching. I am a Hispanic female, and my culture of course influences my views of the world, the ways I teach, and the topics I integrate into course materials. At this point, I’ve taught at three different institutions, two of which have high concentrations of minority students. The other, the institution where I currently teach, is composed of predominantly white students. At my other two institutions, I identified with many of my students and felt right at home. At this institution, I often feel like an outsider when interacting with students and teaching them, and I am still trying to figure out how to deal with that.

How important is identifying with students? How does it affect your teaching?

Enter: a student who was in one of my classes last year. She identified as a Mexican-American and was from my hometown. On the first day of class, she came up to me and told me, “Ms. H., I’m so excited to be in your class. As soon as I saw your name on the roster, I instantly signed up for your class.” “Thank you!” I responded, and proceeded to ask why she chose my class in particular. “Well, to be honest, Ms. H., you have a Mexican last name. That’s why.” I was stunned. This was the first time a student told me that s/he chose my class because of my last name, and I’m assuming the look on my face spoke wonders because she followed up with, “I’ve never had a Hispanic professor here. I knew that, if nothing else, at least I would feel comfortable with you.”

Fast forward to the middle of the semester. She comes up to me after class and tells me, with a tremble in her voice and sadness on her face, about her experiences at our institution. “Ms. H., I feel lonely here. I don’t fit in, I don’t belong, I have hardly any Mexican friends, I can’t find my culture anywhere, and people give me dirty looks and sometimes treat me like an outsider. I know you got your master’s at UH – what’s their undergraduate program like? I’m thinking about transferring. I know I’ll fit in more there.” I wish I would’ve had time to prepare a better response. I was torn. Part of me wanted to tell her to stick it out, that hopefully she would find more people here with whom she could identify and that hopefully her time here would get better. The other part of me, though, wanted to tell her to transfer as fast as she could because yes, this institution and this city sometimes do not feel very welcoming to minorities and that I felt the same way she did. Coming from a city rich with different cultures, it was quite a shock to come here, where I’m part of the minority and where students tell me, “Oh, you’re Hispanic, Ms. H? I thought Hernandez was your husband’s last name. I thought you were white” or “Wow Ms. H., I don’t know very many Hispanic people who are getting PhD’s.” Well, why should it matter what color I am and what my cultural background is? Frustrating.

I talked it out with my student and told her that I often felt the same way she does and that hopefully it would get better. She asked me how I cope, and I told her that my cohort, my professors, and my department created a very welcoming and diverse atmosphere that made me feel right at home. I suggested that she do the same – try to seek out like-minded people, regardless of their race/ethnicity, and to make a home here with people who made her feel welcomed and comfortable.

I struggled with my response for a while, as I did not know if it was the right thing to tell her. Was it even my place to divulge such information about how I’m very saddened at times by the unwelcoming culture here? Should I put on a straight face and pretend that racial/ethnic differences are not a problem here? Was it right of me to somewhat convince her to stay, considering I knew that staying could potentially mean more terrible experiences? I’m not trying to villainize this institution or this city by any means – that’s not my intent. There are many wonderful people here who look past cultural differences and do not make an issue out of them. However, I can’t deny that being a minority here is sometimes a very difficult and exhausting experience.

At the end of the semester, she never told me what her decision was, and I didn’t hear from her again.

Fast forward to a few months ago: I see her at the library with a friend, and she looks very happy. I’m relieved that she stayed, and I’m relieved that she looked like she was enjoying herself. As soon as she saw me, she gave me a hug and thanked me for such a wonderful class and for talking with her about this topic.

Friends and colleagues, if you’re affiliated with an institution that might not be very welcoming to your culture or your ethnicity, how do you cope? Do you have students who often express these same feelings of “outsider-ness” with you, and how do you respond? I've been to countless diversity meetings and mini-seminars--which are helpful, don't get me wrong--but they don't exactly "teach" you how to have these difficult conversations with students. I’m asking because, at this very moment, I still have Hispanic/Latino students who approach me with these same issues and topics, and the conversations don’t get any easier. I adore my students and truly love working with them. I feel like being dishonest with them is the same as being dishonest with myself.

Thoughts are appreciated. J

-Lea

On Mentoring and Love: Thanking Whom?

Mentoring for my students has saved my career. Bernadette Calafell (2007), in her piece “Mentoring and Love: An Open Letter,” writes about the mentoring relationship that saved her career as a tenure-track faculty member within a white dominated institution. This mentoring relationship reminded me of my own feelings of love for my students, and the ways that they allow me to remain a whole person in their presence. By whole person, I mean that I do not have to leave any of my identities at the door. I can be a gay husband, a critical educator, a shaman, a Xicano, a writer, or whatever. Shane Moreman and Persona Non Grata (2011) are a perfect example of the mentoring relationship that I wish to have with my students. In this powerful example of “theories in the flesh,” Moreman, a tenure-track professor at Fresno State University, and Persona Non Grata, an undocumented graduate student, utilize their mentor-mentee relationship to give voice to Persona’s story, which typically would be excluded from academia because of her lack of documentation combined with the real fear of deportation that this political status holds. This work exemplifies the type of teacher I wish to be--one that empowers, supports, yet heals as well. Through autobiographical performance and performative writing, I explore four mentor relationships that I have recently (re)/(dis)entered into thus continuing and complicating the conversation on mentoring and love by questioning: who should thank whom?

I am sitting at my desk with a former Portuguese female student from my very first public speaking class at San José State University. She is beaming and bubbly just like I remember her, yet she is different. She is almost a senior now, and as a communication studies major, she must interview a faculty member from the department about how to be successful with this particular degree. I can tell she has been looking forward to this, and to be honest, I have too. She has kept in touch with most of the class and weaves in their current statuses alongside her questions. So and so is doing great, and he or she is struggling in his/her major. The interview quickly turns into a dialogue as we each move from question to laughter to answer to clarifying question to fond memories to career development. She is still working with my high school buddy at a local restaurant--"he hasn’t told you anything about my past has he?" Her familiar laugh rings and reverberates more memories from that first semester teaching. Inside my head, I laugh at myself because I was her at one point, and now I am on the other side of this type of relationship of love. Is this how my mentors felt? 

Another day, another month, I am back at my desk with another student. This Asian-American male with glasses and a great smile has been warning me for weeks via email and in person that he was coming to interview me. In fact, two days ago, I found him sitting outside this very office waiting for me just to say that he forgot his microphone and would like to reschedule. He didn’t want to insult me by handwriting my answers in note form. He is nervous. He is intimidated but laser-focused on his task. He frames the interview: “I wanted to interview you because I look at you like a mentor. Before I took your class, I was really shy but hearing you say that you were always nervous really help me open up, so when I got this assignment, I thought of you.” I hear his words but have trouble connecting them to my own body. Me? Why would anyone want me to be their mentor? I remember this student well. He visited me in office hours that first week of class last semester--he was nervous then too. He didn’t think he could pass this class, but he did with an excellent grade (for those that care about those arbitrary things) by demonstrating excellent speaking progress and determination to succeed. I’m not sure how to proceed. Was that really me? “I have to disagree... I may have helped but it wasn’t me that did this... it was always you.”

I’m tired. Like Bilbo Baggins of the Shire in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, I feel stretched thin like butter over too much toast, but still, I agreed to two interviews with two former students to help them satisfy assignments for their courses. She is up first and wearing her Latina-identity much differently than I remembered. It is not confidence but purpose that holds her voice stronger and clearer. She wants to know about my activism and how I have pushed back because she remembers protesting with me against the 11th straight student fee hike for California State University students and their families. She has switched majors to communication studies, which is why she now has to interview me. She wants to help her community; she wants to dream about Xicana/o success, yet I hesitate because "when faced with the faces of the next generation of Latina/os, how can we honestly repeat the same mantra that the previous generation said to us? Isn’t it a lie?" (Gutierrez, 2012, p. 6). I see her face change when I tell her that I am heading to the very fringes of Aztlán to get my doctoral degree, so--I can’t be her mentor. I cringe at the irony that building more Latina/o educational pipelines means leaving my community to get a doctoral degree. He’s been listening at the doorway from the linoleum floor. My department is publishing a newsletter, and as the only M.A. graduate student heading to a doctoral program after graduation, my former Filipino student currently a 2nd semester freshman was tasked to interview me. Always brave, he literally scared me that Fall 2011 Halloween with his vampire steel contacts and dark suited costume meant to blend in with the humans to catch us off guard. He is wearing different contacts now and are those diamond earrings? He is my adviser’s assistant, and using that relationship, we reconnect and I am honest with my answers about my graduate experiences as a working-class, queer Xicano male. He can’t believe I’m leaving as he leaves me, and as I write this, I feel vulnerable. Am I really hoping that my disclosures within this mentoring relationship do not end up on the front of the department newsletter? How am I put at risk by mentoring from a place of love?

Mentoring is a huge responsibility for both participants. Like Calafell and Moreman, a mentoring relationship is about love, but for a person of color, it is often about survival. Persona Non Grata needed Moreman to survive in the academy just as much as Moreman needed her. Calafell (2011) reminds us that when it comes to mentoring "the ways people come into our lives, impact us, and in some ways serve as mentors whether we know it or not" are not always controllable. These scholarly works mirror my own lived experience in that my students are often the only people-of-color I interact with in a single day. They listen to my stories of higher education gaps and understand my feelings of being trapped in a system that doesn’t want to hear our voices. Sometimes, it feels like crawling naked over miles of broken glass. When I talk about my husband or my feelings surrounding gender, their eyes do not glaze over and their mouths react inquisitively. Such as, when issues like whiteness or (dis)ability enter the classroom dialogue, they do not push me or each other out of the space but honestly try to grapple with the concepts. In many ways, I am more impressed with them than I am with many of my colleagues in graduate school. No, I cannot stop crawling even if my stomach is leaking entrails and my arms and legs are boney stumps. When I look back, I see my trail of blood cutting a winding path through a scintillating landscape of jagged failed dreams. Is that one of my students I see crawling back there too? Are they using my bloody path to navigate their lives? Like a fish, my muscles spasm sending me flopping forward another stabbing inch. I cannot stop--my students need me.

References

Calafell, B. M. (2007). Mentoring and love: An open letter. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 7(4), 425-441.


Calafell, B. M. (2011 August 6). On the importance of mentors and friends [blog post]. AcademicZ. Retrieved from http://academicz.blogspot.com/2011/08/on-importance-of-mentors-and-friends.html


Gutierrez, R. M. (2012 April 6). Xicana/o communication pedagogy: Theorizing an agenda. Xicana/o Graduate Council Spring 2012 Newsletter. Retrieved from http://www.sjsu.edu/mas/docs/xgc_newsletter_spring2012.pdf

Moreman, S. T. & Persona Non Grata. (2011) Learning from and mentoring the undocumented AB540 student: Hearing an unheard voice. Text and Performance Quarterly, 31(3), 303-320.