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.

Excuse me, Perdón. And other translations

I have become so keenly aware of my difference.  Who would've thought it could be greater?  As a ten-year-old Chilean immigrant girl, I worked so hard to lose my "otherness."  I watched hours of American TV sitcoms, adopted the mannerisms, accents, and sarcasm.  I "whitened" or Americanized more than my siblings did, at least at first.  I studied and learned English so well so I could know it as well as all the other kids in my grade--I needed to be their equal.  I became "Beni" since they couldn't say name.  I wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to accept me and make myself as "normal" as possible so I wouldn't stand out--you know, in middle school when standing out was a bad thing.

Even though I worked so hard to "be like them," I realize I will never be one of them.  Little things over time hinted at it.  There are things that I just can't express as well in English, some memories and feelings that are more potent and beautiful in Spanish.

When I became a citizen, I was expected to forsake my country for the United States.  But how can they not understand?  El amor que se trae en la sangre no se puede borrar.  You can't have a Bloody Mary without the tomato juice in it.

(just bear with my metaphors, please).

In the end... even if I am now a United States citizen, I am still different.

"Naturalized," not "natural born."  The difference remains.

While those words can define it concretely, the difference as I have come to recognize vividly in grad school comes from life and lived experience, in moments, emotions, relationships and people.  What I have come to understand is that I was born into and grew up with a completely different dictionary and encyclopedia of world experiences that make sense of my life and my world.  

Those around me who have not lived that experience do not understand me.  I live life differently.  I form relationships differently.  I value work and family and friends and my time differently.  Touch and actual contact are part of my livelihood.  I communicate and connect and survive through relationships and emotional exchanges with those I am close to.  My family is equivalent to the blood running through my veins.  And a delicious meal can literally make me dance.  (Cuban coffee, sweet plantains, manjar—where was I?  Ah yes…).

Translation has become a constant part of my existence as I try to explain myself, my experiences, my stories to those around me.  And it is no stranger to the academic world.

As far as I can see, it is our burden as Latina/o Communication Studies scholars to explain ourselves, excuse ourselves, give reason for ourselves.  If I am wrong in this, I ask that you tell me so!  As readers, people need to be compelled by something in order to engage it.  In some form it must matter, or relate, or affect them.

Currently, I feel like the drop of oil in an ocean of water.  I’m here.  I’m floating.  I’m hanging out.  I am seen.  But no one is absorbing me.  Or worst yet, I’ve swallowed one of El Chapulín Colorado’s Pastillas de Chiquitolina’s and I am Lilliputian in stature, and it doesn’t matter how much I flail my arms.  I am still just a spec of dust in the grand scheme of the academic world.  Who cares?! I’m just another minority group trying to talk about my subaltern experience.  What’s new?!

I guess in the end what I am finding—and I apologize for my nihilistic perspective.  Maybe it’s because it’s April (taxes, you know)—is that that difference I am facing all too often becomes equivalent to feeling insignificant, ignored, unimportant.  Too different to be concerned with.  Etc., etc.

So what say you, internets?  Any hope to spare for a novice academic?

~ BMYV

When praxis bites

I have been involved with an art and cultural nonprofit org for many years. In fact, I am now the president of our board. The center is located in one of the poorest and oldest parts of town. We believe that the people of the neighborhood should have an outlet for creative expression. We hold afterschool art classes for kids and adults. We hold music and language classes. We employ juvenile offenders who learn landscape design and gardening in support of the neighborhood gardens that we sponsor. They learn to use tools and measurement (to build Day of the Dead altars, raised flower boxes, bird houses for gardens, speaker stands for our sound system, etc.).

Agencies and philanthropic groups blow in with grant money promising great things then leave after a year or two. We struggle from fundraiser to fundraiser trying to make sure our director gets paid and keep our programs afloat.

But this post isn’t about our programs or our resources; it’s about working with other members of the board. Like me, some are professionals working at a local university, two are attorneys with the city and others work at local businesses. All are passionate about the arts and about preserving, honoring and promoting our respective Latin@ heritages.

In many ways, the board reflects aspects of our ethnicity. No matter when a meeting time is posted, the meeting begins 30-40 minutes after that. It is more important to have warm tamales (even for a 9:00 a.m. meeting) than it is to have an agenda. One board member has his daughter-in-law on the board; there is another couple on the board, another member brings his wife to meetings, the director’s cousin is on the board, and another member is madrina to the director’s daughter. People remember who was mad at whom 15 years ago.

Everyone knows we need a strategic plan to get bigger grants, but it has taken a year to get one composed and approved. Some members still wink when they say “plan” because we all know we are going to improvise our way through as always.

Every time I enter this space, I keep hearing in my brain “collectivist culture,” “family oriented,” “present orientation.”  As someone who subscribes to the ideals of action research and dialogic communication, I let all of this play out. I struggle against imposing my standards or preferences. My approach is to let members drive our action and only take individual action when they turn to me to fix something or object on behalf of the board to some city interest. In fact, I am drawn to this org because it is so unlike the university where I work—everyone is warm and giving and we truly enjoy each other’s company. It’s like growing up with my primos.

I accept that our board work is highly social in nature. Yet the org could do much more for the community if it used its resources differently, if it used time efficiently and if it partnered with other arts orgs differently. We could remove so many obstacles to our progress if members returned emails and voicemail messages instead of waiting to see someone at the gas station or at zumba class.

I feel guilty for wanting us to be different and yet I am accepted and trusted because I am the same as everyone else. I want to intervene and create change and yet I want us to stay as we are. Even in this “safe” space, I feel torn by competing prescriptions and practices.

I don’t have the same comfort, like Anzaldúa, “to rebel and to rail at my culture.”  

Anyway, my point is this: Don’t worry that as an academic you will somehow abandon our hybrid/border sensibility—it will hunt you down and find you wherever you go.

ag 

Standardized Tests Shortchange Education: Concern for Minority Youth

I get why we need standardized tests. Teachers teach the objectives, students get tested on the objectives and state tests provide a standard, verifiable way to ensure that all students are where they need to be. But not all students are the same. They do not begin the same way and they certainly do not progress the same. They are each unique individuals who may not comfortably conform to a test that is so confining and narrow in format.

In a school that is 65% Hispanic, 28% Black, and 3% White as well as Asian, “the test” has come to dominate our curriculum at the expense of all else. 

People are always talking about how public school teachers only teach to the test but nobody really knows what this means. About a month ago, a story ran in the Houston Chronicle about “the war room,” an entire classroom paneled with white boards from ceiling to floor (never mind that I am still working with chalkboards). Every wall is covered in magnetic strips describing every student’s name, demographics, teacher, scores from the past and anticipated scores for the current year. Everything is color-coded so that each student can be known in a single glance from their at-risk status to their language proficiency. 

The students are reduced to numbers, lives are reduced to statistics and teachers are reduced to input variables. I recognize the need for data and I understand the necessity of “leaving no child left behind,” but the extremes of this type of analysis leave me sick to my stomach. I do not teach a standardized subject. I am an elective teacher for Communication Applications and my job is to “assist” the “core” areas in ensuring all I do is somehow, TAKS (now STAAR)- related. 

There are 4 tests: English, Math, Social Studies and Science. For each of these tests, schools will shut down for a half to a whole day in order for students to “practice” taking these tests in real, simulated conditions. Once all practice testing is complete, students who are not “on track” to receive the scores necessary to pass will be pulled from their elective courses (my class, along with Art, Theatre, and anything else un-tested) in order to attend testing tutorials. 

Electives are the reason many students bother to come to school at all, and since this process has begun, our school’s attendance has begun to drop. As an elective teacher, we are not allowed to mark these students absent, and we are responsible for ensuring these pre-selected students are caught up with all they miss in order to pass our classes. By the way, this is not just for students simply at-risk of scoring low on these standardized tests; tutorials are also being required of those very close to achieving  “commended” status in order to improve the school’s bottom line.

As a non-core, elective teacher, my course has been deemed as not nearly as important as core-tested subjects by my own administrators. As a Latina educator struggling with my own voice in a school whose teacher demographics (40% Black, 40% White, 15% Hispanic) are hardly reflective of the students, I urge future Latino/a educators to question the validity of such a limited focus.  The challenges our country and our world will face in the future will require problem-solving, innovation and imagination; qualities which are being stamped out as our public institutions systematically require that every thought be standardized.

~ A Latina high school teacher in Houston, Texas currently enrolled in a Masters program at UH

Reflections on NCA 2011: Justifying Diversity

As we embark upon another semester of teaching, research, and service, I would like to start our first post of 2012 with reflections from NCA 2011.

First, welcome to the new blog contributors stemming from ties forged at various NCA panels. Second, I would like to reiterate that this is meant to be a safe space for us as Latino/a academics to discuss issues pertaining to the big three of academic life: research, teaching, service.

The panels I participated on this past NCA in New Orleans were productive. I came away feeling energized to make the next move on my projects, and relieved to be in contact with other like-minded scholars. On the other hand, I heard about others' experiences in not-so-productive, even hostile panel sessions. Of course interpersonally we are all diverse and approach life from specific standpoints --- that's a given, academically and otherwise.

However, does that mean that we can't foster an academically free environment of respect and disagreement? Do the two have to be irreconcilable?

As Bernadette noted of her own experience with the late Nacho Cordova (R.I.P.), though we might not always agree theoretically (or methodologically) we can certainly still respect each others' work. I would say this is something worthy of striving towards - always be respectful but able to critique others (and accept such criticism yourself). I personally believe that criticism provides ample room for improving or clarifying one's own arguments. In fact, I regularly encourage my students to debate hot topic issues with the preface that they should not necessarily shy away from bringing forth a position that goes against the grain. After all, I can't imagine a better way to effectively argue than to be familiar with the opposition's take on your position!

Still, when one hears comments about others' work that are utterly disrespectful, though they may be made with *critical and scholarly* intentions, what is the best response? Where is such a fine line drawn? We all know that academia involves a good amount of rejection and criticism so perhaps the easiest response is to get over it and continue the conversation. However, what I'm more digging at is an underlying theme of disregard or disrespect for marginal minority work. For example, others who genuinely do not see the value in promoting diverse voices might easily disregard some body of work with even such a label of "diversity" or hint of the topic without the explicit label. What about when working on a controversial topic? A student of color recently told me he felt the best way to rid the world of racism is to just stop talking about it. Perhaps communication scholars feel the same way and this might account for shying away from touchy subjects.

The work of justifying minority (though not always controversial) scholarship can be a heavy, taxing burden. It's a fight worth fighting, in my eyes. I'm especially curious to hear what the more seasoned scholars have to say about this and strategies that are used to navigate these tensions at conferences and in routine academic life.

~ Amanda R. Martinez, Ph.D.

On the Importance of Mentors and Friends

For years now I have been reflecting on the importance of mentors, those who are both formally and informally matched with us. In the past I have written about the topic, particularly in my essay, "Mentoring and Love: An Open Letter." But most recently, I have revisited the topic because of the loss of three colleagues in the field: John Warren, Ray Puchot, and Nacho Cordova. I had the privilege of knowing all of these men to varying degrees, but they were all folks I looked forward to running into every year at our national convention, NCA. I have already written a bit about these losses on my own blog, but in the context of this space reflecting on critical pedagogy I think of them again. Each was a mentor. John Warren spend his career writing and mentoring in the field, particularly in Critical Communication Pedagogy, an area he helped pioneer. Ray and Nacho were pioneers and advocates in the field of Latina/o Communication Studies, but also in the formation of the discipline organizationally. Both were active in creating a space for our voices as Latinos in structure of NCA; something we might remember was not always there and we still fight for.  Ray was the Parliamentarian of the group and could always be counted on to be at meetings to inform the structure and hope his usual, "Hola amigo!" followed by a big hug. He was always professional and always wanting to make connections across caucuses. I do not remember an NCA without him. Likewise, Nacho was one of the central members of the LCSD and La Raza Caucus who had also served as Vice-Chair and Chair, which included program planning (a thankless job indeed). Nacho's work in rhetoric was central in creating a space for Latina/o Communication Studies. Nacho was also one of the few Puerto Rican scholars in the field I have met. Though he and I did not always agree theoretically, I always respected him and his work. I was intrigued by the photography he had been doing. From what I hear he was a much loved teacher and mentor at Williamette.

I reflect on these men because they have reminded me of the ways people come into our lives, impact us, and in some ways serve as mentors whether we know it or not. I was inspired by Ray's pride in La Raza and his determination to fight for us at the national organization. John's work ethic and work inspired me and continues to do as. The same with Nacho. Nacho was also a bit of a veterano in the area and he was someone that I looked to as a leader in the area both in regards to research and professional service. He was committed to mentoring a new generation of scholars in Latina/o Communication Studies as he had been organizing a panel for them this past year at NCA. He wanted to remind us all of the importance of being mentors. We will honor each of these men at NCA, but I wonder if we as critical educators might continue to honor them by embodying the spirit of reciprocity each one lived.

To Be or Not to Be Latina

The following essay was written in a moment of crisis, in a moment of painful identity struggle, from when I first moved to the United States. That is how I felt back then. Thanks to a lot of great readings and the support of amazing people, I am slowly finding my own place in this country.

To Be or Not to Be Latina

           

When I moved to the US three months ago, I was not sure how people here would read me in terms of race/ethnicity. Having lived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for my whole life, race/ethnicity was not one of my biggest concerns while living there. In fact, I have always seen myself as a privileged person in a lot of ways. In Brazil, social class is still seen as the hardest struggle to overcome: “If you are poor”, people say, “It does not matter if you are White, Brown, or Black. It will be just as hard”.  Even though I have serious doubts regarding this type of statement (I do think it can become harder if you are poor, African descendent, and a woman). I believe I embraced this idea, considering my traditional leftist political and ideological perspectives. Therefore, race, color, or cultural background were elements which I rarely thought about while living in Brazil.

            Now, living in the US, I am facing issues such as being read as a woman of color. I first realized that was my reality here when I received, weeks ago, an invitation to a student of color meeting at the university. I still do not know exactly what that means. The consequences of being framed in this category remain obscure to me so far. Do I have to fight for something? Do I have to work harder than Whites? Am I going to suffer any type of prejudice for looking darker than Whites? Am I going to be more likely to be subjugated for being a woman of color? Am I ready to fight back?

I come from Latin America,I also a woman of color. Notice I did not say “I am a Latina.” I am still negotiating whether I want to be identified as such, or “Brazilian” will be how I will categorize myself. Do I control these things? Can I choose to be a Latina, or a Brazilian? I did not choose to be a woman of color; this is just the way people read me. What makes me think I will be the one deciding this matter?

Reading “La conciencia de la Mestiza,” from Glória Anzaldúa, I identified with her writings. But at the same time, I had the impression Anzaldúa was not including Portuguese-speaking people in the category “Mestiza,” or to state “somos de una gente.” Some people do not include Brazilians in the Latina/o category, including Brazilians. Where do I fit, then?

The fact that people know nothing about where I come from or what language I speak is sometimes frustrating, but also gives me the chance to reinvent myself, at least to a limited extent. Sometimes I refuse to be categorized as a Latina. Sometimes I identify myself as a Latina. Does that mean I am reinventing myself or is it just a demonstration of my identity struggle? Or perhaps both? What are the implications of being a Latina that speaks Portuguese? Does that make any difference? Am I going to be considered a fraud? Am I Latina enough?

The truth is that no matter what I state, to be or not to be Latina is definitely my biggest struggle right now. Being a Latina encompasses a lot of oppressive elements. Am I oppressed enough to claim this identity? Am I having a diasporic crisis? Is living in “la frontera” the best choice to heal my internal conflicts? Right now, I see myself as my own worst enemy. I cannot decide what I want or where I belong. On the other hand, I do not know how much choice I have in this struggle of identity. I am still fighting to transform my small “I” into my total Self.

Raquel Portilho