This was our first writing assignment in EDUC 671. At first, struggling to rationalize and realize my own biases and judgements, times I've been marginalized, times I have marginalized others, and what those experiences mean about me and the world in which I live(d), I had some difficulty with this paper. For years, I spent my adolescence and young adulthood hiding from these realizations. It took years to accept my childhood and family, but I had come to terms with it. This paper was the first time I had taken the time to really dive deeper into these matters and memories and write them down on paper. It was a chance for me to better understand myself, and by extension, myself as an educator.
Not only did this assignment help me uncover and analyze my own cultural understanding, funds of knowledge, marginalization, and how my life has been affected by the cultural norms in my city, state, and country, this essay allowed me to practice my writing and essay planning. When completing this essay, I found myself creating my own graphic organizer to keep my planning on track, answering the prompts of the rubric, and making sure I stayed focused in my writing. When given an assignment like this, it makes me realize how I can implement it into my future classroom. I believe there are major benefits to allowing students to safely explore their culture and funds of knowledge, but I believe that it should be more structured for younger students--i.e. shorter/chunked prompts, explicit graphic organizers, opportunities to discuss with peers, and teacher conferences.
The Autoethnography shows a different kind of growth. Where my Strategy Log showed a growth in terms of "tricks up my sleeve", the Autoethnography shows a growth of my own understanding of my internal/cultural identity--who I am as a teacher and more specifically as a person. Camangian states that an auto ethnography is a sort of strategy for healing and allows students to introspectively better understand their viewpoints, opinions, emotions, reactions, and overall perception of the world around them. I left my teaching job back in Michigan because I didn't feel a passion to share my story, my life, my mission. This assignment, and this class has revealed more to me than I expected. We need to understand where we are coming from in order to understand where we are going, and I feel that I better appreciate and better understand the marginalization, the hardships, and the traumas of my past--clearing way for a bright and promising future career in education.
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Camangian, P. (2010). Starting with self: Teaching autoethnography to foster critically caring literacies (pp. 179-204). National Council of Teachers of English.
The last section of this assignment was dedicated to how I would implement the Autoethnography assignment into my future classroom. As I wrote, "Sharing our stories can come into play in a variety of subjects and pedagogical methods throughout a school year. Autoethnographies in a multi-media or choice form can help stimulate students’ creativity but also their own journey of self-exploration...we must as a society understand the prejudices and marginalizations we come into contact with on both a micro and macro level in order to fight back or resist. Giving students the chance to explore where in their lives they may feel this sense of marginalization is the first step of many in identifying and wiping out the problem. Also important to the idea of self-exploration and cultural analysis, is the need to share these stories, anecdotes, worries, and concerns within the classroom. When students have an open place to share, they form bridges with their peers and these bridges may just be the safety line needed to escape a less than desirable situation or state of mind." Examples such as quick writes in journals, pair/shares and other conversation starters regarding the topics of experiences and emotions, a creative/multi-media perspective of autoethnographies (i.e. visual/auditory/written self portraits, digital computer applications, cartoons, etc.) will all help to make the auto ethnography entertaining, but more importantly meaningful in student self-discovery.
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION
EDUC 671 Autoethnography: an instructional tool to assist candidates in examining the ways they “experience, exist and explain their identities – who they are, what they stand for, and why – and to recognize their racial, cultural and gendered social relations” (Camangian, 2010). Auto ethnography “is a way of reading between the lines of {our} own lived experiences” (Alexander, 1999) and the experiences of those who share similar experiences, in order to
gain insight of oneself and others who share those experiences.
The Autoethnography correlates with the course objective of "Students will be able to practice an introduced model of reflection to examine how one’s own beliefs interact with the wide range of characteristics of all classroom students." We have covered the Critical Reflection Cycle throughout our courses, but one of the first articles we read for 671 by Howard states, "The formation of a culturally relevant teaching paradigm becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, without critical reflection." (Howard, p.198). The Autoethnography allowed me a chance to dive deep within my own cultural identity and upbringing, the marginalization I have experienced, and the overall societal norms that made me feel marginalized. All this, as Howard states, is to increase my own culturally relevant teaching based on a strong self-knowledge and understanding.