IGS 12Equity in SchoolsMs. Ripley
Educational ReformAutobiography, socio-cultural awareness

Assignments:
The first one requires a number of steps and a fair bit of thought about who you are, how you got that way and what that means for what you do, how you do it, who’s affected and how. The second requires that you be a keen observer and analyst.

First Assignment
Introduction:

“Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I’m still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking about him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?) Not the little wildflowers. Nothing."

"Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. ______'s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say, you have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a’tall."

"Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain’t. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock."

"But this hard work let me tell you. He been there so long, he don’t want to budge. He threaten lightning, floods, and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it." From The Colour Purple, Alice Walker

In this excerpt from The Colour Purple, Celie is coming to terms with the degree to which a more powerful other’s notion of truth and the way the world works shapes what she sees, feels, thinks, believes and does- even though those other understandings work against her. Indeed, she recognizes what hard work it is to stop seeing through someone else’s eyes, even when she stands to gain from the stopping. This is what we mean by hegemony. I’ve provided a more detailed definition at the end of this assignment. The point to remember is that each one of us has had our ways of seeing the world and our place in it projected upon us and, if we’re going to take inclusive leadership seriously, we need to become much more conscious of what “[we’ have to git off [our] eyeball before [we] can see anything a’tall.”
Part One- Taking Stock
Let’s begin by taking a look at the lenses in front of our eyeballs. The following Social and Cultural Awareness Inventory has a purpose in which it will help you to think about your own privilege and about yourautiobiography that follows. For some categories, as your life circumstances have changed, you may want to fill in more than one response to reflect that shift. The point here is to look as honestly and seriously as possible at how your social/ cultural experience and upbringing have positioned you; to consider what life experiences you do and do not have to take seriously, depending on your context, location, history, and biography.

A Cultural / Social Awareness Inventory: peeling back the multi-focal lenses through which I understand & negotiate the world.

Cultural Inventory / Part 1 Answers / Part 2 Answers
Race
Ethnicity
Sex
Gender
Economic Status
Social Status
Beliefs/Values
Sexuality
Ability
Religion/Spiritual Practice
Political Affiliation / No politics is a deeply political thing to say
Region
Age

Part Two: Looking back of your stock:

As you look over your completed inventory, ask yourself the following kinds of questions about the account of yourself you have given:

  1. What subject positions within each of these categories are dominant or minoritized/ marginalized positions? How do I know?
  2. What’s the difference between majority and dominant? Between minority and minoritized? ( For example, it’s entirely possible to be a member of a majority group that is minoritized- consider the victims of hurricane Katrina) In which categories am I am member of a dominant/ minoritized group?
  3. How/ why might my subject position[s] influence the realities/ truths I do and don’t recognize/understand/ embrace? How might my accumulated memberships in dominant /minoritized communities influence my understanding of privilege and the way it operates? Disadvantage and the way it operates?
  4. What ideas, understandings, observations, views of reality, if any, are likely to make me feel uncomfortable or angry or offended? Which ideas, understandings, observations, views of reality, if any, are likely to make me feel affirmed and vindicated?

Again, your answers are only intended to help your thinking;. It’s important here that you think hard about your answers and the taken for granted beliefs about the world that inform them- all of us have taken for granted beliefs on which we automatically base our responses to the world.

Part Two Discourse Matching

Fill out the following chart to help you think about the extent to which your primary discourse and ‘school speak’ matched when you were trying to learn the secondary discourse of school. Things to include here might be rules, dress, values and language.

Primary Discourse Rules and Values / Overlapping rules and Values / School Discourse
Rules and Values

As you look over your completed chart, ask yourself the following kinds of questions about the degree of fit you found:

  1. What conflict, if any, existed between my PD and SD?
  2. How did I resolve the conflict / mismatch? Did I give up something in my primary discourse? If so what and what was the affect of that on me and my relationship with those who taught me my PD? Did I refuse to learn something in my secondary discourse? If so, what was the affect on me?
  3. Did the match (or lack thereof ) between my PD and my SD help me to question the messages and lessons school taught me or did it confirm that the way I had already learned to think and be was in some essential way “Right” ?

Part Three: Autobiography of a Student

This is the part you need to show to someone. Thinking now about the lenses, mirrors and windows through which you have looked all your life, considering the ways in which you have been privileged and marginalized, taking into account the fit between your early years and your experiences as a student, write a thoughtful autobiography about yourself as a grade 12 student who exists within the school and who is interested in creating more equitable school spaces. Obviously, this cannot be exhaustive; you will have to choose parts of your life that you feel tell a central story about you,being a student, being a student in grade 12 and equity. Write about what shaped you; what drew you to be how you are; what you have considered to be a good education and why. Articulate what you think you see clearly because of your experience and what the steps above have shown you thatyou need to look at more thoughtfully open mindedly and critically. How has your social class of origin shaped how you act, what you do and the way you see other students, families, communities and their discourses? How have your gender, sex and sexuality informed your understanding of school? How has your race worked for/ against you and informed the sense you make of race as an issue in your school? (Note that not seeing it as an issue is both a privilege and a kind of sense making).

There are many other questions I could ask but I don’t want to narrowly confine your exploration. What I want from each of you, as a result of going through this whole exercise, is an open- minded retrospective about you as student and a equitable human being- the strengths your Cultural and Social inventory and primary discourse have instilled in you and the unconscious limitations you suspect they have also permeated you with. This examination will give each of us an informed and thoughtful baseline from which to develop a personal plan of action for equitable leadership.

You may do this work as a traditional essay if you prefer but I am not only not opposed to your creating a multimedia presentation; having ventured into using a combination of sound, image, and print text to convey ideas lately, I find it a powerful way of conveying more than I can with print words alone.I’d actually prefer that you have the freedom to play creatively with the expression of your story because that exercise alone can teach you things about yourself that will surprise you; my experience has taught me that it takes me longer to weave image, print, and sound together than simply to write something directly. It’s worth the time it takes and, if it’s an unfamiliar area to you, it will give you an important experience with being on unfamiliar ground again. All this is to say, create your autobiographical exploration in a form that works well for you and that you are willing to share with each other and me and don’t be afraid to try something you’ve never done.

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