Identity Matters: Standing in Solidarity with our Students
by Sarah Bernadette Ottow
NOTE: The first eight paragraphs are an excerpt from The Language Lens for Content Classrooms, by Sarah B. Ottow .
One of my favorite sayings I kept in mind as a teacher and now as a consultant is, Kids don’t care what you know until they know that you care. That is, we can have the most well-planned and thought out lessons and tips and strategies and standards with which to teach but if we don’t connect with our students, we won’t get very far.
We need to make sure we understand what students are bringing to school in order to connect to them well and to help them engage in our content area. This is the foundation for all strong teaching that differentiates by not just academic needs, but linguistic needs and social-emotional needs. In this chapter, we will spend time thinking about how we can “know what we don’t know” about our students so that they do, in fact, know that we care--about their language, their culture, their interests and even their hopes and dreams.
Teach Your Students, Not Just Your Content Area
Before planning any academic content, it is important to get to know our students and try to put ourselves in their shoes. We can have all the latest and greatest teaching strategies in our toolbox, but if we don’t stop to get to know our students, we may not get that far in actually advancing their learning. It is important to remember that it is our responsibility as educators to meet students where they are and to honor who are they are into their learning experiences. Identities must be examined as we approach all learning situations, including our identities as educators and those of our students. Our mindset matters in our approach to teaching students from various backgrounds. It is very important to learn about who our students are and what they bring to our classroom. This is particularly important with diverse learners whose cultural and linguistic identities may not be represented in a traditional American school setting. In our work at Confianza, we teach educators to reflect and deepen what we call an “equity-based mindset” because we want all educators to want--and strive for--equitable outcomes for all students.
When we take the time to get to know our students and their unique gifts and experiences, we show them that we care about who they are, we want to learn about their experiences and we want to hear their stories. We show them that we are investing in them as people and that we take the time to integrate their identities in the classroom. We demonstrate that learning is co-constructed, a constant transaction between teacher and student. When we invest in our students’ identities, we can experience a return on this investment in the form of increased student engagement and higher performance.
More than anything, we model the habit of lifelong learning, reaping the rewards of learning from our students, something I have become richer for throughout my years of teaching having worked with hundreds of students from various backgrounds. For every student I have taught, he or she has taught me tenfold. Having been both a classroom teacher and an ELL specialist, I’ve learned from all of my students. From those with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, I’ve been able to learn about the world right in my classroom.
Demonstrating Mutual Respect and Trust
It’s important to keep an asset-based mindset and remember that culturally and linguistically diverse students often bring experiences that aren’t always seen in the mainstream curriculum. That’s why it’s our job, as their teachers, to integrate their identities into the classroom. In fact, I named my organization, Confianza, after this cultural concept. Confianza in Spanish means “mutual respect and trust” which is at the heart of all learning and, when we attend to this with our students, we can help balance the relationships and make sure that students feel included in their own learning career. Plus, we might even learn something new about our students, our community or the world!
A Global and Multicultural Perspective
Often with some students, we may see a disconnection between home and school. One reason that ELLs and other culturally diverse students may not feel connected to school is, aside from the language being a challenge, much of the curriculum may feature typical ‘American’ topics that may not be readily accessible to learners from other cultures. For example, when studying literature, science, social studies and even math, we generally come from an American perspective, not necessarily a global one, or multicultural one. If we can uncover this ‘mismatch’ of student experience to the curriculum, we may be able to enhance our curriculum to better match the lives of our students. If our goal is for students to be more engaged in the classroom, doesn’t it make sense that their identities are somehow present in it? If students aren’t engaged in the curriculum, underperformance, not to mention behavior management issues, can result. As my esteemed graduate advisor Dr. Martin Haberman said to me as I began teaching, The best classroom management is a student-centered curriculum. I worked hard in my formative years to make my “standard” curriculum more meaningful for my students so that they could not only see their identities reflected in the classroom but were, more often than not, inspired to contribute, to learn and to grow.
The role of the teacher is critical is setting the tone for students and exemplifying safe, respectful learning. By more intentionally connecting to students’ home lives or funds of knowledge into our planning, we can hope for a subsequent increase in engagement and overall performance. “Funds of knowledge” is a key concept in working with culturally and linguistically diverse students and families By connecting students’ lives to the curriculum as well as the lives of their families more intentionally, we can enact a richer learning experience overall. So, how do we do this? How can we invest in our students’ identities? Read more about Identity Investment in Chapter 2 of The Language Lens as well as in our blogs listed at the end of this article.
Start with Your Own Identity
Our students’ identities matter and our own identities as educators matter, too. When bring our own life experience, our own social location, and our own biases to the classroom. Plus, we are in a position of power.
In contexts of cultural, linguistic, or economic diversity, where social inequality inevitably exists, these interactions are never neutral; they either challenge the operation of coercive relations of power in the wider society or they reinforce those power relations. - Schecter and Cummins (2003:9)
We cannot take our position of power for granted. As social agents, we must consider who we are and how we can learn from our own complex identity to either challenge the status quo or reinforce it. When we choose to look inward and see our own experiences and our own biases, we can then stand in solidarity with our, building bridges from our experiences to theirs.
For example, let’s look at an identity wheel about me, Sarah Bernadette:
As I model this activity for you, I invite you to consider how you can do this kind of activity with your students and even your colleagues. Here is a lesson plan to inspire you to adapt the identity wheel activity to use in your own classroom.
I put some aspects of my identity in this identity wheel. I choose what defines me. We need to empower students and each other with this very simple fact: We define our own identities; others do not get to define us.
Some less visible aspects of my identity include having been a “free lunch kid” who was also the first in my family to go to college. Also, as an adolescent, I moved across the country in the middle of high school to a different regional culture (that also included language differences!) These experiences being “otherized” are some of the key experiences that make me compassionate to those in similar situations, especially secondary Newcomer students and those living in poverty, ashamed of wearing secondhand clothes and not knowing how to navigate AP courses and college, among other things. I also have a younger sister with birth defects and disabilities that has shaped me into an educator and ally more than I can fully express here.
A more visible aspect of my identity is that I am a White woman, representing the vast majority of educators in the United States. With my identity as a White woman, I have a platform which I take very seriously, striving to stand for others who do not have the same or similar position of privilege in our society. I stand beside my students, my clients, and all people of color as an ally, not as a savior. As a White woman who taught Black and Latinx students, I knew my background was very different from those I was charged with to teach and nurture. I had to grow—and I try to grow everyday and will as long as I live—to attune my social justice lens, not just through my formal studies and Masters degree but through my words, actions and support for schools as a lifelong learner. Furthermore, as an auntie and caregiver of biracial children in my family, I am even more accurately aware of risks they may encounter in school and in society simply because of the color of their skin. While I will never understand what racism feels like as a White woman, I can try to stand for what’s right by standing in solidarity with those who do.
I consciously transfer awareness into my work everyday as a change agent in schools and in the national and international community. I have chosen to live and work in many different countries and learn many different greetings and more in many languages as a voluntary language learner of the world. All of these experiences and more make me who I am and they impact my biases as well. I have to constantly check myself. I have to constantly put myself in the position of listener, learner and ally.
I ask you, how can you model the unpacking of your identity for yourself, for your students? How can you show that identity matters not just by investing in who your students are but also showing that you identity affects everything you do as a social agent?
Let me know by sharing your journey on Twitter @SarahOttow.
Check out the transformative Social Justice Standards, also from Learning for Justice, which I use daily in my work supporting schools, available at: https://www.learningforjustice.org/frameworks/social-justice-standards