Deep Culture in the Elementary Classroom

When I read the following question, my mind received a great answer, because I was searching for these reasons many years ago. I wanted an explanation about it, Why did certain civilizations in world history seem to be more “advanced” than others? I had read some aspects such as the development of the brain, social relationships, some physical and biological circumstances among others. To think on cultural diversity, it was not a choice.

Jared Diamond (1999), compared and contrasted many societies throughout history and determined that societies that had more access to cultural diversity were more apt to advance than their more isolated counterparts.(Ivers, J. Ivers, N. 2015) I was so interesting to read more on it. The proffesor Ivers, explained in his document called “Cultural Diversity Creative Genius Cognitive Development: Teaching Deeper Culture in Elementary School Foreign Language Classes”, based on different studies, how much is important the cultural diversity in the development and advance of a society.

How it could be possible? cultural diversity? I summed up these statements as follow:

• It is not about intelligence, it is related with the principle that many heads are better than one.
• The exposure to diverse cultural paradigms seem efficacious on the macro level and micro to help to develop better a civilization.
• There is a connection between highly creative people and exposure to cultural diversity in their younger developmental years, based on different culture interaction. Their outcomes were the adoption or adaptation of some parts of these cultures or a great understanding about the society.
• The exposure to cultural diversity may force children (or even adults) to form new neural connections in the brain to be able to sufficiently interpret meaning in things to which they are not accustomed.
• Once formed, these new neural connections, previously mentioned, may be at one’s permanent disposal to assist in a myriad of potential cognitive processes (e.g., language processing, knowledge acquirement, formal operational and dialectical thinking, problem solving)

To know this knowledge helped me to open my mind and to grow as a language teacher, how can I encourage my students to learn english based on the cultural diversity? I would like to follow some steps that the Ivers proffesor suggested:

• One that might be in this realm would be the diverse interpretations of gestures. One very famous one is that in Albania the head movements for yes and no are the exact opposite of what they are in the U.S.! It could be a fun activity.
• Different manners can also provide an area where simple yet diverse interpretations can be taught from diverse cultures.
• To generate discussion related with the intensity and expressivity levels from one culture to another and the variety of connection with the feelings and thoughts.
• Tell about our own experiences with other cultures and how we can learn from them. We can apply this for different reasons: “First of all, they are extremely helpful in maintaining attention. Second, by cautiously discussing some of your personal experiences (or those of an acquaintance) you may be able to somehow work in the idea of diverse interpretations of reality. Third, even if you are unsuccessful in touching the deeper, any discussion of foreign culture is usually valuable. After any sort of cross-cultural input, the child will be that much more likely to recognize a cross-cultural misunderstanding when he or she is confronted with one.” (Ivers, 2015)

To apply these suggestions will be an excellent experience in my teaching work. Also, it could be a challenge for me, because I am a little direct at time to explain something and I do not want to hurt someone. I have learned so much and I am open to different expreinces to grow as a person, as a teacher and as a proffessional.

https://www.euronews.com/2015/12/11/dealing-with-diversity-in-the-classroom

Culture and Psychology!

I am convinced that all about mental problems,psychological troubles or cultural differences, depends on the upbringing that a baby receives. When we are born, we are born as a blank paper. This paper is ready to write, draw or anything that another person wants to make of it.

If you are born in any culture, you will learn and acquire many customes, habits, cultural norms, practices, knowledge, thoughts etc. from these people submerged also in the culture that they were bred and that passes from generation to generation. It is that how it works.

According to different cultures, you know if someone is shy, if he is more cheerful or serious, etc. You even know if her/his behavior is going to be violent or not depending on different circumstances. There are studies that have been able to determine how in some countries they are more or less mentally healthy, or to foresee what their behaviors will be according to their culture. And many cultures are standardized and judged by the majority. They are not seen individually, but collectively.

I believe that all kinds of things from different cultures, wrong and right, affect directly the personality, the way of being of someone his or her behavior and decisions etc. We can learn some examples about it like if in one culture you do not stay with your parents until you are married, then you are ungratefulI person or a bad son or daughter. Many people feel frustrated and sad when they decide to go out of their family when they finish their high school. It is a psychologic affectation that not help to the progress or happiness of this person. While in other cultures you need to go out of your home after you finish your scholar studies and you decide to work and go to the university to achieve your dreams and progressing.

For that reason, we need to be very wise to determine the psychological problems of our students and be mediators between their culture and ours, also helping them to be happy by learning to be respectful and warm with themselves.

Cultural Differences in manners!! What do you use?

When this week I read about cultural differences in manners, I thought how much we are different between ourselves even within the same country or place. Everybody have different customs, manners and habits inside our families and according the education received from there. So, we are different even a family compared with another family. Now, can you imagine how much different can we be between other countries?

Based on manners of different countries we can learn for example, a bone-crushing handshake is seen as admirable in the United States and U.K., but in much of the East, particularly the Philippines, it is seen as a sign of aggression — just as if you gave any other part of a person’s body a hard squeeze! Or, Orthodox Jews will not shake hands with someone of the opposite sex, while a strict Muslim woman will not shake hands with a man. To confuse matters, a Muslim man will shake hands with a non-Muslim woman. People in these cultures generally avoid touching people of the opposite sex who are not family members. In my own country, Colombia, you need tonshake your hand firmly but do not shake it strongly.

There are many other examples, in my country you cannot smell the food when it is served, because it could offend the host. It is like if you do not like the invitation to share the foodstuffs with them. Then, there are many other cultural differences. It is interesting and at the same time it is a good way for being respectfull with others.

The foreign students when they are in other country will have to adapt to different manners of that place and the same thing happens with foreign teachers. You cannot change one entire society, you need to adapt to it.

Cross-cultural language teaching, think about it!

There are many aspects to take into account when we are trying to teach a new language.One of these things is the different cultures. Our students come from different countries and cutures. They have many pedagogical traditions, social rules, restrictions, styles etc at time to teach and learn. For that reason is important to know how to stablish connections between these different cultures and the teaching of a language.

It could have students that they are extremely respectful with teachers such as Asians and prefer not to ask, or doubt the teacher. Others may be very trusting and treat the teacher at their level etc …It could have students that they are. I think is important to know these kind of differences between cultures to plan correctly our classes.  In one article written by Larry Samovar & Richard Porter they affirmed: “our years of practical teaching experience all tell us that good teaching consists of bringing about knowledge and skills in students by making connections between the new things that we are trying to teach them and their existing information base and repertoire of skills.  In a Piagetian perspective students build and expand upon schemas through accomodation and assimilation.  And, from a Vygotskian point of view, students advance fully into their zone of proximal development through the assistance of parents, teachers and peers. are some advices to take into account in our language classes”.

These types of advices are based in different pedagogic strategies, planning, acitvities, resources to use in each class etc. For example, it is important to avoid slang, jargon and idiomatic expressions to reduce confusions or misunderstandings. It is important to help our students to understand the different use of language to encourage them to order in their minds all vocabulary, words, expression etc and make a comparison with their mother tongue. These comparisons help to connect their previous knowledge about something with the new subject to learn.

Other kinds pf things to help our students is through “the use of advance organizers such as outlines, models, concept maps and other graphic organizers whether they are in the form of handouts, overhead transparencies or just writing and drawing on the board.   It also includes making things more concrete in the beginning and then moving toward the abstract and this is greatly facilitated by using more audiovisual elements for teaching.  Movies, slides, textbook illustrations and photographs and CD-ROMs are very effective.  In general, it is important to be sensitive to student cognitive processes”.  (Samovar and Porter)

How we can learn form different cultures and improve our role as language teachers. Our students can help us and others to understand this multicultural world and open our minds to have a good expreince learning a new language. It not cannot be a hard and frustrating experience, this should be an uplifting, fun and exciting experience.

Sometimes it’s not your fault, sometimes it is your fault!!!

Try to imagine this situation, you are now having an adult age. In your mind you think-I owuld like to live alone, so I would like to speak with my parents about it. If you were your father or mother, What would you say about it? At the end of this blog I will tell you what happened with this case in different cultures like Colombia culture and USA culture.

When I was thinking in the concepts learned this week, I was thinking about attributions and their different types. Attributions are inferences that people make about the causes of events and behavior. People make attributions in order to understand their experiences. Attributions strongly influence the way people interact with others. These attributions are classified according to where various situations come from or different context that one situation happend for example attributions external or internal, stable or unestable, fundamental attribution error, and the self-serving bias etc.

I think you can explain or not the reasons why something happend. I do not know why and how most people try to explain or give reasons of different behaviors from people since their own perceptions or judgements. It is something that is inside theri DNA. These judgements come from the education or breeding in their childhood in every culture or family and depending on their traditions. Some of them can self-justify or blame others or other situations internal or external.

I have learned for different experiences that there are things you cannot lead or control that affect your life. You need to have a correct visions of these situations and need to do evaluations of these situations and ask yourselves I can or not control these kinds of things. Then, you can have a correct visions

It is important for us as language teachers, because when one of our students have troubles or challenges with different aspects in the learning and teaching process you need to listen your students, because there are many ways to see different situations. It is like Ivers Proffesor explained: –Are your personal attributional models consistent with those dominant in your culture? In your groups, talk about that. And so always, kind of, question your attributions and think, “Are these cultural attributions reasonable, rational? Reasonable? Logical? Or should I judge things by circumstances?” Sometimes life will just mess you up, sometimes other people will mess you up. Sometimes it’s not your fault, sometimes it is your fault. But each circumstance is different. Life is not black and white, it’s very, very complex. So, this depends of your personality and your own visions of things. Obviously theres are some ethical and asocial rules that you have to take into account to judge the right and wrong to give students that they deserve.

Do you want to know what happened with the situation mentioned in the first paragraph? Ok, the colombian parents would say: You are a child yet. You do not have a job, you do not know anything about life, you do not have a career etc. You need to saty with us until you can be independent. Northamerican parents would say: You have the adult age, you can do everything you want because you are intellingent, you can go to college and choose your best career to study, you need to find a job and save money for your future and paying for your proffessional career and being responsible for yourself and being independent. This happens because they were raised in different ways and in different cultures.

Your personal space, my personal space?

In one of my last blogs, I told you about one experience in NY city, when I was for the first time to the USA. It was unconfortable experience because I thought all people around the world had the same culture than mine. But not!! There are many people around the world, many culutres, many perceptions and vision to see the life. There are many ways to deal with people, many customs, traditions, habits that have passed from one generation to another year after year. But I did not know anything about it.

Now, I undesrtand how important is to know about cultural differences specially when you are an english teacher. The personal space differences are very important in many countries and other not. For example in my country, when you are going to go by bus, you should prepare to have much contact with other people. But if you are in a shopping center and you want to sit to another person it is not invade to the personal space, it is just one way to share the public space. In other case, if you are walking in the street and one man or woman is walking behind you closer, you can feel intimidate or invaded in your space.

However, there are many countries where this topic about personal space is very strict and serious like Germany, Romania or Hungary. There are some social rules where society has classified in zone distances :

• The intimate zone is within touching distance, from actually touching to about two feet. This is the space reserved for people who genuinely care about each other. Lovers hold hands and parents carry their children or put their arms around them protectively. It’s rare to see this space penetrated in business settings. But when it managed effectively, it can send a powerful message. Women use this space more than men; they tend to reach out and touch people more often.
• The personal zone is from two to four feet. It’s used for discussions that are private and not meant to be overheard. In a busy networking meeting or at a party, people will avoid breaking this barrier if you are engaged with someone else at this distance. If you’ve ever been trapped by a bore and waited in vain to be rescued, try moving another foot away. It will open up your space for someone to enter.
• The social zone is four to twelve feet apart. This is the space used for public and casual social conversations. It allows others to enter into the group. It can be fascinating to watch people conversing in a group; they resemble fish in a school as they move in and out to make a comfortable space for new entries.
• The public zone is more than twelve feet. Public speakers and important figures use space to distance themselves from their audience (and establish authority, since demanding more space is a power signal.)

These social rules are important because many people could feel intimidate or uncomfortable during english classes. Even some students can be shy or with some fears to be near to you or others. It could be one obstacles to learn a new language freely.

https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/offbeat/study-global-personal-space-preferences

Individualism vs. Collectivism. Where is your culture?

I was thinking about where is my own culture according different descriptions and concepts of individualism or collectivism. Individualism or individual-oriented based on outcomes such as self-determination, self-reliance, and independent living. Each person has different responsibilities and goals and visions etc. Each person has a mision of growing, develop, and take care of her/himself. She or he can be free and responsible in different ways like thinking, knowledge, make decisions etc. “The individualistic view is that there are sharp boundaries between people, with each person being a complete unit. In other words, people are considered to be independent. They are generally also thought to have rights and responsibilities that are more or less the same. A person’s identity (i.e., the sense of self) in an individualistic society tends to be based mainly on one’s personal experiences—accomplishments, challenges, career, relationships with other people, etc.“

In constrast, collectivism is based on diffrent groups of the society. Collectivistic view is that people are not separate units, but rather are part and parcel of a larger group (i.e., extended family, village, or tribe). In other words, people are interdependent. A person’s identity in a collectivistic society tends to be based on one’s roles and experiences within the group context. There are positive and negative aspects between both. For example, the colectivism has developed extremist groups, in some groups is forbiden to express personal opinions, some leaders of the group make decisions for others without take into account their own feelings, age, desires, dreams and so on. But there are other positive aspects like they keep the rules, can be grateful, think about more better in function of family or members, they are good workers together, more respectful, commitmed and they can achieve faster the same goals .

I think in my role as an ESL teacher is important to know about these kind of cultural differences because I will need to plan different activities to help my students to work together, and being also independent at the same time keeping in mind the respect and the admiration to each other. For that reason I think it is better to be neutral and unbiased to avoid misunderstandings.

Cultural Differences in Emotional Expressivity.

When I am thinking about how express our feelings in front of different situations, It is so interesting to find similarities and differences between one culture and other. For example, one time I invited to two northamercan friends to buy some grosseries in PriceSmart market , here in Colombia. When they came in, they started jumping and laughing, seeing each other and pointing out different products. And one of them said: I want this, and you? I want this better. After, they said sorry for their behavior, but they felt so exciting to see again different products from their country. I was so happy for them, and they could buy some things.

However, when I was in USA, I found different products from my country with some american friends, and I was happy to see these products there, I did not want to scream or jump or laugh loudly like my friends. Their way to express some emotions are so different. Maybe I had jumped or scream if I found an old friend, or a family member. But not for finding food made in my country.

I was studying little more about these type of cultural differences based on how can we express different emotions even with our faces. I found one web page that explained “Culture and Emotion” between North American people and Asian people. These studies revealed both cultural similarities and differences in various aspects of emotional life: family life, jobs, states of moody etc. For example, When to different participants in the study showed them some pictures with different facial expressions, “whereas 95% of U.S. participants associated a smile with “happiness,” only 69% of Sumatran participants did. Similarly, 86% of U.S. participants associated wrinkling of the nose with “disgust,” but only 60% of Japanese did (Ekman et al., 1987. Reference Ekman, P., Friesen, W., O\’Sullivan, M., Chan, D., Diacoyanni-Tarlatzis, I., Heider, K., . . . Tzavaras, A. (1987). “

We can see many differences at time to show our feelings or emotions. Latin american people show emotions with all their body, their facial expressions etc. But if we knew some people from Asia or Indian, they are very shy than others. I think that is important to know these kind of differences with my foreign students, in language classes, when they are from different cultures, because You need to detect how they are feeling and whether they are comfortable in the class and avoid misunderstanding and generate other feelings or thoughts.

We can enjoy our cultural differences!

When I think about my different experiences during my trips around my own country and other countries, I can feel how different we are, and at the same time how we can learn to each other and give more respect to our cultural differences even enjoy them.

I can remember when I visited NY city for the first time. It was an excellente experience for me and my children. I felt lost in the city, despite having a map. I thought that I really needed help.  So, I decided to look for a police man because in my country when you need a help in the city like tthis, you can ask for help to a policeman. I saw a police woman and I immediately touched the police on her arm. The woman turned back with a horrible look on her face. After, she saw me and then she saw to her arm, trying to tell me:  you did a big and serious mistake! Then, the policewoman turned around and left without saying anything!

We felt so bad, so sad! Why did not she help us? Why did she saw in that bad way? What did we do? So, I tried to find again through the map one solution. When I went to my friend’s house I told her all about this problem with the policewoman, she laughed at us. And she explained us that in the United States we cannot touch to people to ask something. Because it is like violating their privacy or their intimate space. It is a social rule, it a part of their culture. At the same way that in Colombia you can softly touch to someone to ask something or asking for some help. It is not disrespectful.

This experience taught us that the cultures and social rules change when you are in a different country than yours. All nations are not equal We have many other social rules, we are more open minds in differents aspects, more friendly and we love to make feel to others very comfortable or happy and with desires to come back again. We learned so much!! We enjoy knowing more in other culture. We learned to be more respectful with these differences.

At the same way, during our teacher’s role, we will need to share about our culture differences to know better who we are and enjoy them. I would like to do a class like a fest, where every student can share with us, her or his culture with a decorated stand with many things like flags, gifts, crafts etc. and the students can share some of these differences,

Let’s read, and choose where who you are!

It is incredible! how I have learned with this assignment. Monochronic? Polychronic? Had you listened about these words? Me neither until today! it is interesting, I never had listened about one clasification of the perception of the time based on different cultures. Let’s see! In the web page called “Exactlywhatistime” gave us an excellent example: “being late for an appointment, or taking a long time to get down to business, is the accepted norm in most Mediterranean and Arab countries, as well as in much of less-developed Asia. Such habits, though, would be anathema in punctuality-conscious USA, Japan, England, Switzerland, etc. In the Japanese train system, for example, “on time” refers to expected delays of less than one minute, while in many other countries, up to fifteen minutes leeway is still considered “on-time”.”

Therefore, most of the monochronic people are like to do just one thing at a time. The value that they give to that time is more important than anything else. They value a certain orderliness and sense of there being an appropriate time and place for everything. They do not like many interruptions. They like to concentrate on the job at hand and take time commitments very seriously. Monochronic people tend to show a great deal of respect for private property and are unwilling to be a borrower. They like to follow rules of privacy and consideration as well as adhere religiously to plans.

Polychronic people are who are interested in relationships with people, they are their main concern, particularly those closely related to them or their function, and they have a tendency to build lifetime relationships. Issues such as promptness are firmly based on the relationship rather than the task and objectives are more like desirable outcomes than must do’s. They can do many things at the same time, people are more important than other aspects of life. The relationships between them are on the top than others aspects. Maybe they can give an order of importance to the family, the friends of a lifetime and then acquaintances or other people. They think most of the time how people feel than in the socials rules related with time, business, agenda, plans, money etc.

Thus, When we think about in our role as teachers of a foreign language, we have to think all about of our students and their cultures and we have to find a balance to achieve our goals when teaching, to use our time in the class with wisdom. At the same time to show respect to our students and their needs. However, it is necessary to understand that the correct use of the time is important at time to learn a new language. I Think that to find a balance between plychronic and monochronic culture, is the key.