Cultural Nuanced Learning

1. Cultural NuancedLearning Yvette G. Flores, Ph.D. Chicana/ Studies U.C. Davis

3. Where are weontheroadtoincreased cultural attunement? • Wehaveexploredthelearningexperiencesof EL students • Wehavelearnedaboutthe 5 E’s • Wehavebegunto explore how culture influenceschildren’slearning • Theimportanceofcontext • Learningstyledifferences • Issuesof “faceandshame” • Helpseekingpatterns • The role ofmicroaggresionsonstudents’ academicdisengagement • Roles ofacculturative stress

4. Migrationanditsimpactonchildren • Migration and changes in meaning systems- • the culture of the school, the home and the community

5. The context of immigrant children and the children of immigrant parents • ELL students typically are first or second generation United Statians • Often they straddle multiple worlds – the cultural world of the home and the school, the parents and the peers, the family and the community • Often these worlds conflict and/or contradictory meanings • For optimal learning, children and youth need bridges to these worlds • educators can provide or serve as those bridges

6. JourneyofMigrationand culture change • Migrations are massive ecological transitions in time and space • Long term experience • Full of loss and disarray • Propitiates vulnerability, physical and mental distress, including substance abuse • Opportunity for change and adaptation

7. Group activity • Discuss in yourtablewhatyourecallaboutyourlastmigration? • Whatstorieshaveyouheardaboutyourparents’ orgrandparent’smigrations? • Whatstorieshaveyourstudentsshared?

8. Migrationandacculturation crisis points • Negotiating “cultural borderlands”~ the zones of similarity and differences between and within cultures • Negotiating the cultural meaning systems and cultural expectations which can be disrupted by a migration • Acculturation implies adoption of new behaviors, attitudes and sometimes values which can cause conflict within the family and between student and school system

9. How migrationaffectsfamilies • Changes in the meaning systems (Falicov, 1998) • Geographic • Social • Cultural • Changes in value systems • Role changes • Role strain • Transgenerational changes

10. Migrationandmeaningsystemchanges • Migration involves the uprooting of at least 3 meaning systems: physical, social, cultural • Physical meaning system: • geographic change with loss of familiar places, people, things, often results in the need to create a metaphoric home and/or in psychological homelessness • Creates a vulnerability to alcohol and other drug use, misuse and abuse

11. Cultural meaningsystems • Cultural uprooting leads to changes in meanings as these are changed or lost • Uprooting of established ways of thinking and doing, and the abrupt and massive exposure to a new language and way of life can precipitate psychological distress or culture shock • Culture shock: reactive process resulting from the simultaneous exposure to the new and the loss of grieving of the old and familiar

12. Family–schoolrelationships • In Latin America and Asia teachers are highly respected • Viewed as the authority who educate by imparting knowledge • The family educates for life: values, morals, traditions • Parents defer to the expertise of the teacher • Parental involvement may take a different form than PTA participation • Studentobedienceanddeferenceisexpected

13. Social meaningsystem • Social uprooting compounds sense of physical alienation and intrapsychic confusion • Social marginality and social isolation leads to reduced self esteem, depression, anxiety • It is critical to connect or reconnect with compatriots or create new systems of support • Can contribute to the creation of adolescent peer groups that disengage from school if the school is not perceived as relevant • Or if the youth experience subtractive teaching

14. Group activity • Reflecting on the information presented over the past four days, discuss your observations of your own EL students • How are these students coping with the changes in their meaning systems? • How may your teaching assist or support them through that journey of culture change and adaptation? • In what ways are parents involved?