# data[].attributes.body
I was born and raised in Philadelphia. I lived on the outskirts of the city in a community that was full of other South Indian families, so I very quickly got used to taking public transportation to get to school and being around so many different people from different backgrounds when I went into the city for middle school. This independence and openness to others is something I've carried with me even when I moved to Texas before my freshman year of high school.

# data[].attributes.body
I was lucky enough to go to a high school that offered dual enrollment at the local university and community college. During my junior and senior years of high school, I was a full-time student at the University of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley and also took classes at Texas Southmost College. Before I earned my high school diploma I was able to graduate with an Associate's Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. This set me out to be a hard worker and the early exposure to college and the expectations of a university made my transition to UT Austin for my bachelor's all the more smoother. However, this also meant that as a high schooler I was more focused on my college classes and clubs trying to get into UT Austin than actually enjoying the high school experience. I never went to a football game because my high school was so small (our graduating class was only 89 students) and never got to do most of the silly fun things normal high schoolers get to do.

# data[].attributes.body
As a girl, there were a lot of restrictions that were placed on me from an early age. I wasn't allowed to play outside like my brother was and instead spent most of my time helping my mom around the house. By the time I was in the second grade, I could do just about every chore. I say just about because as a second grader my cooking skills were more or less limited to chopping up vegetables and occasionally making eggs, but by the time I was in the 5th grade I could cook most foods. I was also limited in who I could hang out with and when. I was never allowed to sleep over at a friend's house because I was a girl and one can never be too careful. Sometimes I was allowed to sleep over at my cousins' house but that was only for special occasions like the 4th of July. I was also always taught to keep quiet and just help others, which has definitely turned me into more of a shy introverted person.

# data[].attributes.body
I came to terms with my sexuality while I was in middle school and I had the benefit of being surrounded by some amazing friends and living in a very liberal city at the time. My parents are very religious so they would not be very accepting of this part of my identity, which is why I haven't told them yet. This part of my identity doesn't seem to have affected me very much. It has created some internal tensions and worries about being accepted and fitting in, however having supportive friends put those worries to ease quite quickly. I'm lucky enough to have never been bullied or excluded because of my sexuality. If anything the opposite happened. I was able to make friends and connect with others because we were part of the LGBTQ+ community.

# data[].attributes.body
I am from Kerala, India which is one of the southernmost states in India. Kerala has such a strong culture. Growing up in the states meant I was a little disconnected from India but my family visited every summer when I was little so I still got a lot of exposure to my culture. I also lived in a predominantly South Indian community, so that definitely helped. The sense of community was such a big part of my childhood, however, there were also some negative parts of my culture. One of the big problems that I dealt with was the idea of what will people think or say. There were so many times when I couldn't wear something I liked or go to a birthday party for a friend because of this idea. Another problem was colorism. The number of times I had a random Aunty say something about how dark I had gotten or been scolded for going out in the sun was ridiculous. My beauty was attached to how light my skin was and it negatively impacted my self esteem.

# data[].attributes.body
I was raised Christian, specifically Pentecostal, but I identify as agnostic now. Growing up the church was a really big part of my life. Most of my socialization happened in the church. They pushed me to develop my reading and public speaking skills. I remember being so incredibly shy when I was little, I would never talk unless someone came and asked me something, and even then I would give the shortest response possible. My church had this program once a month called Family Training Hour (FTH) where every kid had to do an activity in front of the church. Usually, we could pick but sometimes we would get assigned an activity if the directors noticed we stuck to just one or two activities. I usually sang a song, but I would also get pushed to make games or do a psalms reading or prayer. These activities helped me get comfortable speaking in front of people. We also spent holidays with the church so many of my childhood friends were kids I went to church with. This is also because my parents felt that the religious kids I went to church with were the right people for me to hang out with. As a result, for a lot of my early childhood I was around a really homogenous group of kids who were all of the same culture and religion as me.

# data[].attributes.body
My parents were both born and raised in India. They moved to the US in the 90s and eventually got their citizenship. My siblings and I, on the other hand, were born in the states. Since the US is so far from home for my parents, my parents have never been very trusting of American people or American culture. They'd heard a lot of things about American kids, like that they all drink, do drugs, have premarital sex and babies before marriage, and they were terrified that their kids would grow into this horrible American stereotype. As a result, they worked really hard to separate us from "American culture". Our music and TV exposure was really limited, we mostly just watched PBS and listened to Christian music. My parents also really pushed the culture they were raised in onto us, this was really evident in the gender roles that were enforced in my household and the strictness. The unfortunate thing is that while they raised us in the culture of Kerala in the 80s, the rest of the world had moved on and so did Kerala. A lot in my 1st gen friends noticed that their cousins in India had more freedom than we did in the States.
I was lucky enough to have been born after my parents got their citizenship and figured out how to do taxes, so I didn't have to help my parents through those difficult situations, but I did have to translate documents from school for my parents a lot since I spoke the best Malayalam out of my siblings. This was annoying at the time, but now I have relative good language skills for a kid that was born and raised in the States.

# data[].attributes.body
I am the oldest daughter of 3 kids. I am not the oldest child, I have an older brother, but as the oldest daughter, I was treated a lot like a second mom. In my language, you call an older sister "chechi" and there was a time when even my older brother called me chechi. Mind you, my siblings and I are all only about a year or two apart. I was expected to do a lot of household chores, take care of my siblings, and take care of my parents. My mom also has an autoimmune disease that she was diagnosed with during the summer before I went into 2nd grade. This meant that I went from taking care of my mom's emotional needs to also taking care of her physical needs. I was also in charge of making sure my siblings were up and ready for school, and I helped them both with their homework after school. This made me a very independent and caring person, however, it also made me grow up really fast. I missed out on a lot of the immaturity and childishness of being a kid because I had to grow up so fast and be responsible for everyone around me.

# data[].attributes.body
A lot of my early adolescence was marked by a lack of agency. My family was always very strict about what I could and could not do or where I could or could not go. As I got older, I began to advocate for myself more, which came with greater agency. I began to join different school organizations, allowing me to play a more active role in my learning. In competitive clubs like Business Professionals of America, I began working side by side with my teacher instead of being led by them. I was already an independent person, but by that point, I felt that I actually had a say in my work and what or how I learned.

# data[].attributes.body
Sorry this went a little long, I wanted to make sure I touched on all the assigned materials.

# data[].attributes.body
Growing up I was always aware of racism around me. I had the benefit of living in a largely Indian community during my early childhood, which meant I was sheltered from some of the more extreme forms of racism but I did always hear about it. I constantly heard stories from my mom and aunts about getting passed up on opportunities by white hospital staff, or being treated differently because they were immigrants. From cousins, I would hear about this specific racist local college that would give the Indian kids a hard time. As a middle and high schooler, I had to live up to higher academic expectations from teachers because I was Indian. I had teachers that assumed I wanted to be a doctor and were disappointed when I not only decided to be a school psychologist but also was horrible at biology.

# data[].attributes.body
I feel like growing up gender played a really big role in my play. More specifically, being a girl really limited my play opportunities. I mention in my biography that I wasn't allowed to play outside because I was a girl, but my limitations went beyond that. My sister and I were not allowed to join an organized sports team even though my brother played baseball in middle school. I specifically never really had a lot of time to play after kindergarten outside of school recess because I had to help take care of the house and take care of my siblings and sick mother as soon as I got through with my own homework. In school, I tried to play basketball with my friends whenever I could but as my mom got more sick I started having to use my lunch break to get through as much homework as I could because I would have more housework when I got home.

# data[].attributes.body
I speak 3 languages: English, Malayalam, and Spanish. Malayalam is my first language, but since I've moved to Texas I've really only used it with family or at church. Growing up, being multilingual was a big part of my life. It helped connect me to family living in India. On top of that, my neighborhood had a fairly large Malayali community, so many of my friends in school also spoke Malayalam. I've noticed that speaking Malayalam fluently has given me a cultural connection that many of my younger cousins, and even my own siblings who are around my age, lack. Speaking a language opens you up to the mindsets and practices of a culture and that's something that my relatives that don't speak Malayalam really feel the absence of.

# data[].attributes.body
I have been lucky enough to be able-bodied thus far in my life, however, I have struggled with mental illness. When I was really little I suffered through some traumatic experiences that left me with PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Unfortunately, my family is still very standoff-ish when it comes to therapy and mental health, so these mental health struggles were largely left unacknowledged until I got to college. I was one of those children who threw myself into school to distract myself from my mental health struggles. This meant that for the most part, no one ever noticed that I wasn't ok when I was in grade school. This really affected my emotional and social development as a child. My mom was also diagnosed with MS when I was in elementary school and she quickly started to deal with the physical impairments that come with the disease. My mom dealt with a brutal physical disability that wasn't always very visible, so I've just always been around disability in my life.

# data[].attributes.headline
Oct. 20 - Culture and Community Expertise

# data[].attributes.subject
Oct. 20 - Culture and Community Expertise

# data[].attributes.body
I was lucky enough to grow up in a very diverse city. I was always surrounded by people of different cultures. I also moved to a very homogenous region when I was a freshman in high school. Something I noticed was that I had a different approach to culture when I was in high school. Growing up in a diverse community meant that I was constantly around different cultures and it helped me develop this open-mindedness for other cultures and different practices. When I moved to Texas, I moved to Brownsville where everyone was Mexican-American. Many people were first gen immigrants, and most people were Christian. I noticed that my friends in Brownsville lived in this kind of bubble where they just expected everyone to know exactly what they were talking about because everyone shared the same culture. It was interesting to see how different their reactions to different cultures were than mine.

# data[].attributes.body
I grew up in Philadelphia where there such a rich history of Native peoples and their influence on the land that we inhabit today. Growing up, my elementary and middle schools made an intentional effort to educate students on the tribes and peoples who lived here before us and it instilled an appreciation for history in me. My family immigrated to the US from India, and we often talk about the Native peoples and tribes of India who are fighting for their rights to lands and resources. It was nice to have this week to reflect on those who came before us.

This is a sidenote but I was really disappointed to see that the native peoples of South Asia were not represented in the map we looked at.

# data[].attributes.body
I grew up without a lot of technology. Most of what I used it for was just school. I got my first laptop freshman in high school and my first phone in the 7th grade. My parents definitely wanted to wait to get me a phone but by the 7th grade I was taking the train by myself for about an hour one way to get to school, so I really needed one for safety purposes by that point. Before that, I had limited exposure to TV. This was less intentional by my parents and more because of our financial situation at the time. We didn't get Disney or any of the cool kids' channels until I was in like 8th grade, so I only really watched the Saturday morning cartoons and the PBS Kids cartoons that came on right after school. The other thing was that I had an hour's commute from school starting from the 5th grade, so by the time I got home from school I was just tired and most cartoons were over. I would have homework and housework to do as soon as I got home from school, so while my siblings had more time for TV and games I was just kind of working and didn't have as much exposure to technology.

# data[].attributes.body
This was definitely a hard week for me. I have my fair share of individual and shared trauma. I think the easiest one to talk about is the shared trauma of being a woman. Growing up I was always told to be careful and to watch how I dress or talk. I can definitely still see the effects of those teachings and mindsets today and it's been something that I've had to work to unlearn. It's really clear to me how much trauma can shape a child's development, which is why I think it's so important to have trauma-informed care in education.