Description: My friend was born and raised in Korea. She attended grad school in the US. During required seminar courses, which were small groups intended to discuss and argue ideas, she would often be the only one in the group who would not speak. 

Interpretation: She did not come prepared. She is not interested in the topic or knowledgeable enough to critique/argue points.

Evaluation: She is not capable of doing graduate level work.

It turns out that when she was raised, Korean culture dictated certain norms like teacher respect–“You don’t even step on your teacher’s shadow” was a common saying– and humility. Questions were discouraged because it could come across as challenging a teacher. Even if you knew an answer, you did not say it as you may come across as showing off your intelligence. So when my friend was in seminar, she had a very difficult time overcoming how she was schooled. She also was not fluent in English, so would have a difficult time expressing herself. She felt she sounded more ignorant when she spoke and felt very exposed. She had a visceral response to her professor entering the room, knowing that for several hours she would be feeling this way. (She powered through and finished her doctorate, so she was able to overcome this, although she says she still feels uncomfortable in small meetings/discussions).

It makes me think about how even eye contact may, in addition to being culturally unaccepted, be inviting verbal engagement that could lead to someone feeling hyper visible and forced into a situation that could produce similar feelings as my friend experienced. My friend feels that the Western culture encourages us to be verbally articulate, and it is important for us to understand that other cultures do not prize (and may even discourage) this.

Kerri Freese

Description: About half way through the year a little girl joined our class community.  She was extremely quiet.  Any time she was in a group with the teacher she participated in lessons with a lot of teacher encouragement.  However, when she would go off to work independently at a station she frequently did not begin or complete assignments.  My co-teacher and I adjusted our check-ins, kept her longer in small groups, and moved her around into different groups so that she was receiving as much teacher instruction as possible.  She continued to perform in small groups but not in the “independent” station.  When demonstrating understanding in the small group she was able to complete tasks.  My co teacher and I were very confused.   We knew that she was capable of the independent work station assignments.  We decided to give her the directions verbally and with the station task card. We would then ask her if she understood them, her response was frequently “yes” and she would go off to her station while my cooperating teacher and I would begin a new group.  Again, she did not always begin the tasks or complete them.

Possible Interpretations: She is lazy and does not want to work independently.

Evaluation:  We decided to take some data.  We found that on the days she did not begin the task the timer for station rotations was not visually on the smartboard.  After a conversation with her we learned that sometimes she was confused on when to begin the assignment. She did not want to ask the teacher if she should begin. On the days that she did some of the work but not all, she often came to something that she did not understand. When she was confused by a word, direction, or problem she sat and waited instead of asking a friend or the teacher.  Usually, by the time a teacher was not teaching the lesson was over and we were moving on to a new subject. 

We then learned that in her culture, it was considered rude to interrupt the teacher to ask a question.  She was doing what was expected by waiting for further direction instead of interrupting us.  After learning this we remembered to always have the timer on the smartboard and gave a verbal direction for the start of the stations.  We also gave her a 2 sided counter (red/yellow) this allowed her to nonverbally let us know if she needed assistance.  If it was red she was able to work independently but if she flipped it to yellow it was her way of letting us know she needed our help.