Low Income (+ “just average”)

Here's a Google Doc link of this post if you would prefer to read it there! 

An old Korean saying says, “Don’t step even on your teacher’s shadow.” It means respect your teacher (A LOT!!). This is not as emphasized as it used to be, yet teachers still hold a high status in Korean societal hierarchy to this day. Growing up, hearing adults’ advice such as “Listen to your teacher well.”, “Behave well at school.” and “Be polite to teachers.” subconsciously made me an obedient student and it was the only identity I had as a learner. In 12 years of schooling experiences, a few teachers were great and left a positive impact on my life. But others brought power to the student-teacher relationship, and oftentimes my peers and I became victims of that. Whatever they were saying was absolute rules in the classroom and if I (we) didn’t follow it even by mistake, then I was punished (corporal punishment or a red mark on our evaluation). Even when I knew I was completely right and voiced my opinion, I was silenced. One time, I was given a list of Chinese characters to write on a notebook as homework. I wrote every single character on the list and the next day I stood in line in front of his desk along with classmates to get checked. As the teacher was checking my homework, he said, “It seems like you skipped some of the words because you didn’t want to do the homework. I’m deducting points.” Just like that, he deducted my points without checking or comparing the list to my homework. This is only one example, but unfortunately these unpleasant memories compiled over the years. As a result, I became excessively fixated with being right and wrong in a learning environment and I didn’t raise my hand or answer questions unless I for sure knew the answers. I still have a hard time asking questions to teachers(professors) when I don’t understand their explanation or instruction regarding learning materials and assignments (or anything that happens in class!). Rather than trying to ask and being told, ‘What were you doing when I was explaining? You were distracted, weren’t you?’, it was mentally and emotionally easier not to ask, work on the homework as I understood and hope how I did the homework is what the teachers asked for. Even now it takes a lot of courage for me to voice my questions and concerns, and I mentally practice what I’m going to ask many times. 

All of these identities worked with each other to create a student who would follow the rules and listen to authority figures without questioning them. I was always afraid of getting in trouble at school at the fear of disappointing my parents. As a family of immigrants I felt the pressure to succeed constantly. I came into my first classroom at the age of 6 knowing about 5 words of English, 3 of them being “My name is”. Being someone who did not know the language, I relied heavily on visuals in the classroom, and I still do to this day. 

I don’t often realize how much being from a lower income family impacted my schooling but it meant that I did not have access to all the resources other students had. I was one of the first emerging multilingual students at my elementary school and was not given the support I needed for a while. My immigrant family did not know what the school was required to provide by law for me and the language was not accessible for them. 

I think being a Latina student has impacted me as a learner because I did not see myself represented in my classroom until I was in college, and took elective courses. It made me feel like I didn’t belong constantly; which led to not wanting to try. 

Once I got to college, I began exploring more of my own identities and therefore more of my identities as a learner. I came to understand that all of my personal identities do impact how I do in a class and that I can ask for what I need. 

I grew up with my grandparents when I was younger, because my mom worked during the day.  In my family's Chinese culture, we believe in always staying connected with our extended family and elders—with emphasis in respecting our elders and their wisdom.  So till this day, I'm very close to my grandparents, and they are the ones I go to a lot of the time for guidance and advice. And since my mom is a single-parent, she has been working really hard to ensure that both my younger brother and I would receive the best education and opportunities.  This has influenced my mindset to education, in which I have always tried my best to make my family proud.  However, this might not be the most healthy mindset, because it has led me to hold such high expectations and not be forgiving to myself when things don't go according to plan. 

I would describe myself as a visual learner.  In the past, graphics, pictures, and videos really helped when studying topics I didn't have as much confidence in.  I also have a creative mindset, since I've grown up listening to and playing music.  So when music intertwines with educational topics, it really helps ingrain information into my memory.  I hope that I can one day incorporate a creative teaching model that allows for student engagement and excitement in the classroom!

          Coming from a privileged middle class position, I didn’t have very much to worry about when it came to school. My perspective was the one already “normed” at school. I always had a sense that I would be fine at school and at life in general. I would always do well enough to stay out of trouble and hopefully go to college. I think this is also another reflection of my privileged position, I didn’t have to work to support myself or my family, I knew that I would be fine after high school, and I considered K-12 schooling just another thing I had to do. I didn’t realize the false neutrality of schooling or the inequity of the education system until I started studying education at UC Santa Cruz as an undergrad. Going to schools that mirrored my own privilege (and often ignorance) for K-12 led to me not really having to question my identity because it was almost always treated as "standard". 

One of my middle school science teachers was very passionate in implementing experiments in every science class. I don’t clearly remember her providing the engagement of UDL, but I remember she always tried to present a couple different representations of learning materials. Even though there was one way to show our understanding in one way(writing in essay format), I was just excited to write what I saw and learned during the experiments. She tied the lessons to our daily life whenever possible such as blood type experiment and body fat burning experiment! Seeing invisible things that happen inside of my body with my eyes was purely so exciting!

negative experience

My negative learning experience happened during one of my dance classes. My teacher made us students make creative dance for one of the class projects. But she didn’t give us the opportunity to explore the reason why I was doing it, and what I would learn out it. She gave only brief verbal direction of what classmates and I were supposed to do at the end of one lesson. I remember even that brief direction was very confusing, so all of us were not sure what we were supposed to do and what was expected from us. In addition, there was no provided example such as projects done by previous years and no rubric was provided. Given that it was a dance class, I understand that I couldn't have any alternative option to show my understanding and learning for the class other than create the plot and movements. What made the whole situation worse was that we(I) learned completely different types of dances throughout the semester and we were expected to work on creative dance that we(I) had no knowledge of.