Putting It All Together

I’ve reached a point on this journey where it’s time to “put it all together” into some kind of package.  It feels very much like a creative process.  Like an artistic project, I have to determine what my emerging theme or intent is and how others might experience it based on what I choose to show and how I present it to them.  I want a holistic experience for others, that is what it has been for me.  My heart has been met with giving, caring people who live thousands of miles away and have thousands of different daily experiences, which they have shared with me.  My mind has been delighted to read the research, explore the ideas, and then see if I can observe them out in the world.  My body has been nourished by a new environment, new food, new methods of transportation, and new sights and sounds.  I think a journey like this is one will go on living within me many moons after it’s been “completed.”  All the impressions will remain as a part of me.  Some perhaps aren’t even known yet, but will present themselves when the time is right.  I look forward to reflecting on and sharing more at the conclusion of my days in Mexico, but today I’m going to use this space to help me process some of the ideas that I’ve researched since being here.   I can’t include them all in my project, otherwise I’d have about 6 different projects.  But, I did include these ideas in my interviews and observations, so if I want to pursue them in the future I have somewhere to start from.  Maybe one of the ideas will lead me back to Puebla some day soon.

The biggest and most important theme for me has been belonging.  I’ve written about this a couple of times already, but it still stands as a cultural aspect that is really important.  However, this theme requires a different kind of approach, so I’ve decided that while it will be present in my project it won’t be the main focus.  Additionally I have been very intrigued by the research on “funds of knowledge” that has been used as a means of including diverse families into school culture through both school activities and curriculum.  The idea is that each family, each person, has knowledge and experience in something.  Sharing what they know is a way to include parents, and using what they know as part of the curriculum shows value for it.  Giving value to what people have lived and the knowledge they possess, in my opinion, is one way to build community.  What was tough was asking people about their knowledge here in the community, and they only assumed I meant book knowledge.  This topic has become important to me, and I believe that it has a lot of potential, but it won’t be my main theme either.

Another theme that has come up as been the cultural practice of “consejos” here in Mexico.  I read about them in Guadalupe Valdes’ research, and decided that it could be an entire project as well.  Consejos or advice is passed from one generation to the next and they are an important aspect of family life and child rearing.  I asked folks to share the consejos they received or still receive from their parents and you can just feel the weight they carry.  Often they are not “you should do this or that” they are more like motivating speeches, vignettes, or vivid examples of life’s choices.

All of these small areas of research that I’ve explored were initiated back in September by a book a professor from Berkeley gave me when I visited her in her office in August.  The book was a review of current research in education with the subtitle of “extraordinary pedagogies for working within school settings serving nondominant students.”  My first and favorite two topics were Freire’s humanizing pedagogy and narratives in educational research.  I initially started reading a lot about Freire’s humanizing pedagogy and I was completely excited by its possibilities.  Here are some quotes that stand out, “…a pedagogical focus on materials and delivery methods results in a detachment from the human beings teachers encounter in the classroom…” “A superficial and uncritical focus on methods often privileges whitestream approaches aimed at assimilation, ultimately robbing students of their culture, language, history, and values, thus denying students’ humanity.”  (Rodriguez & Smith)  I think my intent for this project is much about creating a humanizing pedagogy and I’ve decided to explore it through narratives.  Within these narratives, we will hear about consejos, funds of knowledge, and together, develop a sense of belonging… wrapping all my themes into one! 🙂

I believe that by sharing our narratives we can begin to see and to listen to how our world interacts with others’ worlds.  And perhaps, together, we can begin to create a new world- one in which we know each other or attempt to know each other.  My idea is that if parents and teachers from different cultural backgrounds share their personal narratives with one another, then a new world can be created.  In this new world, we are more human and less like an other.  We are also able to realize that each of us experiences life in a different way, a way that is influenced by so many superficial factors that are out of our control.  In this new world we actually see each other, not just our clothes, titles, skin color, or nationality.

Here are some quotes on narratives:

“We live by our stories… if we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.”

Vivimos por nuestras historias… si cambiamos las historias en las cuales vivimos, posiblemente cambiaríamos nuestras vidas.

“Want a different ethic?  Tell a different story.”

Quieres otra ética?  Cuenta otra historia.

Narratives are: “attending to lives, and the making and remaking of lives…”  “a way to share, and to understand who we are, who we have been, and who we are becoming”

Las narrativas son: ocuparse de las vidas y del hacer y rehacer de ellas… una manera de compartir y de entender quienes somos, quienes hemos sido y en quienes nos estamos conviertiendo.

**All quotations from this post come from Review of Research in Education Vol. 27, 2013

**I translated them and my Spanish teacher reviewed and edited my translations for me.