it's been dawning on me lately that the semester is almost over. that i was down to my last few lectures. that i would only have a few more class periods to talk about mexican american culture.
it was easy to begin. i gave them historical context for the "culture" that we would be examining. i've thrown in some expressive culture--art and poetry. given them a school ethnography. we've read a novel for its ethnographic content. all of these things that i hope have pointed to a mexican american cultural trajectory.
but now it's the end. today was my last lecture (friday is the test; next week they will present projects). and i felt like i needed to say something profound.
the point of the class is _______________________.
contemporary mexican culture is ______________________.
i realize that i have no idea how to fill in either of those blanks.
my last couple of lectures, i have floundered. i have not known what to say.
culture is a mess. mexican american culture is a mess. we're too diverse to pin down. we are of different immigrant generations, different socioeconomic backgrounds, from different regions. some of us are spanish-dominant; some are english-dominant. though most of us continue to lean to the political left, some of us have jumped to the right (ugh).
but somehow we are all mexican american. and we have a culture, ever-evolving.
what can i do but confess that i don't know the answers? but then to tell them that not knowing the answers is the point. it is the reason why i research. and the reason i write. it is the reason i assign them research. the reason i make them write.
because i think we can slowly fill in the gaps. we investigate what is happening in our schools. we critically observe what occurs in our neighborhoods and churches, our organziations. we can provide small understandings of culture that eventually amount to something bigger. and maybe that understanding and knowledge can be transformative.
a teacher can only hope.
@>-->>---
4 comments:
regardless of the anti-climatic feeling you have here at the end, I'm sure it's been a fulfilling class for the students... and with the immigration protest that happened, literally, during your class- they got a hands on experience that can't be matched.
I always tell my students that if they are more confused about culture at the end of the class than when it began then I have done my job.
Culture is not a "thing" it is a process, hence it is impossible to describe in any permanent way. The best we can do is take snapshots to get an idea of what it is. But when we compare it to reality, the reality has already changed.
My other goals in my classes is to get students to learn what 5 de mayo is all about, when Mexican Independence Day is, and a little more about the Mexican-American War. I have never had students complain about that part of my "agenda".
Good luck with your upcoming move!
I'm at the end of my semester, too, and I'm wondering if my students got ANYTHING out of the class. I want them to understand how complex American history can be on so many levels. I don't want them to merely memorize dates and names.
Some get it, others won't. I think that's just a fact of teaching--not that it makes it easier to accept.
How do you feel about coming back to CA? Being here, I've learned to appreciate the weather, the ocean (which I always thought was grey-brown, warm with no waves) and snow. What is kind of weird and what parallels Texas/Texans in a way is if you haven't been out of CA, the rest of world is like CA. I had a friend who didn't know that Texas has a large Latino population. She's from East LA and went to school in Chicago but had never been anywhere else. She thought Texas was totally white and was very apprehensive about it. I can understand this but you can see how people exist in totally separate groups yet get essentialized nonetheless.
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