641 TSL Case Study Guglani 2016 - Margaret C. Kelly · 2018. 9. 2. · Running head: CASE STUDY 1 Margaret Kelly Dr. Guglani TSL 641 December 4, 2016 Case Study Learner Profile Audrey

Running head: CASE STUDY 1

Margaret Kelly Dr. Guglani TSL 641 December 4, 2016

Case Study

Learner Profile

Audrey is from a small town in the south of Mississippi. She has lived there her

whole life and attributes her growing up there as the inspiration for her love of travel and

adventure, while still finding closeness to family important. She is a black, heterosexual,

native English-speaking female. Her social class is upper middle class, although she

mentions that her father started out in the lower social class and has worked hard

throughout his life to move up to their current upper middle class status.

Her religion is what she says most defines her, although that has changed in

recent years. She is a Christian who belongs to the Apostolic Pentecostal denomination.

While she says that still is her most defining characteristic, she believes her race has

recently become more visible to her. She says that the older she has gotten, the more

proud she has become to be black. Her main source of community is found in church. She

was raised going almost three times a week and spending all of her free time at her

church. She loved it and felt completely at home, loved, and accepted amongst the other

church-goers. It was more of a family than an organization for Audrey. Even though it

was predominately white, Audrey said she never felt that she stuck out or was different. It

was an accepting place and everyone had common ground in their beliefs, and that was

all that mattered.

Her education profile is rather diverse. She attended a public elementary school

until third grade, when her parents decided she should be home-schooled. She was home-

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schooled for the next five years. Before her freshman year of high school, her parents

gave her the choice as to whether she wanted to continue with homeschooling or if she

wished to attend public school for her last four years. Out of the five siblings, only

Audrey and her sister Laura decided to go back to public school.

A gifted student, Audrey was always in the advanced groups in elementary

school. When she was homeschooled, she felt as though she pushed herself academically,

even though she was not in the normal school environment. She had a natural penchant

for learning, so while school was hard work, it was not a chore. She was so driven, that

she tested at an advanced level when taking placement examinations upon re-entering the

public school system. However, her mother was swayed by her guidance counselor to

keep Audrey in the general education courses and not push her too much her first year.

This was one of the first times Audrey felt held back. It could have been her mother’s

fear or low expectations on the part of the guidance counselor. Either way, Audrey

always looked back with regret on her freshman year.

Race Identity: Black Vs. African American

I feel like African American is more of a political term, something that people

trying to be politically correct deemed black people as being. And I think there was place

for it in the movement where people were, back in the day, trying to create a connection

between the African people or people of African descent here with Africa. So, I think

like, maybe there was a place for that at one time, but I think it turned in to a term that

people use, politicians use, and I think that most black people probably just call

themselves black. I’m sure that there are different people with different experiences. But

for me, and with people I’ve talked to, for the most part, I think that just black is okay. I

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think that in the past, it had some kind of negative connotation to be black and maybe

people said it with disdain. But for me, I can say, I’m black and I say it with pride. And

what I feel, like, about African American is that its something that people use when they

don’t know quite what to say.

As far as being American, I feel like being black and being American are two

different things. Of course, I’m also an American and I’m a proud American. But I think

that being black in America is a different experience from being, maybe, white or any

other race or even ethnicity in America. Yeah, it’s a label, a politically correct way of

saying it. I don’t need the politically correct way of saying it because I’m comfortable

with who I am. It’s something I guess for people outside the experience of being black

say because they’re outside of it and they don’t know how to address color, the

blackness.

Religious Identity

I’m Apostolic Pentecostal. And one thing I think that’s distinctive and makes my

religion unique and maybe some people shy away from, not shy away from, but just be

kind of amazed by, maybe, or curious about? We’re oneness, or we believe oneness. And

so, that’s different in that the majority of Christianity after the Council of Nicaea became

Trinitarian and so you’ve got the majority of Christianity that’s Trinitarian and we

believe that God is one who manifests Himself in different ways throughout time.

My church experience has had a really big impact on who I am as a person

because I was raised in a church that considered itself to be multicultural, even though it

may have been just one Chinese person or a Hawaiian woman and a Mexican family and

our family and maybe a couple of black bus kids, but our church was accepting and

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welcoming of diversity and anybody was welcome. We always called ourselves a

multicultural church. Even though the church was majority white, I felt welcome there

and I think that experience of being a Christian first, and being in a Christian

environment, oblivious to the fact that maybe race issues existed, or that I was even

different, because in the Christian context, everyone is the same. And so, that made it to

where I was conscious of the experience of other black people. I really feel like

throughout my lifetime, I wasn’t naïve completely, but my parents did a great job of

trying not to raise us with prejudices against other people, even though there were people

who had prejudices against us.

Before anything, I’m a Christian. I feel like I’ve become, I guess, more conscious

of my blackness, or the fact that I’m black since I’ve been in college. And recently

there’s been a big movement about people of color and all that stuff. So I don’t feel like

that was necessarily my past, but maybe that’s kind of more a part of me now and who I

am now. But initially, I was kind of like, “Christian. Oh, the world’s happy and we all

love each other.”

Race and Growing Up

Of course there are things that are unique to being black and the black experience.

For example, my mom, when we were little would always make sure that we didn’t touch

anything in the store. It was like, really, almost just like obsessive. And her explanation

of why that was, you know, you break something or someone could see us as maybe

stealing. Sometimes we would go into stores and have people follow us in the stores and

things like that. Now looking back, I can see that you really have to really pay attention

when you go out to the way that you dress, but just having black skin sometimes and

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going out into public, you get looked at differently, I guess. There were those things like

that, that in our raising, our parents would incorporate their experience and be like,

“Okay, you don’t do this because of this.” Or, for example, when I was in high school,

my dad was very careful about who he let me go home with. And if it was a white family,

he would always ask who they were and wanted to know a last name and wanted to know

what area they lived in because I guess there’s, when you’ve lived in a place for a

hundred years, because my family has been in Lucedale for a hundred years, you know

where the issues are. And you know the areas. And so he was very careful about who’s

kids he let me go home with and what areas I went to. Some of the, I guess, rural

communities, I wasn’t allowed to go to until I got older. That was in high school. So once

I decided to do what I wanted to do, that was when I was allowed there.

Education

I started out school, kindergarten, and went from kindergarten to third grade in

public school and in third grade, my mom and dad decided that they wanted to try home-

schooling. I think that there were a lot of things going on, maybe just them wanting to

make sure that we were getting the Christian raising, that aspect. And of course, like, my

dad was progressively moving up in the company, but we haven’t always been upper

middle class. So, at that time, I’m sure it was probably just a struggle for them to even do

home-school. I think it was more of a thing of making sure that we got the Christian

education that we needed. Maybe a little bit of fear of the atmosphere of public school.

My brother had gotten into a little bit of trouble in the school for being a clown. He had

recently, like when we got pulled out of school, maybe the end part of that year, he had

gotten a paddling for goofing off with the guys. In his grade, there was a group of black

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guys, they were all really good buddies and so, they were clowning around and he got a

paddling for something. I don’t remember if they were running around the class,

something, being clowns and he got into trouble for it. Then my sister was in sixth grade

at the time that we got moved out and she may have been experiencing a little bit of

bullying, possibly. We went to home-school.

Got out, got home-schooled. Homeschool is kind of tough. I kind of self-taught

myself. Mom was dealing with Leah, who was first grade, so she needed a lot of

attention. And then there’s Melody and John, and Melody would have been in the seventh

grade when we got out and John would have been going into sixth, so they needed more

attention. Laura and I are the two that are in the middle, so Laura and I were the two that

kind of did our own thing. We would work things out using our teachers’ manuals and

kind of problem solve if we had an issue or question. We would read a lot for history,

science, English, the same thing, working through a workbook. I used to dissect

sentences all day. I liked that; I was an English nerd. Yeah, so that was home school.

Maybe it was lower pressure. We were working through everything, working at your own

pace. Yeah, I guess, it was really free and low stress. We would go out and play, do

whatever we wanted that day of work for the most part. You would try and wake up

really early so you could get everything done during the first part of the day and then go

out. At times we were bored, but we had a lot of freedom to do what we wanted.

I think I was more autonomous; I don know if its necessarily because of the

freedom. I don’t know why it worked, but it did. But I don’t know why, I don’t know

what made it work. I mean my mom and dad were kind of like, “You got to do your

school work,” but for Laura and I, and just specifically for Laura and I, it worked. For

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Melody and John and Leah, home-schooling was a complete flop. Yeah, it didn’t work

for them. Melody graduated late, John graduated late, Leah graduated late. And they’re

the three that stayed in home-school instead of going back to high school, which for

Melody that would have been two years of home-schooling and then she would have

been back in high school, because she was already in sixth grade. But for us, they gave us

the option. They kind of set it out in front of us and were like, “What do y’all want to do?

Do y’all want to go back or do y’all want to stay and continue home schooling.” And for

me, I had been able to see Melody and John and what they had been doing. And going

back, it was scary, because, public school. But, obviously, it worked for us. I think it’s

because we were just driven, and so, I guess that was one of the things that home-school

allowed me to do was to be able to design my own study and to do what I was interested

in which is also why I have a hard time now in the master’s program when I have to do

things I’m not interested in that seem like busy work to me, that’s probably why. In

home-school, if it didn’t seem beneficial to me, I wouldn’t do it. That was one thing that

surprised me about public school is that the kids needed the teacher for everything. Like

for me, for example, if you can just give me a couple of examples, like in algebra, where

I can problem solve this out and see what I’m doing wrong, then I’ll do it. But the other

students really needed the teacher to be there to step by step them through everything and

it drove me insane, because I was just like, “why, why do you need the teacher for

everything?” There are other study skills or things I didn’t pick up throughout

homeschool and high school, but that was one thing I did figure out how to do was work

things on my own.

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Well, Laura and I decided to go back. So, when we decided to go back, we had to

take testing, and Laura tested way more advanced than I. I was just like a little advanced.

So for Laura, mom decided not to allow her to skip a grade, because of her age. There

came a point where my mom had to decide if I was going to be placed into advanced

classes or not. And I don’t think that my mom or the counselors necessarily had the best

expectations from me at that point. I think for my mom on her part, it was more fear

because she probably pretty much hadn’t been teaching us the whole time. So she

necessarily didn’t know and hadn’t been doing the best at measuring us and having some

kind of documented growth of how we had grown. And the counselor I think maybe

didn’t expect too much out of us. I don’t know it’s because, well of course, a lot of

people say home-school is a joke. And so, I don’t know if it was that or also just that she

didn’t expect anything out of me because of my race. So, I can’t say if it was one thing or

another. Just I guess in the interactions with those counselors, they have a lot of influence

over the success of the students. And it wasn’t both counselors, but one of the counselors

in particular, just had kind of that feeling that maybe she didn’t like you or didn’t care

about you the most if you were black. And it’s kind of funny now how life goes. That

counselor in particular is just kind of weird. And now I’m teaching her daughter Spanish

this year. And it’s just funny how life just kind of came back around. That counselor in

particular made you feel uneasy, in just the way that she looked at you and talked to you.

I don’t know if that was maybe her personality or if it was because we were black. But

my sister and I both had that same kind of feeling with that counselor. But I had this other

counselor, now that I think about it, that really helped me. My junior year, I got a chance

to go with the Mississippi youth works and they paid for us a trip to go to Jackson first,

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initially, and to learn about power, electricity, and how that works. And, also, I guess to

learn about co-op and how that works. And how the government works. So we got to go

see the capital, talk to a representative, just spend time at the capital for a week and also

get training on leadership. And there after that, I don’t know we if we had to through

another round of competition but somehow we ended up being allowed to go to

Washington as well, our co-op did. So, that was like a paid trip and I think it was the

counselors that had to nominate the students. And I had to go through an interview

process. So, looking back, I can’t say that all of the counselors were evil, but I also had

people who helped me and expected a lot out of me. My counselor in particular, because

the other lady was kind of an intermediary or maybe the head counselor, I don’t know,

that was kind of iffy, but my counselor was always very sweet, and always very helpful.

What Makes A Good Teacher

During the time that I was in public school the first bit, I had several teachers that

were really great. I was in Spirit, which was the class for gifted students. My cousin and I

were the only ones in the gifted class in our school, the only two black kids. I really

learned a lot in Spirit. It helped me to figure out how to be a problem solver. It’s also

where I got my introduction to Spanish. There was a Spanish component. I don’t even

think the teacher knew Spanish, but she played us these tapes.

My second grade teacher was really great just because she brought a lot of her

personal experience into the classroom. I think she was maybe a military, from a military

family. And she had just gotten back from Panama, and so she really brought that

experience from having lived in Panama to the classroom. And I don’t really remember it

being a thing of speaking Spanish because now that I think of it, it’s a Spanish speaking

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country. But it was more of like bringing in cool pictures, she brought in a picture of a

sloth one time, just like sharing what she had done in panama was a really great thing.

And then, in that class, we got to do a lot of hands on things, a lot of touchy things.

Then my third grade teacher was also really good, Ms. Banning. And I don’t

really, I can’t exactly express why she was great, but it was just a good experience. Ms.

Sullivan and Ms. Banning, both of those teachers were the two teachers that really

impacted me. I think they were unique. I think I remember Ms. Banning maybe being

really focused on reading and on books and I liked to read at the time. Ms. Sullivan, too,

liked to work on reading a lot and I really liked to read. It’s just like random stuff that I

feel like kids like. I remember one day in Ms. Banning’s class, we had a day where we

could only write. And it was I think almost meant to be a punishment, but to me, it was

like the funnest (sic) thing in the world, because we couldn’t talk. And we had to write

everything that we would have said in class. It was probably mean to be a punishment

because we talk too much but to me I remember that day being the most fun thing in the

world. I don’t know why. I guess it was because we were allowed to pass notes in the

class. They had unique approaches that were different and their personalities were really

loving and caring. I think it was just that. I don’t remember anything in retrospect that

stuck out.

Race and High School

It was kind of weird because Kara (my cousin), although she is lighter skinned

than I am, you would expect for me to have had a worse experience than she did because

she’s lighter and I’m darker, it wasn’t that way. At a young age, initially, Kara kind of

experienced what I guess was black on black racism or prejudice maybe, a little bit of

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negative peer pressure, because she had a lot of white friends, maybe in kindergarten

through second grade, somewhere around there. Well, they didn’t consider her to be

white or to be black, because she was way lighter skin, and then she was with white

people all the time. So they were kind of like, “Well you can’t really be black because

you’re not with the black kids.” So there’s a lot of self-segregation that goes on with

black people or just any cultural group sometimes there can be self-segregation. And that

can be for a lot of different reasons, maybe. But, anyways, that’s how it ended up being

that she experienced that, where, the kids really kind of told her she couldn’t be black and

be with all those white people. So I think it was kind of two things. I think she had some

rough experiences also with some of her white friends and treatment with her white

friends because by the time she got into high school, there were some girls that she just

didn’t deal with because she said that they were racist. And I guess, kind of like in one of

those slick ways, where you can’t necessarily put a finger on it, but she had had some

experiences with some girls who were her friends. So, she kind of snapped back, I guess,

and became super black pride. So, I think in high school, she had a hyper-awareness of

being black and that she was black and that she was proud to black and you couldn’t take

away her blackness because she was proud to be black. So, get to high school and I come

from my insulated environment where I’m with white people all time because I’m with

church people all the time and at church it’s majority white people. So I guess I had this

idealized idea of race relations and didn’t really see that there was an issue although at

times there was. So we get into class one day and we’re reading some kind of passage, I

don’t know what literature we were reading at the time. Kara was like, “Okay, this is

racist.” And Kara was very vocal, always has been, her dad is very vocal, and they can

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talk. And so, she wasn’t ashamed, and was like, “This is racist.” And so, you know, you

have twenty other students in the class who automatically are like, “No, no, no.” And so

she looks to me and says, “Audrey, do you see what I’m saying?” And I’ve always been a

diplomat. I’m the middle kid and they say that middle kids are peace makers and I kind of

just wiggle out of things if I can help it. So I was just kind of like, “Well…” And I didn’t

really back her up in that moment. She talks about it when we look back on high school,

and that class and that moment because she felt like I really let her down and I left her

hanging. I didn’t really com to her defense. She thinks at least I could have stood up for

her in that moment and then later come back to her in private and told her that I didn’t

agree. So she felt in that moment that I abandoned her. And for me, I’ve always tried to

be very truthful, and so, I can’t lie if I don’t see it at that moment. In retrospect, of course,

I see things in a different light. But, in that moment, the truth for me was that, “I don’t

really quite see it, sorry.” And I think that was a let down for her. And I think that a lot of

kids made her the bad guy because she was so vocal about the injustice that she saw in

the system, the treatment of a lot of the teachers of students, black students, really, a lot

of school policies a lot of times are punishing for black students. And I think that was

probably the case still in my high school, not to a huge extent, but enough to that you

could see that people were being treated differently. Even when I was in high school, we

had race riots. It was only a race riot, I guess, and of course the majority of the time,

everybody got along but, I don’t remember if I told you about Billey, who was a black

student who was dating a white girl. Billey was in my grade. Actually Kara, my cousin,

had dated him. She had previously dated him. He was a black kid, dating a white girl. Her

family didn’t care for it very much that they were dating. And then, I think it’s coming up

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the anniversary of his death actually, I think it was December 8th. He was on his way to

school, early in the morning, and had his gun with him, and got stopped right outside of

town, coming in. And according to the police report, or whatever, somehow, his shotgun

went off and shot him in the head, and he died. An accident, was what they say, they

don’t exactly know the cause of death. The police scene was destroyed. The officer that

stopped Billey was a friend of the family of the girlfriend. And so, pretty much, everyone

believes that he was murdered. They called the NAACP, but of course they ruined the

crime scene. They wouldn’t allow his mom to see his body, or to come up to see his

body, even though he was lying dead in the street. Instead of allowing his mom to

identify his body, they allowed his white coach to identify his body. And so just a whole

issue with that that really kind of created a charged atmosphere because of course you

have the whole black community that believes he was murdered. And I don’t think that it

was just the black community that thinks he was murdered. There were just things that

don’t make sense. NAACP was called; the attorney general maybe said that they didn’t

have evidence. But the evidence on the scene was not treated properly. And so pretty

much it just seems like the evidence was tampered with and washed away. And by the

time that things, at the end of things, there was no truth. There was no way of proving

what had happened. And so I think after that point there was a little bit of friction. And I

can’t remember exactly why it ended up being, maybe, a student calling another student a

derogatory word. But it ended up being, not necessarily a lockdown, but a bunch of crazy

stuff where everybody’s fighting. So for a while there, everything was really charged at

the school because of that. That was just like one season, and then of course everything

settles back down with time.

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I think that especially here in the south, there’s an undercurrent of racism that if

you have the right people involved, it’ll get things on and popping around here. It doesn’t

really go away; it just goes to the undercurrent. It goes below the current. I don’t think

I’m always aware of it. I feel like maybe I’m not always aware but I think that still, I and

a lot of people in the south, have unconscious actions and interactions in the way that we

interact with people is moved by us being in the context of where we’re at in our history

and I don’t think that we even realize it sometimes that we’re acting the way that we’re

acting because of our knowledge of things that happened back in the day or things your

parents teach you from when you’re young that this is the way that you act, or this is

what your do, or this is what you avoid. And there are times that you feel it. For example,

this was the other day, I went to rescue one of my friends from Purvis, no from Picayune.

He broke down in Picayune. So, it’s me and two Mexican guys, off of Highway 51. And

we’re parked in the middle of nowhere and we end up parking in this parking lot at this

boondock gas station and it was literally this old white man in this gas station. And I’m

with two Mexican guys and I’m a black girl. And so in that situation, when you’re in the

boondocks, and you don’t know the area, that’s when you feel that undercurrent. And I

feel very uneasy in those kinds of situations. Because you know, I said, my dad wouldn’t

let me go to these kinds of places because you never know what’s there. A lot of times,

you find ignorance in rural places. And so, being there with two guys, not speaking

English, I go into the store because we need a jack to jack up his car so we can get his tire

off. And I’m the only one who speaks English well, so I have to go in. So I walk in, and

you’ve got this big Confederate flag and picture of Robert E. Lee, and so you feel like,

“Okay, oh God.” And of course the man was like, “Hey sweetheart, what you need?” So

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you think, is this a condescending sweetheart? And there’s always distrust to what his

motives are and how you’re going to be treated. And it’s [the Confederate flag] not an

offense, but I’ve never had a positive association with it. And maybe it was something I

was raised with. But for me, when I see it, I automatically associate it with a person

who’s not going to be welcoming to me and who I am as a person. Not necessarily

everyone who has a Confederate flag is racist, but is probably racist or less tolerant. And

so it just doesn’t ever for me, and I don’t think for very many black people, produce a

good feeling to see a confederate flag. And when you see that, it makes you uneasy.

College

Being one out of five, of course the expectation is for us to go to college. You

have to be able to support yourself a little bit. So, it was kind of expected. I don’t think

we were pushed into going to college, but I enjoy college. I’m a learner, I like to figure

things out, I’m curious, so that was the next step for me. So in high school, I was already

preparing for college. I had a lot of teachers who helped with information and knowledge

to help me get there. My parents didn’t necessarily know exactly what I needed to do, so

being in those advanced placement classes helped me to be in the atmosphere to where it

was just naturally a part of a dialogue. And that’s something that the kids in the other

classes don’t have is the training of what they need to do. Maybe they don’t have that in

the other lower levels, because it’s like you automatically assume that they’re not going

to get the scholarships so they don’t quite address that in the other classes. So I took ACT

prep in high school, had a professor who helped me look at different colleges. I basically

did the entire application process, my parents upped me the money. Took the ACT

several times, probably like eight times. Applied for the colleges. I went through and

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investigated which programs I wanted to do. I started out at the community college. And

I don’t think it hurt my college career. At the time I was being paid to go to community

college, so it was good in that aspect, as far as financially, not to have loans. So it worked

out well. And also, I was close to home.

Multicultural Education

I think that if I could change curriculum, all cultures would be integrated into the

coursework. But you have to realize that we can’t work magic. And so, a lot of the

curriculum is probably going to remain the same because it’s a lot of the same companies

writing the same thing. And you have to think about people desiring to purchase a book.

And I think that’s where there’s a place with classes that focus specifically on the black

experience or the Latino experience or even the experience of the woman in the States.

And those experiences are unique. And you have to look at it thought that lens of color or

that lens of your cultural background. And that’s why there’s a place for that because

general history tends to ignore that or doesn’t teach you to look at things through

different lenses. I haven’t seen a seen a history book that teaches history from more than

one side. It’s usually kind of a one-sided thing. It doesn’t tell both sides of the story. And

so I think that’s what those courses are for. For example, you have the story of

Thanksgiving, or the story of the colonists coming to America. You hear about them

coming for religious freedom, but the Indians attacked them, but they made it through.

You hear about the colonists coming to flee from religious persecution, but you never

hear about the persecution of the Indians from when the colonists arrived and invaded

their home. You never talk about the biological warfare through the giving of smallpox

blankets that was waged on these Indians or the way that, you know, the colonists

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disrupted a way of life and a way of living. You don’t talk about what that Indian way of

living is, the benefits of their lifestyle. It’s kind of “we came, conquered, tamed, gave the

Indians religions, and that’s why America’s great today!”

Commentary

While she admitted she had witnessed racism and discrimination when she was

young, Audrey said that for most of her life, she lived in a bubble produced by home-

schooling and her church community. She did not realize all the different struggles that

other black people faced out in the world until she went back to public school and began

to learn alongside her cousin. She talks about her cousin’s experience of black on black

racism as well as being discriminated against by white girls in her grade. This made her

hypersensitive to racism and gave her a desire to stand up for herself and others who had

similar struggles. Audrey noticed how her cousin’s experience was much different from

her own experience. By the time her cousin was a freshman in high school, she was

already painfully aware of the plight of others. Audrey mentions in a later conversation

that her cousin “checked out” after a certain point in her education. She says that Kara

would not participate in class and would put her ear buds in and listen to music in order

to pass the time. It was her way of silently protesting the mistreatment she witnessed in

her school. Norton (2016) explains the cause and reasoning of Audrey’s cousin’s actions

in her article Identity and Language Learning: Back to the Future. She writes, “if the

classroom practices are racist, sexist, or homophobic, the learner may have little

investment in the language practices of the classroom and demonstrate little progress in

learning” (Norton, 2016, pp. 476-477). When Kara felt the text was racist in class, yet the

CASE STUDY 18

teacher and others chose not to acknowledge her feelings, she was not motivated to invest

in the class. If she was not being understood or even heard, why should she try?

Intercultural competence is not something that only ESL instructors must learn.

Within the English language, there are different cultures that exist simultaneously. In her

advanced English course, Audrey and Kara were two black students in a classroom of

around eighteen other white students and a white teacher. While they were native

speakers of English, they belonged to a different culture than their white peers and their

white teacher. Hager (2011) writes that, “Intercultural competence requires certain

knowledge, skills, and attitudes that one must learn” (p. 16). While unfortunately one

cannot expect a classroom of teenagers to all be interculturally competent, the teacher

should have been. And even if she did not understand what Kara was saying, she should

have given her time to express her feelings in a safe environment instead of

unintentionally facilitating a situation in which Kara felt ganged up on by her classmates.

“Acting interculturally compels individuals to interrupt deeper cultural values, perhaps

only temporarily, so that they are able to comprehend and empathize with the values of

others that differ from their own” (Byram, as cited by Hager, 2011, p. 16). This is crucial

for a multicultural education. In order to have a multicultural education, there must be

multiple cultures. One culture’s point of view should never be discredited because a

another culture disagrees.

Audrey mentions two specific teachers that she felt truly motivated her and her

desire to learn. According to Stronge, Ward, and Grant (2011), instructional delivery is

vital in making a teacher effective because it “includes the myriad teacher responsibilities

that provide the connection between the curriculum and the student” (p. 340). Connecting

CASE STUDY 19

the students to the material is the key to engaging and motivating students. Audrey felt

that Ms. Sullivan brought the outside world into the classroom. She remembers a specific

unit on Panama and Ms. Sullivan sharing her personal experiences in Panama with her

students. This was certainly a break from traditional curriculum. Nieto and Bode (1992)

write that, “one approach to transforming curriculum through a more multicultural

perspective is the strategy of teaching about a specific geographical region and the

cultural experiences of its people” (p. 343). Whether or not the Panama was a part of the

curriculum that Audrey’s elementary school used, it is clearly something that she

remembers fondly twenty years later.

Audrey’s parents’ education expectations of her played an important role in her

life and educational choices. Her father has a college education and made it clear to his

children that they were expected to get a college degree to be able to support themselves.

Wood, Kurtz-Costes, and Copping (2011) write in their study on motivational pathways

to education for middle class black students that “Parents’ expectations were related to

youths’ motivational outcomes both directly and indirectly via youths’ perceptions of

those expectations” (p. 965). Audrey has not only completed her bachelor’s degree, but is

currently in her final year of a master’s program. Her parents’ expectation of her

educational achievements heavily influenced and encouraged her to not only do the bare

minimum, which in her case was get a college degree, but to exceed those expectations

and pursue higher education. Parents’ involvement, or lack thereof, in their students’

academics can have last effects that will influence the student throughout their academic

career.

CASE STUDY 20

In their book Myths and Realities: Best Practices for English Language Learners,

Samway and McKeon (1999) confront the myth that only the staff that deals with ELL

students need to have staff development training in how to treat ELL students (p. 150).

While Audrey was not an ELL student, she belonged to one of the minority groups at her

school. She said she felt uneasy with some of the interactions she had with one of the

counselors at her school. She felt that her race played a part in her treatment as well as

her mother’s coercion to not put her in an advanced level her first year back in public

school. Samway and McKeon (1999) write that, “anyone who comes in contact with ELL

students and/or their families should be provided with appropriate, focused staff

development. Research indicates that programs that are comprehensive and include all

staff (not just teachers) contribute a great deal to successful programs for ELL students”

(pp. 150-151). As previously mentioned, Audrey is not an ELL student, but one can only

imagine that if this strategy is successful with ELL students, there is training that exists to

help teachers and staff support other minority groups and that it would also contribute to

the success of those students as well.

Audrey expressed that she felt her education had not acknowledged the

viewpoints of minority groups that exist in the United States. Textbooks, even the ones

she used during home-school, were predominately “white”, so to speak. Nieto and Bode

(1992) explain that, “this is because history is generally written by the conquerors, not by

the vanquished or by those who benefit least in society. The result is that history books

are skewed in the direction of dominant groups in a society” (p. 55). Audrey believes that

if other voices were acknowledged, this would be a great start to a well-rounded,

integrated, diverse education. Nieto and Bode once again summarize the exact sentiment

CASE STUDY 21

that Audrey tries to convey. They (1992) write that “a multicultural perspective does not

simply operate on the principle of substituting one ‘truth’ or perspective for another.

Rather, it reflects on multiple and contradictory perspectives to understand reality more

fully” (p. 57). It is not saying to take away the perspective of a majority group. It is

saying that all perspectives deserve to be heard and taught, no matter if they are

contradictory or uncomfortable.

CASE STUDY 22

References

Hagar, M. (2011). Intercultural Studies and Foreign Language Learning: Culture,

Psychology, and Language Learning. Brussels, GB: Peter Lang AG,

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.

Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (1992). Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of

Multicultural Education. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

Norton, B. (2016). Identity and language learning: Back to the future. TESOL Quarterly

50(2), 475-479.

Samway, K. & McKeon, D. (1999). Myths and Realities: Best Practices for English

Language Learners. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing.

Stronge, J., Ward, T., & Grant, L. (2011). What makes good teachers good? A cross-case

analysis of the connection between teacher effectiveness and student achievement.

Journal of Teacher Education, 62(4), 339-355.

Wood, D., Kurtz-Costes, B., & Copping, K. (2011). Gender differences in motivational

pathways to college for middle class African American youths. Developmental

Psycology, 47(4), 961-968.