Cultural Identification

Nina Godette
As I reflect on my culture and ethnicity, I often think to myself what is my culture? I have
thought about this many times within the last 10 years of being a military family and teaching in
Alaska, Hawaii, North Carolina, and now California. Growing up in the south and being white I
never thought about or was exposed to special aspects of my culture or ethnicity. Since my
family never embraced or practiced aspects that would be special to our culture or ethnicity I
had no idea of the hardships many of my students would go through who were not white. This
made it hard to connect and help my non-white students learn as a new teacher.

However, once the Army moved my family to Alaska and I taught at a Spanish
Immersion school my eyes were opened to how cultures, ethnicities, and differences were truly
embraced even in the school setting. I loved learning about my students’ backgrounds and
bringing their knowledge and their families knowledge into our classroom to enrich our learning.
I also quickly learned the struggles of students who are second language learners. I could see
my Spanish speaking students flourish in their Spanish class where they learned science and
social studies. Then quickly retreat to a hermit crab-like state when they came to my class to
learn English, reading, writing, and math. I knew I had to find ways to help them connect with
and access the curriculum. I was still a newer teacher at that time and was eager to learn
instructional strategies and best practices to help them learn best.

Three years later when our family moved to Hawaii I was faced with the question of
really reflecting on what is my culture when my daughter was in first grade and I was also
teaching first grade at the same school. One of our social studies standards was to investigate
cultural characteristics in our community, so we did Ohana (family) projects to learn about the
cultures of each family in our classrooms. I enjoyed the project as a teacher and learning about
the various cultures and ethnicities, but I did not enjoy the project as a parent because what was
I going to tell my daughter? What was our culture? I had no clue! While her friends and
classmates were sharing special foods, dances, songs, instruments, clothing, and other artifacts
I had nothing to share with her. Her father is black and both of us were raised in a southern
farming/coastal town in North Carolina. I had to rely on memories of my childhood and my
husband's childhood to try and help describe our culture to our daughter. Rather than focusing
on our ethnicities specialness we focused on our culture based on the region my husband and I
were raised in. We are proud of our southerness, our foods, our dialect, family gatherings,
games, and things that make our region special. This is why when we are moved to different
states to serve the Army we embrace each place's uniqueness! I feel that these experiences
and reflections have helped mold me into the teacher I am today, which I am so proud of!

As I reflect on some of my current students who are ethnically different from the
mainstream culture I have empathy for how different and hard it may be for them to learn. I have
noticed more of a struggle or less confidence when we are reading. I believe this is because
there is a lack of knowledge in vocabulary words, even during our phonics lesson. Oftentimes I
can see the confusion on their face, almost like they are thinking to themself what does that
word mean or what is that. As I see their facial expressions I know we need to address this gap
in knowledge. We pull up pictures, explain in context, and give the definition of new words to
help students make a connection. If students know that word in their native language I invite
them to share how we would say it in their language. Once I take this filter out you can visually
see a sense of relief from students, even students whose first language is English but may not
have been exposed to such vocabulary. Students who come from a background of being a
second language learner need to know it’s ok to not know something, so they can feel more
confident in the learning process.