Diversity. Intersectionality. My family and I are just one family in the school system in good ‘ol Southern California. And, like most of you, we are wildly intersectional in our identities. I’m white and raised in severe poverty as a child. My spouse is Filipino and immigrated here at the age of 12. We’re a same-sex gay male couple. We created our family through the wonderful world of adoption. Our daughter is a dark Black African-American girl. That makes us a multi-racial family. Different communities of faith have impacted us. I grew up Baptist. My husband’s family are Jehovah’s Witnesses. We’re a multilingual family (Tagalog and Spanish and English). We have disAbilities in our family as well.
I could keep going, for sure.
And our kid, Helena, will be just ONE student in your class. I can’t even get my head around the immense pools of diversity and intersectionality that are in one single class of students. It’s immense! As educators, we spend our lives nuancing about identities in our classroom - our own, our students, and our colleagues.
This week has us nuancing a little bit more about some of these topics. Of course, you’ll have entire courses in your crendential and masters programs about some of these, like language.
I’ve been on a book-buying spree this past week. Below are the books that have come in so far. One is an updated version of a classic that I want to read (Pipher), but the others are topics I want to read more about and/or feel like I need more nuance about. Several of the books were recommended by colleagues or were just recently mentioned in professional development seminars. I can’t wait to dig into these and I hope it illustrates to you the power of continually being committed to nuancing throughout our professional lives.
There are so many topics to dig into, and this week we look at several. One piece is my own story of growing up in school poor and how school actually worsened my poverty because of what they asked of my family and myself. Of all of the things I’ve written, I personally feel that this has been my greatest contribution to teaching in regards to my writing. I hope, above all, it really gives you a little more nuance.