What are the limitations of your own education?

I wasn't surprised to see the dad who came to talk to me at lunch break.  I had invited the parents at our meeting the previous night to come in to talk to me any time.  A veteran staff member told me afterward that I should expect to be taken up on my offer.  The parents had been quiet during the meeting, but she knew that they had opinions on the issues that we were discussing.  "Just give them a day or two," she said.  English was the second or third language for all of them, and sometimes they just needed additional time to process our discussion and to think about how to respond.

Still, I was a bit surprised when he told me that he had been thinking all night and all morning about something I had said at the parent meeting.  I worried that it might have been something offensive or controversial, but it turned out to be nothing like that.  Actually, he was responding to a request that I had made.  Since I am the principal of a Mennonite Alternative Program school, I am often asked questions about Mennonite beliefs and practices even though I am not Mennonite. In this case, I asked the parents at our meeting for their advice in how to respond when non-Mennonites ask me why Mennonite families take two days for Epiphany, Ascension, and Pentecost holidays.  This request sometimes comes with suspicion or resentment from non-Mennonites who question why Mennonites will miss multiple days of work or school for religious holidays even if their family is not particularly religious.  At our meeting, one parent responded by stating simply that, "that is how we were taught."  All of the parents nodded in agreement and then there was silence.

The parent who came in the next afternoon wanted me to know that there was more to it.  He explained how he had been taught to use the additional days for thinking about the scriptures and the spiritual meanings of those days and letting them sink in.  They were also for rest and for family, he said.  He had wanted to explain all of this at the meeting, but he wasn't sure how he would come across in English.  Even as he spoke to me in person, it was clear that there was more that he wanted to say, but was prevented from doing so by the language barrier.

At this point in our conversation, he began to apologize for his limited English, but I stopped him.  “Remember that I am the one with the limitation here,” I explained. “If I spoke Low German, I am sure that you could explain this to me easily.  You are the one who speaks two languages; I am the person who only speaks one.”  At the parent meeting, I had also emphasized this point.  I reminded them that speaking more than one language is considered the norm in most of the world.  “In this very important way” I explained, “you are more educated than I am, even with my three university degrees.”

It is a point that I come back to often, in part because it is too often forgotten and in part because these parents often feel inadequate or judged for their own lack of formal education.  I want them to understand that we all have limitations in our education.  I shared with them how I had come to realize that I had a tendency to call the parents of my ELL students less frequently than the other parents because of my fear of my limitation.  It is uncomfortable and embarrassing to misunderstand others and to struggle in getting your point across to them.  I knew that I would have to get over that fear to do my job as a teacher.  "I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one," said one of the parents that night.

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It is true that I have a lot of formal education, or what these parents might call "book learning."  I value this type of learning a great deal, which is why I have put so much time and money into pursuing it.  It is powerful and it helps to transcend the limitations of personal experience and opinion.  I am the first to admit, however, that this type of learning also has limitations.  It tends to be abstract, theoretical, and removed from the context of immediate relevant action.  Unfortunately, in formal schooling, the truest answer to, "Why do I need to know this?" is often "Because it is on the test," or possibly, "Because you might need to know it some day."  Informal education tends to be more immediate, concrete and context embedded. This sort of learning is often more immediately relevant and useful than the academic style "book learning."

In the teaching profession, a key example of this difference is when we try to provide educational experiences which are responsive to student needs.  We can assess students and gather information on reading levels and I.Q. or attendance or frequency of certain behaviours.  We can quantify this data and categorize it to assign codes or provide labels.  This academic approach provides useful data about students, but it does not directly assess their needs, per se.  Student needs are determined as much by the demands of their environment as by the abilities or behaviors of the student.  "Needs" always have context.  Determining student needs means making judgments about how they are using those abilities in their day to day environment.  This immediate, practical information can only be obtained by getting to know the context:  What barriers does the student face in the classroom environment?  What do we know about the family background?  What are the student's interests and strengths?  What are their goals and hopes for the future?  How do these things relate to our curriculum and to the resources available in our classrooms?

This sort of information is particularly important in working with students with limited or interrupted formal education.  Since many of these students are adolescents, they have limited time to meet their educational goals.  They are at great risk of leaving the education system entirely if they are not feeling successful or if they do not see the relevance of the educational programming that we provide. The more we know and understand about the context of a student's educational history, their culture, their family, and their own personal dreams and interests, the more likely we are to be able to find ways to provide what they need.

When it comes to working with SLIFE, then, I encourage teachers to begin by examining the limitations of their own education.  If we do not understand the cultural or family context, we must find ways to connect with those families and let them inform us about themselves.  Where language is a barrier, we need to own some of that limitation for ourselves rather than place it solely on them.  We need to seek out translation services if they are available.  We need to seek more contact with those parents, not less - even when it is uncomfortable to have those conversations at first.  We need to ask them questions rather than make assumptions based on cultural stereotypes.  We need to own up to our own limitations and find ways to accommodate for them.