Personal Learning History
When I was 24, I moved to Prague in the Czech Republic to try and find a job. Before I went, I bought a Czech-to-English dictionary and a book of phrases. I practiced and learned as much of the language as I could before I got on the plane. I made flashcards and flipped through them until I fell asleep each night. At my first job interview, I was asked if I knew the language, and I was fully prepared. I said my practiced line, "Můj ÄŒech není moc dobrý, ale studuji," which means "My Czech isn't very good, but I'm studying." The interviewers exchanged glances and then said, "So, you don't speak any Czech at all." My pronunciation was so bad that they wrote me off (and didn't give me the job). After that, I signed up for a Czech language class, but it was taught entirely in Czech. I was lost. The other students were turning pages in their workbooks and busily learning the language. I couldn't even understand what page to turn to. I felt like I had landed on another planet.
I was an "outsider" in Prague, but that made me realize that I had almost always been an "insider." I grew up in a house of English language readers. My father read three newspapers a day and did calculus problems for fun. My mom was an avid novel and magazine reader, and she read to me every night when I was young. When I arrived at elementary school in Connecticut, I was eager and prepared. And then, as a white female, I found myself in a world of white females, where I could always understand what the teacher was saying, see myself in her stories, and relate to her point of view. I did not have a male teacher until maybe the 4th grade, and I did not have a teacher of color until high school. In Prague, I realized that I had been an "insider" from the beginning.
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Being an insider in school actually puts me at a disadvantage as a teacher. Because the system is designed to support students like me, I am sometimes less able to naturally pinpoint where students are struggling. Luckily, my education did not end in high school. In addition to my humbling experience in Prague, I have worked with many amazing students over the past thirty years, They have had the generosity and courage to teach me to be a better teacher.
From my students, I learned how they learn: about what the brain does under stress and what it feels like to be an outsider. This has helped me break lessons down, ask lots of questions, and pinpoint areas of difficulty WITH my students. Here are some pictures of the students who have helped me over the years. All of these pictures are taken with RCC students: some in my classes, some on field trips, some at student conferences where my students presented their papers, and some during my work as the Honors Program Coordinator (i.e. the transfer celebration), and most recently some from my semester teaching RCC students in Barcelona. And yes, that was my hair, haha.
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