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October 14th. What is culture and what defines it? We can talk about the easy stuff-
the institutions, the food, the traditions. However the role it has inside the individual
and how it affects their outlook on life is a whole different matter. Where do you
learn to understand who you are and what makes you you? We are taught in social
studies classes about our history and government that it seems to be without the
necessary reflective component. Sometimes values are talked about. But how is it
made to be personal? Where does the culture meet the person? And how does it
resonate or fill them?
November 22nd. I have fallen in love with a place and it is under my skin. I’ve got
it bad. Without leaving my couch I feel the warm
sun grab under my feet as I walk through the ashram. I smell the rain on palms,
the fresh mud. I hear the jingle of Bharatanatyam dancers, the bell between classes,
and I can taste the filtercopy. While all these sense and memories drift in
and out, I don’t want to even think about what it will mean to say goodbye.
New doors open upon returning the United States. I was selected to build a
relationship with a school in Beijing. I leveraged my Fulbright connections to build
collaborative connections with schools in India and South Africa through my
districts’ international study program and led the first exchange trips to Cape Town
and Mumbai. I served as a resource person to new Fullbrighters during their
training in Washington. But through all of these experiences, the questions about
culture and understanding still lingered from my initial experience in South India.
Ultimately these questions would take me on another road.
It was the questions raised on my blog, which led me to the University of
Minnesota’s Comparative International Development Education doctoral program.
Here, work with Dr. Michael Goh who was my adviser, expanded mythinking about
intercultural capabilities and its interface with education. With Dr. Deanne
Magnusson, I’m working on creating an internationalization resource center for our
department’s faculty to hopefully continue the work of Joseph Mestenhauser. With
Dr. Magnusson, I’ve also worked to expand our department’s global reach by
exploring new international projects in South Asia and Latin America for faculty
research and collaboration.
I was told by a professor during my time here at the U that I think like a teacher.
They couldn’t be more right. When I think about intercultural capability and
internationalism, it’s in my classroom where it begins and ends. This is where it all
comes together. Work with the heart, putting questions into mind, preparing
teachers who get culture, who get students, who make classrooms that welcome
everybody, who push their students to think beyond their borders. Teachers for
peace. I think like a teacher.
As I work through my dissertation and look to the future, I hope I can continue to
research cultural intelligence and education with Dr. Soon Ang with Nayang
Technological University. I take very seriously that teachers have remarkable
potential to prepare their students for an increasingly international world and to
navigate cultural differences. I hope that efforts with Dr. Goh and the Teacher
Education Redesign Initiative will better prepare our current teacher candidates to
connect with students, expand their conceptions of the role of a teacher, and to
engage them in the larger global conversations about education. Similarly, through
the Internationalization Resource Center, I hope to play at least a small role in
facilitating faculty inclusion of internationalism in their courses and to encourage
knowledge sharing in internationalization projects.
If I could choose the legacy I leave here at the University of Minnesota, it would be
that when my daughter walks on to campus in a decade, that internationalization
interculturalism will be in the ground water. A way of being, a way of thinking, the
way we do our work at the U. That what she sees and hears at home will be a norm
on campus. And that her dad had a part in it.