Our school is starting a new initiative next year called, "The Leader in Me." It is grounded in the "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," and it gives schools a common language for discussing leadership skills with our students. The program has been implemented in all the elementary schools in our district, and the middle school where I teach is exploring the program now with anticipated full implementation next year.
I feel a collective eye-roll at times when I start coming at these things from an ELL perspective. I get it. 88% of our students are not ELLs. But 12% of our students are. And our current population of ELLs is coming to us from refugee camps in Thailand and Burundi and Somalia. These aren't kids who have been living in the United States for years and are still struggling with language acquisition. These are kids who have just arrived in the country and are just trying to get their cultural feet under them while struggling to maintain a hold on their home culture. Some are just stepping into a school for the first time.
So I've got questions. Read this paragraph from The Leader in Me:
"First, observe the universal nature of the leadership principles that are being taught at the schools. The principles are timeless and, in most cases, commonsensical. I did not invent the principles; they have been around for ages and are familiar to all cultures. So whether a student is stepping out of a sizable home in an upscale neighborhood or out of a thatched hut in a rain forest, the principles will enable them to make better choices today and improved their tomorrows" (13).
Honestly, this paragraph made me really uncomfortable. So I'm trying to explore why. I started a conversation about this at a faculty meeting last week, and a colleague suggested that all cultures value respect, and that is one of the things that this program teaches. At the time, I agreed. But I was still uncomfortable, and I went home that night and thought about it, and here's the thing: yes, all cultures value respect. But showing respect differs greatly from one culture to the next.
The book, Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands, is great for leadership reference. It explains how to do business in sixty different countries. Here's a bit from the book about doing business in Austria:
However, in Argentina:
- Austrian executives are often very charming, relaxed, and unhurried. They do not usually respond positively to high-pressure tactics or limited-time opportunities.
- Austrian management style emphasizes consensus-building and sophisticated "people-skills." Confrontation is to be avoided even if rules must be bent to do so.
Let's translate this to some things I have seen in my teaching. Students from Burma call their teachers, "Teacher." It is a term of respect. They would never call their teachers by their names at home. In the same way that I call my doctor, "Doctor" and not "Steve", they call their teachers by the title. And kids arrive in schools in the United States, and the rules shift on them. While it seems like a very small issue, it is an issue of formality and familiarity. Titles mean something. I'm still struck when my colleagues call me, "Mrs. Bowman" in our faculty meetings when no students are around. I want them to use the familiar, "Kim" when talking with me. I'm not comfortable with the formality. I think it makes building personal relationships more difficult. I've been asking people to call me by my first name for six years. Yet that's not always the norm for the culture of our school. So it's a tough shift. Imagine what that does for students when we ask them to use a more familiar term than what they've used their entire lives.
- Argentinian negotiators have a reputation for toughness, yielding very little. Part of their immobility is due to the fact that they are generally averse to risk.
- Personal relationships are far more important than corporate ones. Each time your company changes its representative, you will be starting again from scratch. New alliances must be built before business can proceed.
Or when having a disciplinary conversation with a student from Tanzania, it's nearly impossible to get them to make eye contact. How many times have I heard teachers say to students, "Look at me when I'm talking with you?" Who knows? But respect in the United States means that when I am speaking, you are making eye contact with me. Even if it makes you uncomfortable. Students have told me that they can be admonished for eye contact in their home countries. That level of disrespect can warrant a smack with a ruler in some places. And then they come to our schools, and we ask them to show us respect by doing something that has been ingrained in them as being disrespectful at home. And we wonder why their disciplinary issues leave them feeling all topsy-turvy?
The other day I was teaching, and a student from Tanzania wouldn't stop talking out of turn. I gave him a quick warning, and his apology was quick, as well. "My bad." Sigh. I stopped class for a teachable moment. I pointed out to him that "My bad" is an apology perhaps better used with friends than with teachers and that it isn't appropriate to apologize to a teacher using that phrase.
Fast forward to yesterday afternoon. A non-ELL student was coming out of the cafeteria. He had just picked up his yearbook at lunch, and he was walking down the wrong side of the hall with the book open, looking down at the pictures in the book, and not paying attention to where he was going. He ran right into me. The corner of his book caught my arm in just the right spot and left a three-inch scratch/slight cut on my arm. His reaction? "My bad." Sigh.
What's the takeaway? All of our students need a lesson in registers of language. But some kids are trying to negotiate appropriate responses from a different point of view. And we need to be sensitive to that as we implement any program in our school.
People are excited about this program. Me, too. I have a background in leadership development. I used to run a Challenge Course for a living, and I spent my days dangling from climbing towers and trying to get people to understand how they impacted the others in their group. I just am wary of implementing any program without considering the cultural biases that may be embedded in the program or in the people implementing it. I have questions. But I'm out of coffee this morning. Just want to start people thinking. And talking. If I can.
