What a start to the unit as I was definitely thrown into the deep end in the most positive way by writing a positionality statement. Not sure if I did do it right nevertheless it was refreshing to look at myself objectively to recognize where I stood socially so far. This is what I wrote…
“As a Chinese man who grew up in a post-colonial Hong Kong, I have certain prejudices against the white capitalist discriminatory perspectives of the British. Even though my own economical privileges are acknowledged, I still feel as though my ethnicity and cultural back background are treated as an oppressed minority and seen as an antagonizing trigger in discussions about social and political issues.
Nevertheless, my hetero-normative views have helped my professional career; in terms of jobs, reputation, creative freedom, and acceptance of opinions in the ever problematic patriarchal society. My income, fluency in English, privately educated history and British citizenship have provided me with the advantage of choosing how to live my life and provide for my family. Through the conservative views of my family, I have inherited some problematic views about marginalized groups who are unable to express their identities. So since living and working in the UK, I want to surrender my prejudices and develop a more mature empathetic perspective when comes to teaching in a classroom.
I want to learn more about how different cultural behaviours and attitudes towards work in a multi-cultural classroom. A true understanding of what ‘inclusivity’ and ‘queerness’ really means from an educator’s perspective is something that will help me to develop my critical thinking through teaching practices.”
I mean all of this stuff is in there when I go about my everyday life and it will be insightful how laying all this on the table will help and affect my teaching practices.
Task 2 had us watch a ‘vintage’ film on ‘critical pedagogy’ and give comments about it. At first glance, I thought this is something we already think about daily as teaching practitioners and artists/designers nevertheless it was interesting to see its origins. Mostly the academics were from privileged backgrounds which beg to emphasizes the notion of ‘choice’. Of course, if survival wasn’t the priority of the household/children, then criticality is a choice. But if survival is at the gore of a family being, then you do rather than ask no matter. This also has triggered another thought about the role of highways in American poverty and how Biden is attempting to create a much more inclusive country by restructuring its infrastructre.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of-highways-in-american-poverty/474282/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58106414
The third task was perhaps a problematic task? Still unsure how to digest it. So we were asked to assign perceived intersectional identities to a list of images of people, all of them I have not seen before. Categories such as; age, disability, race, class, religion, gender, pronouns, sexual orientation, marriage, pregnancy, nationality, schooling, and highest educational status. My thoughts after the task were…
- Why are we here to pre-judge people’s pictures? = Not entirely sure how productive it is even though I understand the point of recognizing our own preconceived ideas based on the visual. I mean was it supposed to highlight that we all pre-judge even if we might feel we don’t? But then it’s only encouraged because it’s a “task”….hmmm…
- Why were they all adults and not students? = As teaching staff, we encounter students more than adults. So if the exercise is based on unconscious bias, be useful to have us look at a much younger demographic.
- Is this task even relevant to the unit? = Again I understand the purpose however can it be the simpler task of learning HOW to ask questions if we need to know about or address a partiuclar trait of a person. Personally, the majority of the time is figuring out how to structure questions in a non-violent manner to acquire information about the person in question; through causal conversational and empathetic tone.
Unfortunately, I had to leave before task 4 to pick up my child from the nursery. I will go back over the task and reflect on this at a later date.