Cultural Proficiency

This week Easten led us in a discussion about Cultural Proficiency. We started off with a great game of All My Neighbors that went straight into a discussion on differences between us that aren’t on the surface. Obviously we’re all Iowans, going to Iowa State and are a part of the Hixson Program but even within our little group, there are a lot of differences.

I really enjoyed the worksheet as well; It gave us a lot to reflect on about ourselves. I enjoyed talking to Brad about thing that make us unique that could be misread until explained. I loved having the practice about articulating differences in a positive light and once you can do it for yourself, it’s easier to do so for others. I believe this can be useful in the classroom since not all the students are really going to know how to approach cultural differences appropriately, especially when discussing them.

Just as some of us faced, they aren’t going to have the largest knowledge base when it comes to cultural differences before coming to Iowa State and its going to be hard to articulate what they mean which will lead to stating things in a negative light. At one point last year we did a similar thing and one of the phrases that wasn’t always used positively is 'Farm Kid' which you wouldn’t think could be used negatively but it can be. “Oh, he’s just a Farm Kid and doesn’t know…” or something like that can come up in the classroom and if you can’t rearticulate that back to them or explain why that isn’t appropriate, it could be difficult for some of the students that do associate themselves as a ‘Farm Kid’.