Skip to main content

6/6/19-W07 Culture and Psychology

Are there any elements in your home culture that are irrationally causing you to have low self-esteem? If so, what are they and how would you like to change them? Yes, there are elements, though I've grown used to or moved passed a lot of them. I'm overweight. I have acne. I eat too much sugar. I talk really awkwardly. I don't have a clean house or well-behaved children. Those are all things that people are judged for that make them feel less adequate. My culture promotes perfection to some degree and any status below that gives reasons to think less of yourself. It's not just aesthetics either. People determine your worth by how much you care about your self and your children. If you don't exercise, eat too many calories, over-indulge in sweets, shower too little, yell at your kids too much, don't discipline your kids enough, etc then people treat you like your less of a person and how can your self-esteem not be affected. In the church, I'm a topic of Branch council because my kids make too much noise during sacrament meeting. At the store, I'm stared at for trying to keep my kids in line. There doesn't seem to be any way to change how people judge you--just how much you care about what they think.

How do you think your home culture can be improved based on the knowledge you have received about how other cultures handle these situations? My home culture could not be so judgemental. It could allow people who are different to enjoy being different. Especially in the church, where we espouse to love everyone, there is so much categorization and judgment being passed that it's almost unbearable. My former Relief Society president wore a sundress to the beach and went to dinner in it afterward and posted pictures of it on facebook. She was told she was unworthy of her temple recommend, that she couldn't be sustained by the sisters, and that she should be ashamed. The members of my branch chased this active, strong member into inactivity because they decided they had a right to be judgmental. Ooh, I'm ranting now...sorry. This is supposed to relate to what Brother Ivers said...well, he said that the standards vary across cultures, but we're all affected psychologically from meeting or failing to meet our cultural expectations.

How will your home culture affect you and your students in a TESOL classroom? There might be some stereotype threat in the classroom. Where students know they're being judged by where they're from. This will take work to keep the affective filter low and help them see that they are being treated the same regardless of race or culture. I think some students will have lower self-esteem based on what the cultural expectations are for them in their home culture. I can't reprogram students, but I can try my best to raise their self-esteem so they can acquire a new language.

What insights did you gain about other cultures and your own culture? How can this new insight help cross-cultural understanding in your classroom? I think I learned mostly that there are a lot of paradigms that people hold themselves too. They are very vulnerable to feeling better or worse about themselves depending on how closely they fit the standards that they were taught makes a good man/woman/person. I think students will not always be able to express how and why they feel the way they do, so it will be important to remember that I will have to discern how a student feels about themselves and why. Then I can work on figuring out ways to help my students define their own healthy standards for self-esteem.

Comments

  1. KerriJune 6, 2019 at 9:58 PM

    That story about your former Relief Society president is awful! That would sour me from attending church, too!

    We definitely have some serious cultural issues with being judgmental in our religion. I catch myself making unfair judgments too often and I hate it. I do my best to fix them but they're really unpleasant when they come. I feel like we're harder on our fellow saints than others who don't know or try to follow the commandments. I remember Lindsey Stirling getting a lot of flack for wearing something that wouldn't cover garments once, too. We've got to make sure we're actively focusing on the gospel and doing our best to combat the negative cultural habits that can come from being part of a typically conservative religious culture.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FAML 220 Course Journal W04

The DAP Considerations: 1. What is known about child development and learning—referring to knowledge of age-related characteristics that permits general predictions about what experiences are likely to best promote children’s learning and development. 2. What is known about each child as an individual—referring to what practitioners learn about each child that has implications for how best to adapt and be responsive to that individual variation. 3. What is known about the social and cultural contexts in which children live— referring to the values, expectations, and behavioral and linguistic conventions that shape children’s lives at home and in their communities that practitioners must strive to understand in order to ensure that learning experiences in the program or school are meaningful, relevant, and respectful for each child and family. This week as we learned about parenting styles it really reminded me of my Culture and Diversity class. People need to give...
Post a Comment
Read more

FAML 220 Course Journal W05

This week in Parenting we learned about a book called Mindset. It's about the research of this one lady into how and why some people keep learning and some people stop. It's really important for parents to read because they can foster certain traits in themselves, but also in themselves. There are two mindsets--a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. A fixed mindset person would say things like--A person is only born with so much intelligence, I can't learn that because I'm not a that-person, or I won't try because I might fail. A growth mindset person is much more likely to try new things, think that they can keep learning their entire life, and more likely to focus on the learning than the outcome. I wrote two papers this week--one about my friend and I and our mindsets. And the other about my daughter and how I praise her and how I can be better at fostering a growth mindset in her instead of a fixed mindset. It's never too late to change or to help her chang...
Post a Comment
Read more

6/4/19-W07 Differences in Manners

Manners are something that seems universal among cultures. We can't agree what is good manners vs bad manners but we all agree that manners matter. They do matter because we want to make good impressions and impacts on people. They matter because sometimes there's more than just a little offense or trouble that can be caused by insulting someone. I made a list of all the things Professor Ivers mentioned. Rather than write down exactly what is and isn't bad manners, because I doubt I'd remember which culture went with which manner, I wrote down things to keep in mind when traveling and interacting with other cultures. How you hand things to people How you eat and place your hands How people act on public transit Covering your mouth when you yawn, stretching in public, How people are sitting—their posture Hands in the pockets Tolerance for noise—loud music elicits different responses Blowing your nose in public—handkerchief’s are gross Pointing the bottoms of y...
1 comment
Read more