Lessons of Diversity Learned the Hard Way

The opportunity to work with teachers all over the country has taught me many valuable lessons, especially concerning diversity. Being from Texas, I have often experienced culture shock as I trained teachers in Boston, or in South Carolina, or in Minnesota, or in Arizona. Each of these unique environments offers a rich culture, diverse foods, clothing, and points of view. Each environment also requires that I adapt my teaching strategies and techniques to meet the unique needs of the teachers I encounter. This became clearly evident to me during a workshop at a Bureau of Indian Affairs school in the middle of a Navajo reservation in Arizona. The closest airport was 100 miles away and the closest hotel about 30 miles from the school through open range. Open range means there are no fences or barriers to restrict cattle, horses, goats, etc. Livestock wandered across the road as I drove to the hotel and to the school each day. The elementary school was actually a boarding school. Many students lived in a dorm during the week and were bused home on the weekends and back to school on Monday because they lived too far away from school to travel home daily. All of the teachers and students were Navajo and conversed in their native Navajo language when speaking to each other. When speaking to me, teachers and students spoke English. My workshop was during the school's first week of professional development. I arrived early to set up and meet the principal. When I arrived, the room designated for the training was not prepared for the event. Tables were all pushed to one side, and bookcases were covered with paper just as they had been left for the summer break. There was no overhead, no VCR nearby, and the air conditioner was on the blink. The principal soon told me that he was meeting with the teachers before my workshop and would send them into the library in an hour or so to begin the training. That was a surprise to me. The workshop would not begin until an hour or so after the assigned time, which meant that I would not have the full amount of time to address the content. However, I rationalized that I could make up the time in the coming days. As I set up the room and waited for teachers to arrive, I began to think about my expectations. Time was very important to me, as was staying on schedule. I was accustomed to environments where schools were prepared for my arrival and would accommodate my needs. I began to talk to myself, as trainers often do, and tell myself to relax and to try to go with the flow. I reminded myself that Native Americans frequently have a different concept of space and time and more often than not see life as an unhurried event (Sparks 2000). I needed to adjust my European-American, middle-class thinking to accommodate the situation and the teachers I was training. The training eventually got under way and I quickly made up for lost time, though not in the way I had planned. I went quickly through application activities because few participants joined in whole-group discussions about the strategies. Teachers were pleasant and involved when doing collaborative learning activities, but they rarely volunteered any information to the whole group. I listened with interest as they spoke to each other in their native language, and I tried to read their body language for their understanding of the approach. I reminded myself that participants often don't volunteer much information on the first day, so I was not overly worried at that point. During the afternoon session, I again noticed the lack of participation in whole-group discussions. I'm a very active teacher who involves participants in many activities that apply the concepts being discussed. In addition, I use storytelling and humor throughout the sessions. However, I wasn't getting the typical responses to the classroom activities that I had planned, nor to the stories that I told. The teachers seemed to enjoy the stories, but they were silent for most of the day. …