Choices reveal a lot about individual's personality. Whether it’s the language, food, or music choice; these factors relate to one topic: culture. Being from Texas, I always considered myself open-minded, but after moving to Boston I found people to be anything but usual. The beauty of your own culture is it's normality, so learning something new can often be a challenge, and rude awakening.
Luckily I had the opportunity to take a class in my undergraduate studies called Intercultural Communications. My professor Dr. Dana Janbek taught me the importance of not only embracing change, but accepting it. After several class debates and rigorous lesson plans, I realized I participated in unconscious racial slanders and unnecessary stereo-types. I felt the need to make a difference, so I took on a self project called: Inner City Bliss.
I had the opportunity to volunteer at an inner city church called Emmanuel Baptist, located in Worcester, MA. While I was a little hesitate about the experience, it was truly an amazing journey. In the beginning I had little expectations about the project, but to my surprise I left the program feeling as if I had a made a difference.
For my project, I worked with fourteen inner city teenagers (age 14- 16) for five weeks, and focused on the topic of identity. I came into this project with a strict lesson plan, but after one week the children made it perfectly clear they were interested in discussing certain key terms that related to their own experiences. One particular lesson we discussed was from our class text book Communication between Cultures, which focused on the three level of identities; human, social, and personal. (Samovar, Porter, McDaniel, 2009)
With this study, I learned students based a majority of their identity on how their peers viewed their material possessions, verses their individual personality. When asked “what identity means to you” twelve of the fourteen students replied,
“the clothes I wear”
“the friends I hang out with”
and “the sports I play.”
After discussing their answers, it was clear the students were more concerned about what their peers thought, verses how they viewed themselves. It was also disturbing that five of the students classified themselves as “nerds” , because they did not have the funds to keep up with the latest trends. I immediately reminded the children, possessions do not define a person, character does!
With that said, I challenged the kids to hang out with someone who was not considered “cool” and get to know their personality. To be honest, I did not expect the kids to follow through with this assignment, but to my surprise the kids had interesting revelations.
Apparently there was a boy by the name of Mason, who seemed to be ridiculed quite often by his peers. The children claimed he had body oder, wore glasses, and was not popular with the ladies. After starting the challenge, two of the boys found they shared a similar interest in music, and liked the same video games as him.
I also learned nine of the fourteen children attended the same school, and after our classes, took initiative to acknowledge one another. I felt I was making a difference when one of the girls approached me after class and said “Ms. M, I am glad you are teaching us, because the boys do not make fun of me at school anymore.” At that moment, I realized this project was making a difference in children’s lives.
After five weeks of discussing identity, the students and I reflected on what we had gained from this course. All of the students agreed that material things are nice, but they do not define a person. They also learned that sometimes doing the “uncool” thing, is really the “cool” thing to do. I learned that being in high school is not as easy as I remember, and sometimes talking to students and enlightening them on the important things in life, (like education, and health) can really make a difference in their future.
