The Skillful Teacher

Avoiding Cultural Suicide
How can we minimize the risk of committing cultural suicide? To
help students keep this danger to a minimum, I have run role plays
in class that explore what happens when students go back after class
to their dorms, homes, and communities on fire with the joys of
learning. In the role plays students usually reenter their home space
talking enthusiastically of their new friends, the new ideas or skills
they are learning in the subject, how they are developing a real
sense of confidence about their abilities, and the new vistas and pos-
sibilities opened up by their studies. The friend, partner, or colleague
in the role play who is hearing this can barely get a word in edge-
wise. Not surprisingly, when this happens in real life those who
occupy the home space and who see former friends changing in
front of their eyes feel intimidated and betrayed.
During the debriefing of these role plays the students involved
have proposed some simple rules for avoiding cultural suicide:
1. If you’ve just come back from class, the first thing you should do
is ask your friend, partner, family member, or roommate what
happened to them while you were away.
2. If your time away has involved this person covering for you in any
way, find some way of acknowledging that and returning the favor.
3. Never talk about what happened in class until you’re asked
directly to do so.
4. If you absolutely cannot follow rule 3, and you feel you really have
to share what happened in class, you should make sure that
you begin your sharing by talking about moments of anxiety or
insecurity. Instead of celebrating the marvelous things happening
to you as a student, talk about how you feel like a fraud, how 
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difficult you find studying, how you fear you won’t make it to the
end of the semester, and so on. Then, and only then, should you
talk about your triumphs and the changes happening to you. This
way of disclosing the details of your learning journey heartens
rather than threatens.
5. Try to find a small group of peers—just one person is better than
no one—who is also going through the experience of being a
first-generation college student. Meet with them regularly to do
some informal strategizing and to give each other support as you
run into problems with hostile friends and family members.
The same logic that informs the avoidance of student cultural
suicide applies also to teachers who reenter work spaces determined
to share a new idea or practice they have learned in graduate school
or at a professional conference. The newly energized teacher often
speaks evangelically about her raised awareness, probably using lan-
guage that is unfamiliar. She is so concerned to share her good news
with peers that she ends up almost haranguing them. Very soon after
introducing her insight, she starts to sketch out how her colleagues
can act on it to change what they do. The combined effect is to
make colleagues feel like the victims of an arrogant onslaught
unleashed by an egomaniac. Not surprisingly, they beat a retreat.
Adapting the rules for students’ survival outlined earlier suggests
the following protocol for faculty:
1. If you’ve just come back from an event (for example, a conference)
that triggered some important reflection, but that your colleagues
did not attend, the first thing you should do is ask them what hap-
pened to them while you were away.
2. If your time away has involved colleagues covering for you, find
some way of acknowledging that sacrifice and offer to return
the favor.
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3. Before talking about the event, person, or book that triggered a
reflective insight, affirm your colleagues’ experience and abilities.
Tell them that attending the conference made you realize how
much expertise your colleagues have or how any one of them
could have been a presenter there. If you have been reading an
edited collection, let them know that you feel that they had just
as much to say as did the contributors to the volume. This sets
an important tone by affirming the experience of the people to
whom you are speaking.
4. Introduce information about the new idea or technique that has
engaged you by saying how it helped you deal with some feature
of your teaching about which you feel embarrassed or worried.
Grounding your disclosure in a description of the shortcomings
of your own practice does not threaten fragile egos to the point
where people feel they have no option but to turn away from you.
It prompts colleagues to look critically at their own practice in a
way that is invitational and affirming rather than confrontational.
If the problem you have been helped with is graphically described
in concrete terms, the chances are high that your colleagues will
recognize their own dilemmas in the story. Consequently, they 
will be likely to come to you asking for further details about what
you have learned.
5. If possible, use language that you know is familiar and congenial
to your colleagues when describing the new technique or idea
and its application.
6. At all costs hold back from telling colleagues what they should
do. Wait till they start knocking on your door asking for informa-
tion and advice.
7. Try to find a small group of peers—just one person is better than
no one—who share your convictions about the need to work dif-
ferently. Meet with them regularly to do some informal strategiz-
ing and to give each other support as you run into problems with
hostile colleagues.
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