Understanding Culture Conflicts with Personal Values and Ethics

As the paper circled the room I dreaded the moment it would reach me. How was I to respond to the question every student was being asked; “what letter do you see?” The student whose ‘D’s’ looked like 'A’s' sat in the corner of the room with an expression of absolute mortification. “What letter do you see?” asks the teacher standing at the front of the room. The student sitting directly in front of me responds, “An A.” He hands me the paper. I am sitting at the end of the second row of students. Every student prior to me gave the teacher the answer he wanted to hear, "An A sir." I looked at Danielle’s name. Her ‘D’ looks half A half D. The unavoidable moment comes, “Ms. Ray, what letter do you see?” I hesitate, thoughts racing to figure out a way to break the perpetuation of this destructive lesson. I am suddenly very aware of my delicate position… a social change agent whose primary focus currently is on developing rapport in a new school I know very little about and that knows very little about me. I feel caught in the middle of ethics and image. I blurt out an unsatisfactory compromise, “it looks like an attempt at a D.” The teacher looks stunned for an instant before laughing and saying to the student, “it’s an A, an A, and from now on in my class your name is Aanielle.” I sit down kicking myself for my pathetic response. I wish I had responded more constructively... “I have seen Ds like that before” or “great penmanship but you might want to make your Ds a little more rounded.

This scene illustrates only one of the many sticky situations that volunteers find themselves in. I met this teacher last Tuesday. Before class we hung out and he seemed like a cool guy. When his students entered the class room he appeared to have good rapport with them. I could tell the students regarded him as the ‘cool teacher’; the teacher whose classroom became a hang out spot. He could definitely relate to his students on an admirable level. However, some of his methods were questionable. In addition to the already stated scene of humiliation, I also witness this same student being spanked with a 3 inch in diameter stick. After responding “I don’t know” to a question the teacher had her bend over a chair at the front of the class, then proceeded to spank her three times, just hard enough to sting. I sat in my chair at the back of the room in horror as I watched the spanking take place, watched the girl begin to sob, and I said nothing. I knew that challenging the teacher right then and there would black ball me immediately. It would disrupt the rapport I was building with the school. I had to keep reminding myself that how the school views me will greatly affect their acceptance of the proposed changes that I bring to the table over the next two years. I now realize that I could have used the experience to educate the teacher, without challenging him. In the future I could inquire about his methods. I could discuss alternative teaching methods and their effectiveness. However, at the time I only sat there in shock.