A thread about understanding my role as a teacher of color in the discipline of #Classics through some unexpected but very welcome and engaging one-on-one conversations with students today. #ClassicsTwitter #TeachAncient 1/
Today is the first (and probably last) Sunday for me in Worcester this semester, so I decided to spend the day on campus to get some work done. I extended an invitation to my students in #CLAS102 to come visit me in my office since their first papers are due this Tuesday. 2/
I was surprised to have four students take me up on my offer, but glad for it, as I love talking with students one on one, hearing their ideas, helping them strengthen arguments, etc. I hope to have more one on one meetings as the semester progresses. 3/
A bit of background. Holy Cross has a minority population that clocked in at 26% in Fall 2017, an enormous increase over the population stat when I was a student here from '06-10, when the statistic hovered somewhere around 17%. The ratio in #CLAS102 is somewhere in between. 4/
(source: holycross.edu/about-holy-cro…) 4.5/
One of those minority students was the first student to visit my office today. He didn't come with any books or a laptop or anything, so our discussion about his paper was pretty cursory and superficial -- "my argument is a, my points are b, c, and I forget what d is" etc. 5/
After we talked about his paper, he paused for a second and seemed to weigh what he wanted to say next. I forget exactly how he broached the topic, but he said something like "I actually came today not really to talk about the paper but ... can I ask ... are you Filipino?" 6/
I was surprised at the question, but more than happy to answer "yes!" And immediately he smiled & said he was too, and we got to talking about being Filipino, our favorite foods, family life. This led into a larger discussion about being a minority on a campus like HC's which 7/
has been & still is predominantly white. What's the onus on students of color to be educators about their cultures? How do the multicultural student orgs & orientation programs on campus fit in? Does our sense of being "different" come from us or others? Do we feel supported? 8/
The convo ranged widely and was stimulating and interesting for me as a former HC student of color and now an HC faculty member of color. I was glad to make this connection and share stories from my perspective, and I extended an invite to him to visit any time to chat. 9/
The third student to visit today is a friend of the first student and also Filipino. She came to show me her work on her paper, and much like the first visit, the talk almost seamlessly transitioned into talking about being Filipino: favorite foods, Tagalog, cities of origin. 10/
This conversation came with a few more revelations to me, though, re: the atmosphere on campus. She told me about recent incidents of students being victims of racist "pranks" and an atmosphere of unease among the minority students that she's in contact with due to it. 11/
And it reminded me and drove home for me my own experience as a student of color. Even if my teachers and friends never made a big deal out of my race, for me, there was always a sense of alterity and outsiderness simply by dint of how I looked. & though I haven't experienced 12/
racism on this campus 1st-hand, I know there are plenty of students who did & do. Hearing about this made me wonder how I could help minority students who feel targeted or unsafe feel supported, seen, celebrated. This student who was visiting with me unwittingly told me how. 13/
She mentioned that before the semester began, she saw my name as the instructor and wondered what my ethnicity was. Then, when I walked into class on the first day, she and the first student mentioned above shared a look that went "He's Asian! He's one of us!" 14/
I almost cried when she told me this. All of a sudden, it hit me. In the same way that Crazy Rich Asians gave Asians representation and visibility, just as Love Simon did for the LGBTQ community -- THAT'S ME. In real life. In a classroom in front of students. ME. Wow. 15/
My very identity, an Asian who teaches in a traditionally white discipline on a traditionally white campus, is almost a political statement in and of itself. This discipline belongs to anyone who wants to learn about it, no matter what race, economic status, sexuality, etc. 16/
My role as a teacher is to guide students in their interactions with the ancient world, and if I act as a role model to students who share my ethnicity or sexuality and show them that this discipline belongs to them as much as to anyone else, then I'm doing my job well. 17/
By simply being me in front of the classroom, I can help students who share my ethnicity or sexuality feel like they belong, that they're in the right place, on a campus where feeling like they belong might be difficult at times. I know because I've been there. And it sucks. 18/
As a teacher, I now feel a tremendous sense of responsibility that I've never felt before, but one that I'm glad to shoulder. And I thank these two students who came to visit my office today for inadvertently getting me to realize the weight of this important responsibility. 19/x
