Rural Pennsylvania & My Teaching Context

Mansfield, PA is about 200 miles north east of Indiana, located in a county that has 40% of its roads unpaved..... need I say more? Though, it certainly beats the ubiquitous construction found here, downstate.

Mansfield University has an enrollment of about 5000 students. 94% Caucasian, 5% minority, 1% non-native speaking. I teach ESL Composition and ESL Advanced Grammar. The ESL population is diverse, encompassing about 10 different languages.

This past year, a controversy ensued regarding students from Liberia, who were assumed to be American because of their perfect fluency and lack of accent in English (English is Liberia's official language because Liberia was originally established as a free slave state in 1820 ). However, the students are extremely low performing in written language. They were all failing at least one class. A few professors were frustrated with what they perceived as the student's low achievements, low motivation, low skills. In fact, some even expressed stereotypes of low performing American minorities. It wasn't obvious that the students' low skills are a reflection of the lack of focus on literacy in Liberia; books aren't read as children, stories are shared and passed down. Furthermore, Liberia has the second lowest literacy rate in Africa yet citizens are fluent in the spoken language.

My thoughts are revolving around this situation as a possible focus for my ethnographic research.

Reflecting on On Ethnography

The metaphor of learning to juggle as the process undertaken by ethnographers in their fieldwork was a great introduction for me and helped clarify the methodology of ethnography- in fact, now it seems less intimidating than clown work to me. I'm more likely to jump on a plane, fly to an exotic country and submerge myself in a foreign culture than to pick up three red balls and keep them all aloft....grin. Furthermore, I found meaningful Heath and Street's reflections regarding an ethnographer's job, "Sorting out the many connections of language and culture as possible across reoccurring and definable situations" (11).

Additionally, they highlight three situations that are relevant to those connections: individuals setting their own goals toward expertise, groups building their identities, and formal education intuitions transmitting prescribed values, skills, and bodies of information. Ironically, as a future ethnographer, it seems that I would experience the first two aspects through my own observations, as on cannot not be influenced through her actions. This is the most meaningful aspect of ethnography that I have gleaned from the past two days of discussions and readings. As an ethnographer, I should be expected to be influenced by my observations. Surprising and provocative. I'm looking forward to learning more about this.

first thoughts

I enrolled in this class to broaden my traditional view of ethnography.
I am at nature a traditionalist and understand ethnography as a means
of observing aspects of a culture to gain deeper insights. Ironically,
hopefully my insights will be the ones that will deepened through this course.