Personal Cultural Artifacts

“Culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group” (http://carla.umn.edu/culture/definitions.html).

The elements of culture include values (understanding of what is good and just in society) and beliefs (convictions that people hold to be true) that also differ from norms (established expectations for behavior in certain situations that most people in a society adhere to – learned through observation, imitation, general socialization, and written laws). (http://byu-multicultural.wikispaces.com/file/view/elements%20of%20culture.pdf/358226105/elements%20of%20culture.pdf)

Inspired by the above definitions of culture and elements of culture, I have collected artifacts that I feel illustrate MY culture and labeled them with brief captions so that you can understand what exactly you are looking at. At the end of the post I will review my artifacts and reflect on how my culture serves as a help or hindrance in school settings.

This is BYU’s cheer team sometime in the 80’s…

My mom is the one on the far left with the blond hair and super long legs!

Probably the main reason that dance has become so important to me is because it was important to my mom. She danced and competed with various different dance groups her entire childhood, which continues into high school and college. She graduated from BYU with her masters in dance education and taught for a few years before having children. Then, she had a lot of children and never went back to teaching, but maintained her love of dance and transferred that on to me.

This is a picture of me as a high school cheerleader. I’m the one on the right with outstretched arms.

iTunes cover of DANCEMOMS 

Dance has been a huge part of my life. Google's first suggestion when I typed "dance" into the search bar was "DANCEMOMS," a reality TV show basically about a culture associated with dance.

Google image of a teenage dance group

All of the dancers are extremely thin and flexible. Because I value dance, some of the values within dance culture were also transferred on to me in someway. The dance world values strength, technique, skill and flexibility, but also has a stereotypical image of a dancer that everyone is pressured to conform to. This image generally includes extreme thinness, beauty, and talent with hair and makeup.

This is my family when we were fairly young. My parents have been married for 25 years and love having a big family. Largely due to my own family experiences, a marriage between a man and a wife is very important to me, as well as having a mother in the home to attend to the children’s needs.

These are my siblings at the Long Beach temple last summer.

We value religion and family.

This picture is of my younger siblings and me at the Salt Lake City temple at Christmas time. We value Christmas, traditions, and celebrations and they greatly contribute to our culture.

This picture is of me and my cousins up at my grandma’s cabin before it was finished being built. While my brother on the far left did smile for the picture, I was the only one that posed.

I value beauty and appearance, and want to look good in pictures. This value sometimes dominates my desire to document my life through pictures because I won’t want to be in a picture where I don’t look nice.

This is a picture of my senior prom group.
I felt that this picture could show a big part of our culture because it emphasizes beauty, glamor, dating, wealth, romance, and friendship.

This is a picture of me as a missionary in Berlin, Germany. Part of my religious culture contains the value of serving a full time mission. There are all of these ideas attached to serving a mission – that you’re fulfilling your responsibility to God, that your helping people, that you’re developing admirable character traits. For whatever cultural reason, coming home from a mission early is just as shameful as never having served, and it discounts whatever time you might have spent in the mission field. I came home from my mission after 9 months of service (instead of 18) because I needed to have knee surgery, and I chose not to go back. In the end, I was (mostly) culturally accepted because I was a woman and I wasn’t commanded to go in the first place, and I had a physical health issue rather than mental health or some issue with repentance or legality. I still felt culturally unaccepted, and found greater understanding among those who had also come home early. Through this I entered into a sub-culture within the religious culture that I grew up in.

This picture is of me hugging my younger sister right after getting off the plane coming home from my mission. I was crying, partially because I was happy to see my family, but also because of my feeling of failure and having to face everyone.

This is a picture of my knees after that knee surgery! See the blood? This was actually my third knee surgery, so I’ve had a lot of experience with physical therapy and I’ve come to value some of the same things from within that culture. These values include health, wellness, strength, and exercise over a lifetime.

This is a picture of my brother’s tombstone. When I was almost 8 years old and he was almost 6 years old, my family was in a car accident where he was killed and my sister was permanently physically handicapped. Because of this experience, I value life and death, car safety, trauma, and treatment of people with handicaps differently.

This image contains a joke about the connecting piece of tissue between both halves of the brain. This displays my culture because it is a nerdy joke, showing that I value both “nerdy-ness” and humor.

This is a humorous ecard that I found on pinterest. It portrays the belief that obtaining things is good and obtaining them on sale is better. When things are on sale, you should buy them.

This is a quote from a prophet from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I believe that being a faithful follower of Christ is a good thing, and that we should share our faith with others.

I really like sleep… My whole life I have struggled with the need to go to bed early in order to function. I value sleep and believe that sleep improves my health and performance and generally happy personality.

This is a picture from Pinterest that links to suggestions on rules for buying engagement rings. I am recently engaged, and I thought that this picture portrayed that there are cultural rules for engagements. With the ring comes the assumption that a diamond ring is valued and important, which influences the belief that giving an expensive ring to your Fiancé shows commitment from both people involved - the one who buys the ring and the one who wears it. The ring therefore symbolizes love and marriage and commitment, all valued within my culture.

This is a sign that says “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” that would most likely be displayed at a birthday party. Celebration is a big part of my culture, influenced by the belief that you deserve a day to celebrate yourself and others celebrate that you are alive. Birthdays, holidays, and other celebrations are ways to connect to family and friends and the community because it incorporates many cultural values into one event.

This is a picture of many different kinds of pancakes. I found it on Pinterest, and the link takes you to a page with all of the recipes.

Pancakes are unique to American culture, and I love them.

In relation to the elements of culture that I addressed in my cultural artifacts, I wanted to explicitly outline some of my personal values, beliefs, and norms that I have decided to follow.

  

I value friendship.

I value family.

I value hard work and diligence.

I value having a positive outlook on life and a kind disposition.

I value education.

I value being able to earn, have, save, and spend money.

I value having an attractive appearance and feeling beautiful and confident.

I value dance and sport and extra curricular activities, but not at the expense of academics, religion, or family.

I value health and wellness and strength, including mental and emotional health, and I believe that putting forth effort to maintain those things is absolutely necessary.

I value religion and having a personal relationship with God.

I believe that relationships are worthwhile and we should work to maintain them.

I believe that marriage between man and woman is ordained of God.

I believe that there is a God and that Jesus Christ is his son.

I believe that there are certain rules, called commandments, which we should live.

I believe that children need parents in their daily lives.

I believe that everyone should have freedom to choose for themselves what decisions they will make and what they believe.

I adhere to the norm of stereotypical female body image. I like having blond hair, tan skin, makeup, and a thin figure. While this is my personal ideal, I don’t think that everyone should look like this and it even bothers me that I might look like many other people. I will have students that don’t like me or don’t respect me because I am white or blond or female. I will have students who struggle with their own appearance or body image and I need to be sensitive to helping students realize they are all beautiful.

I adhere to gender norms in that I “act like a woman” and I believe that men and women should usually conform to the behavior of the sex they were born as. I have been becoming more comfortable with the concept of people identifying as trans-gender, but I still conform to the norm in my own behavior. In order to deal with this in the classroom, I need to be careful to use non-gender-specific pronouns and call students by the name that they prefer. I can also advocate a gender-neutral bathroom space and gender-neutral policies.

In relation to conforming to gender norms, I also adhere to sexual norms. I am heterosexual and engaged to a wonderful man who is the love of my life. In my classroom and in school, I will have students who identify as gay or lesbian or queer and I need to be an ally despite my adhering to heterosexuality. Because I also adhere to the norm of a heterosexual marriage, I will be different from many of my students who have broken families, divorced parents, blended families, homosexual parents, or single parents. I need to be sensitive to students whose families don’t adhere to stereotypical norms.

I adhere to the norm of having a place to live and to sleep and having the means to provide myself with food. I will have students who are homeless and don’t have resources to find food or shelter so that they can be healthy and get sufficient sleep. I will have students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, and can’t have the big breakfasts that I love so much. I can work with other administrators to ensure that students get fed and work with students so that they can learn despite not being able to study at home when they don’t have one.

While the norms that I conform to might hinder the culture of my classroom, I think that my values are transferable across cultures and ages. Students and parents might not value the same things that I do, but I can exemplify my values in my actions and behavior. By valuing education I am giving students a chance at life through education. By valuing family I can help my students to want and strive for healthy, happy relationships as a family, which in turn affects self-esteem, identity formation, and academic success. By helping my students to also value health, I can help them to develop lifelong habits that will benefit their entire lives.

I learned that my own culture is comprised of many different values and has been shaped by many different life experiences. Where I went to high school, many of the students and teachers held fairly similar values to me and I was able to get along pretty comfortably for the most part. I imagine that many of these values could be difficult for students outside of the culture to deal with and they probably wouldn't feel comfortable. It's impossible to create a culturally neutral classroom and school, and so I think that we as educators need to make more of an effort to include and value different cultures than the dominant one. As an educator, I need to figure out how to overcome the barriers that are in place between cultures and people who are different from one another so that students can feel loved and safe and able to learn.