Personal Experience: Growing Up In My Culture

The first year I was a teacher, I worked closely with a colleague from Jamaica. She taught me several things about her culture that I found quite interesting. I was stunned to learn how the children in her Jamaican school still did not have enough desks, so they had to put their notebooks on each other’s back to write. I don’t think this would be accepted in our schools because students would be violating each other’s personal space. I also remember a time that I told her that she misspelled the word “color” (colour) and she corrected me. She said it was Standard British English spelling and that is what she was taught in Jamaica. Actually, I had never realized that the spelling of English words I learned as a child could be different and widely

I find that I am uncomfortable if someone gets too close to me during a conversation. This is something that I have learned automatically because I did not have to decide or give it a lot of thought. Growing up in my family and in my culture, I learned how to behave and fit in without even realizing this was a cultural issue. In reading Gonzalez-Mena text (2008) I find that this is indeed a cultural norm for “White Anglo- or European-Americans” She explains that we usually like to have about an “arm’s length of personal space” to feel comfortable having a conversation. If someone invades that space we might find ourselves actually backing away without even realizing it. We could be viewed as unfriendly or weird by someone trying to talk with us. Consequently, I might view the other person as being rude or threatening. Even though I feel this way with strangers that I have no personal connection with, I do allow others to hug me as a greeting when I know them and know they are my friends. I might also hug someone that I just met if there is a personal connection. This is probably a personal choice and not culturally determined because I decide on a case by case circumstance. I believe that my personality comes into play about who I hug and who I allow to hug