Understanding Your Privilege
The biggest factor in getting me to where I am today has been my parents. They have supported and encouraged me my entire life in all my pursuits whether that has been interests in athletics, career, or education. Their interest in education has been the most significant influence on my life. They both grew up in Ohio where my mom was the first in her family to graduate from university and my dad followed his parents who both had undergraduate degrees. My entire youth I remember the educational pressure they applied wasn’t to have straight A’s or a 4.0 GPA but just do our best and complete whatever program we started. Another key aspect to their strategy regarding education was to surround us in environments that were educationally positive. When they decided to move the family back to the US as I was entering high school, their number one priority in choosing where to live was the school district. We went to public schools but it was the best public-school district in the region with both high graduation rates and a high percentage of students who continued on to university. Unfortunately, it was not a racially diverse school although there were a mix of different nationalities among the students. I remember having had only one teacher of color in my whole high school career. Other than this lack of racial diversity, my parents’ overall plan in terms of furthering our formal education worked as my three siblings and I are all university graduates with three of us having an advanced degree as well. I realize this is not the norm.
However, I am surprised that I have come this far educationally because when I was in elementary school, I remember hating school. Later, in 3rd grade, I was diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disorder. Fortunately, my school just happened to have a roving regional educational psychologist on their staff as learning disorders were not commonly diagnosed in any region back then and we were living in the Philippines. This support network was the exception and not the rule at the time. I realize, now more than then, that I was extremely fortunate to have had help available and parents who kept on trying to find out what my problem was. Teachers up until then had just been saying that I was under-performing (lazy), socially underdeveloped (anti-social), and/or distracted (slow). I am not fully versed on dyslexia but I have learned coping strategies as it is a disorder than one has to deal with their entire life.
I am a product as much from my upbringing in a loving family with opportunities as I am from my own individual efforts and hard work. Although I never felt any of it was easy or a result of privilege, I realize that I had a great amount of support at the start of my life and academic career which, in its absence, I might not be here writing this today.
Hi Oliver,
Thank you for sharing.
When you mentioned dyslexia, I am glad that you had support when you were in the Philippines. I grew up in China and back to 30 or even 20 years ago, support for kids who have dyslexia is not common due to a lot of reasons, such as a great population, underdeveloped medical service.
Xinxin, I was extremely lucky back then for sure. It wasn’t the standard and I had a very good educational psychologist since she helped me and I don’t remember it as being painful.
Hi Oliver, thank you for sharing. I admire your parents for the emphasis that they put on having a good education without pressuring you to be an”all star student.”
In my own experience, my family also instilled a deep appreciation of education and encouraged me to do the best I could in school. They never put pressure on me to be an “A” student, but I definitely internalized their encouragement and it became somewhat twisted in my head. All through school I put probably an unhealthy amount of pressure on myself to be a perfect student.
What are ways we can encourage our students (or children) to do the best they can without putting pressure on them (even subconsciously)?
I wish I knew! That is the $x,xxx,xxx question. My parents encouraged us to do and study what we wanted – within reason. I don’t think they would have accepted me dropping out of school (hs) but none of us wanted to so it never came up. I wasn’t a straight A student but my older brother was. That was pressure to follow in his footsteps but it was self-imposed, much like you state your pressure was self-imposed. I remember the college selection and application process and my parents assisted me, even cajoled me, into visiting the schools I was interested in and offered to read my application essays etc. The bottom line, I think, is that they cared even when I didn’t.
Hi Oliver,
You mention that you were living in the Philippines when you were in the 3rd grade. Was the roving educational psychologist a public state school employee? I’m intrigued to know about a school that does this sort of testing. Did you stay there until high school and moving to Ohio or did you live in other locations?
Rebecca, I went to an International School (IS) in Manila, the capital city. The roving psychologist was employed by various International Schools in Southeast Asia (I think Indonesia and Taiwan for example). Are you familiar with ISs? They follow an American curriculum, are taught in English with mostly local (Filipino) teachers and staff, and the students are mostly children of foreigners. After the Philippines, I lived in Saudi Arabia for a few years before moving to Connecticut for high school.
Hi Oliver – thank you for sharing your story! Like Rebecca, I’m interested in your educational experience in the Philippines vs. the US. You said that before 3rd grade teachers formed a negative opinion of you as a student; was this while you were in the US or the Philippines? It seems like you were in a unique situation to receive the attention and help that you needed. From your experiences in the US educational system, if you had been there, do you think you would have received the same attention for a diagnosis?
Mia, all my schooling until the 9th grade was abroad so the teachers’ opinions of me were the International School’s teachers (my school). Great question about whether I would have had the same extra help if I were in the US at the time and I honestly don’t know if that is standard nowadays, to have a school psychologist. When I taught middle school in Turkey, our school had a psychologist. Maybe Rebecca can answer what the situation is like in the US since she is an active public school teacher. I think my parents told me that the psychologist wasn’t that busy at the time and people were wondering whether she should remain on the payroll so, if that was true, maybe I got extra attention since she could focus on me. She definitely helped me out.
I didn’t know any of this about you Oliver, thanks for sharing! It is really interesting to think about how we end up where we end up in life, no? And how one teacher/school counselor can make a HUGE difference? That’s why no effort is small or futile.