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The Sociological Imagination

The Sociological Imagination

Friday, after I got up, I showered, ate breakfast, got dressed, and then logged on for a zoom class and then a meeting. After another class later in the day, I went to work for 7 hours before coming home and going to bed. 

1- The first thing I do every day is shower. I do this so that I smell good, and my hair looks put together, and I appear clean to anyone I come across. I was taught by my parents, and through interactions with others (i.e. listening to someone tell a story about someone who hadn’t showered in a while and smelled bad) that I should always be clean when in with others in public. This is also so ingrained in me that I feel much more confident in myself after I shower, and even when I’m alone it feels better whenever I take a shower.

2- I ate breakfast. Even though I’m not normally particularly hungry immediately when I wake up, it has been socialized that I should I eat 3 meals a day and maybe small snacks in between if I’m really hungry. So, I make sure I eat some cereal immediately when I wake up so that I last until lunch. Even though I know I personally prefer to eat small bits of food every hour or two rather than eating a bunch of food in one sitting. This also is part of the reason I get a lunch break at work later on in the day, which I’m thankful for.

3- I got dressed. Because I had a meeting with a cooperating teacher in the morning, I wore a collared shirt that I thought would make me appear more professional. I do this because my professors tell us that as teachers we should always be professional looking, especially in front of students. This is also affected by what society decided professional looks like. I always fall back on wearing a collared shirt, khakis, and having my hair cut short and neat. 

4- At work, I try to always keep my distance away from customers and even my coworkers because of the pandemic. This feels like breaking a normal socialization, where I should be close to someone when speaking to them (but not too close). Wearing a mask also goes against some aspects of social interaction because I normally expect people to look me in the eye when speaking and make facial expressions, but now both of these things are made more difficult because of the mask.

5- Anytime I have an interaction with a customer, I always make sure to say please and thank you frequently if it is appropriate. This has been socialized to be polite to others, especially since I am working, I am supposed to be extra polite, even if the customer isn’t polite back to me. Another example of this is always saying that I’m doing good when someone asks how I’m doing, regardless of how I actually feel, because it is the polite thing to say, along with asking them how they’re doing in return. I think these ideas about politeness likely come from corporate policy and expectations, which is leftover socialization from being in white high society, which were then passed on to the middle class in the industrial revolution. If this is different, I may not be expected to always appear happy to meet everyone I come across, and they also may not feel obligated to do something to make my job a little bit easier with extra effort. There also may be less of a rehearsed dialogue to go through anytime I meet someone I don’t know, or it would be different from what exists now at least. 

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Week 2

The readings this week I think are going to change the entire way I look at education. As a music education major, my prior experiences in band at school are one of the main ways that inform the systems I use when I teach, even though I may have a different style from my teachers. However, part of the Shor reading about teacher-student power dynamics really hit home. “In traditional classrooms, students develop authority-dependence; they rehearse their futures as passive citizens and workers by learning that education means listening to teachers tell them what to do and what things mean(Shor, 1999).” Even in my music classrooms, this perfectly describes how I have viewed my education, moreso in K-12 than college, but still is how I have viewed myself as a teacher. I specifically remember feeling lost and confused whenever my 8th grade band teacher gave us an assignment to figure out our own intonation tendencies for a class. Even now, I feel much more comfortable as a student when I am in a very regimented situation such as marching band, compared to an education class where I am being asked to think about open ended questions. 

Now, I obviously need to think about how to use this in my teaching, but really even in my own life and education. I sometimes realize how many of my thoughts and opinions on certain areas (especially areas where I feel knowledgeable!) are just regurgitations of what my teachers have said to me. It is just in the past year or so that I have started to feel like I have come into my own just in my personal music making, that I don’t need to always rely on my lessons teacher to provide me with answers. In order to effectively use this as a teacher, I think I need to figure out how to be in their shoes myself, so when that moment of awkwardness, confusion, or uncomfortableness comes for my students, I can help them navigate that. 

Another thinking point for me, is even trying to conceptualize what an ensemble class looks like using the Freirean approach. I think this topic is something that will really give me something to chew on with my classmates and professors as I prepare to go into classrooms for internships, student teaching, and eventually being a full time teacher. 

References

Shor, I. (1999). Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy. In Education is politics: Critical teaching across differences, K-12 (pp. 28-29). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann.

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I chose this image to represent this week’s readings because I think it does a good job of exemplifying how positionality can affect our worldview. Specifically, I think this image (Hill, 1915) works as a good adjacent to the parable of “Hodja and the Foreigner,” found in the prologue of the readings (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). Similar to how Hodja’s view of the conversation was about food compared to the foreigner’s view of science, this image can be seen in two ways; one as a young woman looking away from the viewer, and another as an old woman with exaggerated features. This idea is important to keep in mind while studying critical social theory because while I may personally being “seeing the old woman,” someone from another perspective may “see the young woman,” and both of these viewpoints should be considered, especially when power is involved in the topic at hand. Because is always a power dynamic between teachers and students, so this must always be kept in mind when teaching, especially because students’ viewpoints can be varied and not always obvious to the teacher without seeking it out.

 References

Hill, W. E. (1915, November 6). My Wife and Mother-in-Law [Cartoon]. Retrieved August 25, 2020, from https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/ds/00100/00175v.jpg

Sensoy, Ö, & DiAngelo, R. (2017). Prologue. In Is everyone really equal? an introduction to key concepts in social justice education (pp. Xxv-Xxvii). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.