Identity

The main idea that I took away from both Holliday and Pavlenko’s The Making of an American  was cultural identity and identity itself. The majority of the article discusses the immigration of people coming to America during the beginning of the 1900’s. Immigration generates the thought of coming to a new place and either changing your ways, not changing your ways or a little of both. I feel that now days many people frustrate themselves with the fact that there are many immigrants who still do not speak the language. These kinds of people are in doubt that the country is continuing to become more and more culturally integrated. They are bitter towards immigrants who do not speak the language and therefore turn them away or treat them poorly.  

            There are all different types of people in this world and in today’s society there unfortunately still remain groups of people who do not accept others for who they are where they come from. For example, after 9/11 many American’s stereotyped all types of dark skinned Muslims, etc. I feel that us Americans need to drop the idea of having one identity or one culture and continue to embrace the new. Our country is extremely unique I feel in the sense of being so much more integrated than other places. I have neighbors whom both come from different cultural backgrounds. For example, my neighbor Estrella is from Cuba. I was exposed to her cultural from a young age seeing as she is similar to a second mother of mine. She speaks both Spanish and English and has assimilated to the American culture and has been living here since a very young age. This is more background knowledge for me in teaching my students.

Holliday’s ideas were also on identity. I thought that the reading was interesting in the fact that it talked about what one thinks about him or herself as well as what others think about those people. Stereotypes are a big part of today’s society and in order to help avoid people being mislabeled is to avoid all of the nonsense and think past the general stereotype which I agree, can be hard at times. As future educators we must do better than the rest of society in changing these stereotypes around and not letting them come into our classrooms. Holliday also talked about truly defining who we are. I am a Spanish Education major and therefore already have an appreciation for two languages. I studied abroad in Spain and fell in love with the culture. I have found a balance between embracing the Spanish culture as well as not losing my identity as a native born American. After taking my English Linguistics course last semester, we had a discussion on second languages and it was very intriguing because we had a discussion on whether or not we would have our children learn both their native language and then the American language. I believe that in order for the society to continue to culturally grow that people do not need to drop their native culture and language. I think that they need to find a balance of the cultures. Especially with the rapid growth of foreign languages in American, being bilingual is almost becoming necessary.

Cultural identity will be very influential in the classroom for teachers and students. For teachers, we need to realize that each and every student has their own story and personality. We cannot be quick to judge for we may not know their culture, likes, dislikes, etc.