Summer Retreat, Part III: So, What’s Next?

Bayan Student Organization Board Members

Note: This entry is the third of three posts that record the ideas Bayan scholars and professors had at at our Summer 2018 planning retreat,The first entry outlines our reflections about what made our experiences feel humanized, what made the learning feel so “live”. The second entry outlines our exploration about the particularity of Filipino American experience that requires a special kind of “rehumanization”. We began exploring what about the our own individual experiences, sociology, and history might account for the dehumanization. This third and final entry outlines suggestions and ideas 

For the final portion of the retreat, we discussed suggestions for next year.We came up with four themes, all of which logically followed from the retreat activities and our experiences in Bayan. 

Focus on History/Sociology and Identity : A significant portion of the discussion focused around our lack of formal knowledge regarding Filipino American history and sociology. How did we get here? What, if anything, characterized our peoples’ experiences. What were the factors that lead to our inclusion in the US story? How might lack of information or misinformation impact our individual sense of self as well our sense of belonging to the larger society? The professors need to include more history - the stuff students (and professors!) don’t know or information has been hidden. As a class, we can deconstruct and revise our understandings of ourselves and our situation here in the USA. 



Focus on Identity and Culture: Our program needs to continue keeping students’ experiences central to the program experience. This means incorporating more personal sharing, story telling, and assignments that encourage personal exploration. Doing so strengthens student voices. This also provides students (and professors!) the opportunity to see patterns and connections between and among their experiences. Exploring shared patterns of experiences as the particularities that makes us individuals can sharpen group and individual awareness. 

As we look for patterns and particularities, we might also see how Filipino values have shaped us, individually and as a group. Two values in particular came up in our discussion, kapwa, a core Filipino value having to to with shared identity, bayanihan, that has to do with cooperation and community building. Students remarked that discussions like that in their semester helped make visible the ways these values played a part in their culture. 

In addition, recognizing the ways Filipino cultural values may shape us can help us explain to ourselves what happens when the values come into conflict with more American values. The example that kept coming up was the tension between how collectivist impulses of kapwa and bayanihan rub up against the more competitive, individualistic values of the United States. 

Faculty Modeling - Lead by Example: Students urged faculty to continue educating themselves on the processes of dehumanization, particularly as it operates in classroom settings. Faculty need to work on making sure their practices are in line with values that humanize the classroom and encourage for genuine, relevant learning to occur. Faculty, for sure, have lived more years and drank more water. So they have a particular vision to share. But they mustn’t privilege their knowledge or experiences over those of the students. 

Text We're Using to Explore Identity 

Networking:  Several participants discussed the need to network with other Filipino student organizations. Bayan students have or currently hold leadership positions in Pagkakaisa, Southwestern College’s student organization. And, we noted, that relationship can be strengthened. In addition to what’s on campus, folks suggested we start reaching out to other programs and student organizations at other colleges and universities, too. Doing so can help us build communal knowledge, perhaps recognizing broader patterns of issues that face scholars at other schools. In turn, we might be able to find and give to support to other entities like us.

What now? What’s next?  As you can see from the date this piece is published, the semester is well underway. In line with the call to include more story telling, Personal Development and English classes have included many more opportunities to embed sharing, writing, and discussing of personal experiences into the lessons. Both professors are experiment with discussion and writing tasks that foreground the learning objectives with students’ lived experiences. Doing so, we may find those patterns, at least within our community, that may have to do with culture and which particularities are about personal, individual experience. We began this exploration looking at our student stories, the ways we were taught, i.e., the “modes of education” we experienced. 

And we’ve begun examining Filipinx values and racial identity, again, foregrounding personal experiences. We supplement our “talk story” and writing by reading formal pieces on psychology and education. In part, those texts clarify our experiences but also give us shared vocabulary to talk about when those theories fail to fully explain our lives. In other words, we are reading our lives “with” and “against” what theorists have to say. 

In no way do the professors claim that our initial lessons will answer all our questions. Nor will we read the entire corpus of Filipinx American psychology and history. We are only beginning the exploration - one the class has dove into head first!

Salamat to Jessica B. and Jared C. for their able assistance revising this post. 

Practicing #BayanihanSpirit!