This past week (my second in Kenya) has been dedicated to new staff orientation, which has included lectures about transition and TCKs, question and answer sessions about life in Kenya, and opportunities to grow to know our fellow incoming teachers. Some of these opportunities have been officially organized (such as the Wednesday outing to a tea farm run by three generations of British immigrants) and others (no less significant) have come about less formally (such as the clinic run three of us made to get some new vaccinations -- in my case, typhoid, yellow fever, and hepatitis A & B).
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During the course of all of this orientating, a comment was made about clashing cultural expectations, and the need to be aware that many students are coming from cultures with high uncertainty avoidance, and will find a classroom with open-ended questions and space for independent thinking and personal creativity deeply unsettling. They want to be told exactly what the rules and expectations are, so they can be certain of doing the assignment correctly and giving the teacher exactly what he or she desires.
When it comes to teaching (and learning) I tend, like most Americans, to be pretty low on the uncertainty avoidance scale. I like room to think for myself and define my own parameters, and I like for my students to do the same; I believe the process of taking ownership of one's own learning to be a significant, and life-giving skill.
Interestingly, however, when it comes to my walk of faith, I am pretty entrenched in the high uncertainty avoidance camp. I want to be told, not what the rules are, per se, but exactly what is expected of me, and what structure I should exist within. Where is the path, what is the path, and am I on the path? I want to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am getting it right -- doing this "life" thing in the exact way that God desires.
I will do anything, or go anywhere, I am just desperate for God to make clear what that thing, or where that place, might be.
In other words, I am an eager-to-please, perfection-seeking student, terrified of the blank page and the open-ended assignment. And God, perhaps, is wishing that I lived just a little more like I learn.
[the tea farm]
During the course of all of this orientating, a comment was made about clashing cultural expectations, and the need to be aware that many students are coming from cultures with high uncertainty avoidance, and will find a classroom with open-ended questions and space for independent thinking and personal creativity deeply unsettling. They want to be told exactly what the rules and expectations are, so they can be certain of doing the assignment correctly and giving the teacher exactly what he or she desires.
When it comes to teaching (and learning) I tend, like most Americans, to be pretty low on the uncertainty avoidance scale. I like room to think for myself and define my own parameters, and I like for my students to do the same; I believe the process of taking ownership of one's own learning to be a significant, and life-giving skill.
Interestingly, however, when it comes to my walk of faith, I am pretty entrenched in the high uncertainty avoidance camp. I want to be told, not what the rules are, per se, but exactly what is expected of me, and what structure I should exist within. Where is the path, what is the path, and am I on the path? I want to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am getting it right -- doing this "life" thing in the exact way that God desires.
I will do anything, or go anywhere, I am just desperate for God to make clear what that thing, or where that place, might be.
In other words, I am an eager-to-please, perfection-seeking student, terrified of the blank page and the open-ended assignment. And God, perhaps, is wishing that I lived just a little more like I learn.
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