Learning Doesn't Happen in School

For many first-generation Haitian American families, financial literacy comes up in conversations as educational moments. It is often paired with how they traveled from Haiti to the United States “with only two hundred dollars to their name and are now living a life they only dreamed of.” 

For my family, building fluency in the value of the dollar involved what Goodwin and Goodwin (2013) called “tactics of tough love [which parents used to teach] responsibility and perseverance in the midst of conflict (p. 170).” For instance, I recall learning about financial “investments” while also learning to read. My father filled our home with books of all genres, as he and my mother were both former teachers and avid readers. He encouraged my brother and me to read and value education because “it is the one thing that no one can take away from you.” I recalled this memory while reading about Gutiérrez’s (2008) Third Space in using it as a social semiotic toolkit: “With all the repression and the oppression and suffering in the world, we’re telling you to pick up books! We’re asking you to study, that’s what we do with oppression” (p. 156). And the unique forms of oppression under which my parents were raised, the trauma caused by the Tonton Macoute of the Papa and Baby Doc eras, from which my parents fled, still leave scars. These scars taught them to value education because it was what they, as teachers, used to build the life we have today. 

Gutiérrez (2008)

“With all the repression and the oppression and suffering in the world, we’re telling you to pick up books! We’re asking you to study, that’s what we do with oppression”

So, if we read books every summer, we would get weekly allowances. The stipulation for spending it involved purchasing more books—investing in education. Yet, even that experience was an adventure that afforded us autonomy as learners and as individuals within our family unit (Ochs & Kremer-Sadlik, 2015). We did not purchase books from chains. Instead, my father took us to rare and used bookstores from which we found the types of books that were not on our school reading lists. One of these rare bookstores is where I found my first book of poetry.  It is tattered, and its binding is falling off, but reading poetry coupled with these experiences with my father grew my creativity and my desire always to prioritize self-directed learning, which I have maintained throughout my life.

Similarly, Goodwin & Goodwin offers cooperative engagement examples in family units in which children were “socialized to view events in terms of rank ordering of positions in a game or monetary worth” (p. 175). This type of learning through nurturing held maintained a sacred place in my heart, so much so that the memories met us in Paris this fall when my father and I went on a father/daughter trip to look for—what else? Rare French books!

The stipulation for spending it involved purchasing more books—investing in education. Yet, even that experience was an adventure that afforded us autonomy as learners and as individuals within our family unit

I used to think learning happens in classrooms, but the more I grow from self-directed pursuits, I see learning in every moment. Reflecting on my childhood, I see all the little moments that learning occurred within my family. Recently, I have been thinking about how informal learning happens in my work. In my hospital, I employ cooperative engagement in team projects. Many nurses I work with have needed more formal experience or instruction in leading quality improvement (QI) projects. In the process of shepherding them through a project, delegating tasks, and having discussions during work breaks or meetings about ideas that have sparked their interest that can support their project, they build fluency in project management and QI methodology.

Much of their fluency is developed informally through the mundane tasks of meeting planning (knowing how to send an invitation, prepare for the meeting, and setting up tools to use during the meeting), talking with stakeholders about the project (learning about resistance to change, cultural roadblocks and bureaucracies), playing with graphs to prepare data for presentations (learning data management skills as well as communication skills—what do you want your audience to know?), and the like. Yet, at the same time, we are building a relationship, a team with a shared vision of improving the outcomes of our patients and making our work environment a place where we can continuously learn and create. 

References

Goodwin, M. H., & Goodwin, C. (2013). Nurturing. In E. Ochs & T. Kremer-Sadik (Eds.), Fast-forward family: Home, work, and relationships in middle-class america (First ed.). University of California Press.

Gutiérrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148–164. https://doi.org/10.1598/rrq.43.2.3

Ochs, E., & Kremer-Sadlik, T. (2015). How postindustrial families talk. Annual Review of Anthropology, 44(1), 87–103. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014027