Aruguement: Corinne McKamey

Corinne McKamey argues in her case study about the differences between being a researcher and a teacher. She realizes that by being the type of teacher that is willing to fight for her students’ rights, she “loses” power from being a researcher.  She also focuses on the different understandings of what it means to be someone who cares and someone who does not, and understanding the meaning from immigrants.  

For example “She cautions a teacher’s gaze may function to regulate student’s behavior, for example, holding students quietly seated in classroom rows, and may also function to limit dialogue between teacher and students.” Which in certain classrooms there are certain teachers that feel good about that, they believe it is not their duty to not cross boundaries. Whereas there are other teachers that, “For example, a teacher might care for a student by asking about her emotional wellbeing…”  Another scenario is when Mrs. McKamey helped ‘save’ a student from wasting time outside an auditorium, “…one of the first days of school, I met Nam, a Vietnamese immigrant student. Nam had been sitting in the auditorium for two days waiting to be transferred to a high school closer to his home…” Since no one in the school had no idea what to do with Nam, Mrs. McKamey decided to use her power as a teacher to help Nam get to where he needed to go and he did. The interesting part about this is even though it was a good deed Mrs. McKamey felt guilty and ashamed, which is when she felt that her, “…decision to help Nam resulted in gains for me in a teacher role and losses for me as a researcher (Luttrell 2000). In helping Nam, I gained sense of power and control through making decisions and actions within a familiar institutional logic.” I never thought about it that way, I never truly realized that researchers had a certain image that if it was challenged could end up costing a huge damage. I honestly would see it as people that were very interested in finding out information and they would ask a ton of questions and do a huge case study on the topic. 

After reading this case study it opened my eyes to realizing just because one person might think asking a student about their day or helping them get help like Nam might seem heroic; but you cannot just see it in your own perspective. In order to work with youth you really have to make sure that just because you think one thing is acceptable, you have to sometimes step back before offending youth to the point that they never want to come back to the program. At times it might be hard because as we discussed in class it is normal for someone who has a degree to be given more respect and attention because of its power of being in a higher education level then someone else. But just because you do, does not necessarily mean that you have the right to have a close minded way of thinking and allow the youth to take charge.