[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 392 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Norlan Hernández joins me to talk about identity, belonging, and Hispanic/Latin American culture.

[00:00:16] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

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[00:00:25] Bonni: Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

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[00:00:53] Bonni: Norlan Hernández is a proud Nica, Nicoya, terms used to describe someone with Nicaraguan roots. He’s the proud father to Aella Mia and a husband to Isabel. His previous roles include leading a corporate training department that served an international audience. He’s also led a team of higher education professionals who pioneered institutional efforts to create a infrastructure to support fully online undergraduate and graduate students.

He’s the founder and president of Faithful Teachings, a nonprofit organization that aims to create educational resources for church leaders in Latin America. As the director of the Jesse Miranda Center for Hispanic Leadership at Vanguard University, Norlan works internally with administrators, faculty, and staff to support student success and strengthen Vanguard University’s Hispanic serving initiatives.

He’s a PhD candidate in intercultural studies from Biola’s Cook School of Intercultural Studies. His research interests include Latin American identity, theology, contextualization, leadership, justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In his free time, Norlan enjoys exercising, spending time outdoors, reading, watching movies and documentaries, and leading his nonprofit. Norlan, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:02:24] Norlan Hernández: Thank you, Bonni. It’s such a pleasure and I really appreciate the invitation.

[00:02:28] Bonni: I have been looking forward to this conversation ever since we booked it and we get to have a little history lesson but a history lesson in your life. Would you tell us about your experience in community college?

[00:02:41] Norlan: Absolutely. It’s one of those interesting things because as a first-generation college student, you don’t realize you’re one unless you’re told you are a first-generation college student and that comes with X, Y, Z complexities. As I was navigating community college, I did not understand that I was a first-generation college student and I did not understand the various challenges that came with that.

The interesting thing, really, is that one of those challenges was just seeing myself represented in the faculty, in the leadership, that then cause either for me to feel accepted, comfortable, feel advocated for, or the opposite. I recall one particular experience and I think this was one of those odd experiences that really cemented my experience in college and really almost the trajectory of how I pursued my academic endeavors. I recall being in a political science course and the first day this professor comes in, in shorts, and he has tattoos all over the place.

He’s a Latino. He comes in on his bike and he’s riding his bike through the hall. One of the first things that he says is, “Let me clear the air before anything starts.” He started talking honestly and transparently about his life and the challenges that he faced, being in the Army, having addictions, pursuing higher ed, the implications of that. The journey that he went through even to get a PhD that was not planned but ultimately he had the capacities and the capabilities. All the struggles, even mentioning being married five times and the failures of the previous marriages and how he understood all of that.

There you have before you, this man, who is a PhD, who is teaching, and then as he articulated, of course, the remainder of the class, you begin to have this connection with him beyond just the academic and of course, I saw him and I said, “Wow, he has the talents, the capacities. He has this thing about him being a professor, but he looks like me.” Then when he said and he always reiterated this, if I can do this, and again, he named all of those challenges, then you can too. I remember that strike just being so impactful in my perception of myself, in my experience.

I have to say this, I had a 4.0 in high school, and I don’t recall any counselor telling me, “Hey, you should apply to college.” I didn’t apply to any colleges, any universities. Therefore, I ended up being at the community college and later on, of course, acknowledging, “Wow, what a missed opportunity.” That first-generation college student experience truly was fundamental in my experience. Now in looking back and how I look at the future, and I look at my role as part of the director of the Jesse Miranda Center, my own academics, my own journey, and my own passions.

[00:05:49] Bonni: When you talk about the missed opportunity because you had such a good experience, at least in this class at community college, what can you tell us more about what that means to you? What was missed by going straight to a community college and I suppose maybe even what was gained?

[00:06:07] Norlan: Absolutely. Such a great question, Bonni. By this, I want to be clear, I don’t mean that the community colleges are less than or that they don’t provide the same caliber or the resources that one needs. What I really truly mean is that as someone who had the capacity and had the grades to pursue anything, to have options, the missed opportunity for me was that to have options that then I choose for myself where I attend rather than saying now I had missed the deadline for these universities and I have to pursue something locally.

That’s part of a missed opportunity for me because I would have loved to experience something different. I would have loved to have options and say to my mom, “Mom, I got accepted to X, Y, Z institutions.” I didn’t have that and that for me is the missed opportunity.

[00:07:02] Bonni: Talk a little bit about any mentors that you had that took on maybe even a more formal role than that first bike riding, tattooed, shorts-wearing professor that you were so surprised by.

[00:07:16] Norlan: Yes, absolutely. When I think about mentors, it’s a really tricky question because I didn’t have someone that formally said, “I will be your mentor,” or that I formally said, “Hey, can you be my mentor?” However, there were people, there were men in my lives that played a critical role in making decisions. One of them was my Bible school teacher. While I was doing my undergraduate degree at the community college, and when I transferred over to Cal State LA, I was also pursuing a Bible Institute degree. One of the men there, one of the professors I still keep in touch with, he’s still pretty much an advisor, was this role model of a figure for me.

I have to provide some context for that to make sense. I didn’t grow up with my father truly in the picture. At 15, my parents divorced but even prior to that, emotionally speaking, he wasn’t necessarily available. He was there available for other things such as finances, providing, but to say that he went to a basketball game, to say that he gave me life lessons, to say that he said I loved you or cemented my emotional intelligence in that way, I can’t say that. This man that I came across at Bible Institute, I saw him as this role model because I saw the way that he treated his wife, the way that he was with his family, the values that he upheld.

In addition to that, I also saw that he was pursuing his own degrees, his own academic goals. That was truly inspiring for me because as I was pursuing my own, I often came to him for advice, advice on what to do, what to take on, some of the challenges that I was facing in school, some of the important decisions that I needed to make such as majors. I switched from one major to the next until I finally landed on one. At a very personal level, he was able to connect me. He was a Latino as well, a Spanish-speaking professor, which resonated with me, which he understood my culture.

We bypassed a lot of those often conversations that we have to have to contextualize decisions or contextualize the way that we think. That was truly helpful for me, a Latino who’s a father, who’s a husband, who is a Bible school teacher, and in addition to that, who’s also pursuing a PhD, a … actually at his level. That to me was a mentor and is a mentor of mine.

[00:09:51] Bonni: When I first began today’s episode, I shared your name, but I know that you have more that you could share about it. Would you talk about your name a little bit and some of the ways it connects with your identity and also with your family?

[00:10:04] Norlan: Absolutely. So many of these things are funny and joy, and humor is part of my culture. You go to Nicaragua, you will not get past one day or half a day without running across someone telling a joke or running across somebody really just bringing some humor into your life. I say that because for example, my last name Hernández, it took a long time in my identity development journey to truly lean into articulating my name in that way, Hernández, or even my first name Norlan.

I often decided to go the easier route, whatever was easiest for whatever context I found myself in, Norlan, or I often said my middle name Josué, but Hernández, the funny story here is that my wife’s maiden name is also Hernández. Because of where we found ourselves in this journey, this identity development journey, I understood my cultural, ethnic roots a lot more deeply than she had. She’s a third-generation Mexican American and I am a first-generation Nicaraguan American. I am deeply tied to my culture, to Nicaragua, to this country, to my family. Therefore I have a lot of things that come with it.

Even the tilde in the letter A, that little apostrophe in the letter A, I told my wife that when we married, even though we have the same last name, that she was going to have my last name, which was to include the tilde every time that she would write it. That shows you the depth of my understanding and my commitment to my last name, to Hernández, to my culture, what that truly means for my family as well.

The other thing was my first name Norlan, when I asked my mom about this, because as you can imagine, Norlan, why would you name me this and have people have trouble saying my name in middle school, in high school, all across my entire life? I wanted to understand it more. I told my mom, “Hey, what is the deal with my name? Why would you name me Norlan? What does it mean?”

When I found that out, of course it had more and more meaning for me. It means born in Northern lands, Norlan, so Northern lands. That has a lot of meaning for my family because out of the four boys that we are, and I’m the third one, I’m the only one born in the states. Everybody else was born back home in Nicaragua. That comes with history, it comes with meaning and truly, actually, it comes with a responsibility, I feel. A responsibility that I feel for my family, for my family’s dignity, for my family’s honor in all that I do.

[00:12:54] Bonni: I find it funny what we remember about stories because when you told me the story, I did remember it differently. Either you missed, or I don’t mean you missed, either you didn’t share the part of the story or I’m just fixating on it, but your wife, does she take your last name exactly as you had intended?

[00:13:14] Norlan: Yes. In her journey of deepening her awareness, her ethnic roots, she’s coming to grips with what that means. Does she do that and practice it? Not as often as I do.

[00:13:27] Bonni: [laughs] See, the little feminist in me, maybe the feminist in me is a little bit bigger than little, the feminist in me was like, “I thought that she carried her own sense of identity and independence by not using it.” Isn’t that funny how much of that works, Norlan, where it’s like we are really on a journey of our own sense in terms of our partnerships and in terms of our identities. It sometimes depends on exactly when you catch us. I love getting to hear that story for a second time. I know a lot of today’s conversation really does have to do with identity.

A lot of today’s conversation has to do with names. I was thinking about Shakespeare, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. I know you have to share with us today a little bit about the importance of terminology, not necessarily what we call individuals, but what we call groups of people, and specifically what we call a particular group of people. Would you bring us into first off, just talking about the importance of terminology, specifically when talking about people with Latin American roots?

[00:14:43] Norlan: Yes. Such an important conversation because of where we are today. As we look at history, I think that’s where we truly find the value of this, the value of terminology. We find power dynamics. We find experiences. The use of a particular name and who determined that particular name and for what reasons. All of that truly does contextualize the importance of this.

When we talk about folks that have roots in Latin America, it’s important to understand this. One, it’s not a monolithic group. When we talk about Latin America, we’re talking about so many countries, so many variations, this cultural mosaic traditions, regional differences, languages, skin color, histories. Therefore, even to attempt to put a terminology that encompasses all of that is problematic.

It’s problematic to use any term to categorize any group with such diversity but then again, we understand some of the necessities, and that’s why I think it’s important to talk about this, because there have been so many different terms and names that have been utilized for various reasons, and they continue to morph in shape, but it does influence, I think,

and it does impact our engagement with the group, with the person, interpersonally, just even our own thoughts. Thinking about the Latin American community and terms such as Hispanic.

If we look at the history behind this, of course, we see how in the US at least, it has been used. It began being used in the 70s, through the US census bureau to classify a group of people. People from Spain or with Spanish speaking origins and how that was utilized to encompass, again, such a large, diverse group of people. At times we look at this even in law, we look at this in policies, you look at higher ed, Hispanic serving institutions. It gives you an indication of the utilization of the term. There’s also Latin American or Latina, Latino, or Latin@ with the @ sign.

Personally speaking, when we talk about this, we’re acknowledging that this group of people have a common root, common ancestry to a country in Latin America. Again, to recognize that when we talk about Latin America, it’s not all Spanish speaking, you have Brazil in the mix and they speak Portuguese. We have Latin American, we have Latina and Latino, or Latin@ with the @ sign. I actually like this term as well because of the intentionality of the use of this term, which has gender equity at the forefront.

You’re talking about that feminist in you, this is where it shows up really well, Bonni, because when I utilize this term, I make sure I make such an intentional effort to say Latina and then Latino because it truly is countercultural, the hierarchical structure within most, not all, but most Latin American communities is patriarchical. I want to challenge that, especially because I have a beautiful five-year-old girl, I have a wife, and I have a mother, and I want to do whatever I can to bring about this sense of equity, even with the utilization of terminology.

We move on from Latin Americans and Latina, Latino to a more common term right now, common meaning it’s been popularized a little bit, Latinx. Latinx has this more progressive bent towards gender-neutrality. It’s important to note also, even though we see it a lot, and we see it in the media, we see it in the academy, that recent surveys demonstrate that only about 3% of Hispanic or Latina/Latinos use it. This was a study done by the Pew Research Center. It’s important to understand the utilization of that as well.

This is where we can start seeing truly the variations, the differences, the diversity within this group of people because we’re not just talking about now a set of group of people that have Latin American roots, but now we’re talking about generational differences. We know that second and subsequent generations are picking up English at a faster rate than they are Spanish.

This is important because when we talk about Latinx, the letter X in Spanish is Equis. It’s not really gender neutral. There’s some difficulties in utilizing that term in Spanish. That in and of itself gives you an indication of who is utilizing it. Lastly, of course, you have, and this is what I find really interesting. When you go to these countries, you ask them, you ask a Nicaraguense, “Are you Latina, Latino, do you want to be called Hispanic, or how do I approach this?” More often than not they’ll say, “I’m Nicaraguense.” This is an approach. It’s the utilization of their nationality.

You can say Hispanic, you can say Latina/Latino or Latinx, and there’s also this opportunity to simply acknowledge the country they’re from, Brazilian, Colombian, Cuban, Mexican, Nicaraguense. At times, and this is where the beautiful thing about the cultural mosaic that we see, it also merges some of these nationalities. You have, for example, someone that was born in New York with Puerto Rican roots and the term Nuyorican and there are so many variations of this.

That gives you a really brief 3,000 foot level view of the lay of the land in regards to some of the terminology. It’s not all of them. I am by no way saying one approach is better than the other. In fact, there is this thing that I’d much rather do, which is the approach towards having these kinds of conversations. Don’t ask yourself the question, should I use this or that? It’s ask, what is my approach to having the conversation and the approach that I often think about has to do with cultural humility.

The idea of cultural humility that has these two different components, an interpersonal component and this intrapersonal component. The recognition that I don’t know everything about everyone and although I see you, I may have assumptions about you, and about your culture, about where you come from, I’m not going to lean in that way. I want to approach the conversation, and I want to approach the individual based on these assumptions or biases or stereotypes that oftentimes are shaped and formed by our surroundings, politics, media, movies, anything and everything that we come in contact with.

The second element of this is the interpersonal, which truly the posture says, I want to give you the opportunity. You deserve the opportunity to tell your story, and then based on that, that’s how I will approach you. I hear you talk about I am Latina/Latino, then I know, okay, you consider yourself a Latina. Let me go that way. You tell me your story about, “I am second generation Mexican American.” All right, great. What does that mean? They self define and that right there, the approach that I think is most fitting and most equitable and most just is really that.

It’s approaching the individual and allowing them to have that ability, because historically, and we see this with the first term Hispanic, historically the Latina, Latino, Hispanic community, didn’t have a say in the terminology and the naming, and therefore lost agency in who and how they are represented and how the terms would be utilized.

[00:22:49] Bonni: Yes, I’m hearing two themes from you, both is that this is so tied up with people’s identity and wanting to honor all people in the ways that they get to show up in the spaces that we might be facilitating learning in. Then the second thing I heard you say earlier is that we need to be also recognizing that some of this “work” has already been done in the sense of so many of us now are teaching at institutions that are designated as Hispanic serving institutions and the importance of having those conversations, I know for us the work is never done there.

Recognizing to name it, this is problematic, this wording, this naming, this class may not resonate with you. It also can really bring down to bear the need to be having conversations who don’t feel included because they are in fact not any one of those categorizations and sometimes the misunderstandings and the ignorance that can occur there in which can just exasperate challenges as well for us to be really honoring each other’s cultures and identities and those kinds of things.

I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about how– I think specifically in a classroom context, in a college campus, the community we want to build, what more ways we might be able to facilitate these kinds of conversations just to be bringing to light to name the problems inherent anytime you try to create classifications yet recognizing their very presence, human brains. They do tend to classify things and we classify colleges and universities as R1, that kind of thing. Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this messiness and importance of having these conversations class after class, community after community.

[00:24:53] Norlan: Absolutely. It’s such an important thing to think intentionally about as a Hispanic serving institution. That’s often a statement that we hear. It’s, are you Hispanic enrolling? Is that really what you are as an institution or are you Hispanic serving, which means also Hispanic graduating. Graduation, persistence, time to degree comparisons, these kinds of things that are intentionally thought about as an institution to truly serve the community.

Conversations like these are truly important because, one, as an institution, it demonstrates a commitment, of course, it demonstrates a responsibility, and also provides accountability. Because again, we are HSI and we need to define what that means and who we’re serving and how we’re serving them. Secondly, as I think about the experience and talking about the responsibility and the accountability of having these conversations, it truly does need to go beyond conversations, because as we come to understand, as faculty, as administrators, as leaders, as staff members of a particular university, and we come across this conversation, it needs to do something.

It’s not simply for the sake of learning and understanding, but truly for the sake of transforming how we approach our task. Here’s where the challenge is, that when we are confronted with that, then we need to truly think about our pedagogical sensitivity, if we’re talking explicitly about the classroom. How then do we bring, for example, a justice-based pedagogy, which justice, equity, and resistance are very much a part of the culture of the experiences.

When we talk about justice based pedagogy, we mean things like, well, let’s take a look around our context, our society, and what kind of social issues our students are facing. For example, if we’re talking explicitly about our Latina/Latino students, what social issues are Latina/Latino students facing, those who are in our class, and how does that affect their experience? How does that affect their performance? How are we as professors, as faculty members, as leaders who are stewarding their lives, not only their academic journeys, being there for them?

For example, immigration issues that often affect them, they affect households, they affect close relatives. Are we intentional enough to be aware of that and allowing that to dictate and help us navigate the space, navigate the academic space within the classroom. Let’s talk about the curricular format. More often than not institutions are based on a tug, a traditional undergraduate format. As we look at the data, as we look at the trends, we also see this growing population of the post-traditional undergraduate students, whom communities of colors have lots of those identifiers.

Often they work, often they have families or responsibilities, often they are older because they’re pursuing their academic journeys later on in life for various reasons. If that is the case, are we being intentional in providing the kind of format that is conducive to their achievement, to their success? When we talk about representation, there’s so many things for that, and I just talked about my own experience. About the impact of seeing this man, this Latino professor and his own experience resonating with mine and that nurturing a sense of, I can also do this.

Representation matters significantly, but not only just in the classroom or in the person, but also curricularly. When we talk about the academic resources that we use, am I seeing myself? Throughout most of my college experience I did not see myself in the books that we use, in the authors that we use, in the articles, not even in the perspectives that they provided. Then it added this added layer of learning to this learning curve that I needed to take on in addition.

[00:29:06] Bonni: Yes, the added layer of learning and also the added layer of things that hinder learning, which is if I don’t see myself, do I really belong here? Those two things, just those two forces working against each other. You were talking about cultural humility and the curriculum, some of us aren’t going– all of us are going to be in positions of not being able to understand the cultures to the degree we wish we could and would of the learners we facilitate.

I love the examples that come from people like Kimberly N. Russell. She teaches at Rutgers, and she has an example where she creates and facilitates opportunity for people to bring their own sense of identities in through something that sounds silly, maybe to some people, but I find it delightful. She has them create a beast profile, because they have to come in and do all this memorization. You have to memorize all these creepy, crawly creatures. That’s my very technical term for it.

Instead of coming in and memorizing all this stuff, or I should say in addition to, they get to create a beast profile and that beast profile can be based on– I always laugh because the example I use is I would definitely pick a grasshopper and I would definitely pick fear because I am terrified of grasshoppers. Norlan, it’s bad. The other two elements that people can base their beast profile on is either fascination. It might be a creature that they’re particularly interested in and curious about, or it could be disgust.

You might recognize these three things, whether it’s fear, fascination or disgust, those are all emotions and there’s so much literature and research around the connection between learning and emotion. She’s an example who comes up a lot for me. I do just want to mention that I was able to learn about her from the book called The Spark of Learning, and that’s by Sarah Rose Cavanagh.

That’s just one example, and I’ll give one last one from my own teaching. I would teach a consumer behavior class. One of the things that was talked about there is the idea of having a target market. Then there’s these really overgeneralized way we sometimes market to people, men versus women. Then you can see the problems there, even just in today’s conversation or the different identifying things that we just talked about.

If we try to market to Hispanics, we already could see the problems there. In that class, they talk about micro markets that are very niche but very powerful if you’re actually able to tap into them. Rather than me trying to pretend the examples that were in the textbook, just … ones I couldn’t relate to at all. I remember something that had to do with skateboarding, and I was like, “I gave up skateboarding when I fell down the hill, I was about seven. I have a scar still, by the way, from that particular accident.”

Inviting them to do that. I have such a distinct memory of three students that got together for their group project because they all wanted to share that yes, they feel like other people think that they look the same, and they make assumptions about them that they must all be the same. Their project was all around foods from their culture and to help– because we celebrated at the end of that semester. They all wanted to say it like different foods, different music, different cultural icons and all this stuff, but do it in a fun, playful way. I could never have done that to the extent that they brought it in.

Having these mechanisms by which we’re able to express our cultural humility and still allow them to bring their identities, bring their cultures into the classroom. I know that you were talking about that earlier in terms of the curriculum. Am I seeing myself? I think we just have to lean into that humility because otherwise we’ll just say it’s too hard. It’s too hard. I’m not going to be able to do this. What are the little ways that we can help facilitate that and be humble and let people bring these into the learning communities that we’re a part of?

[00:33:29] Norlan: That is so important, Bonni, I think, because we need to acknowledge that in the process of imparting knowledge, we’re also stewarding their identity development process. We have them for so long, for four years, let’s say, or more depending on their track. As they do this, as they engage academically, they’re also internally engaging their own identity and that shapes and forms who they are.

The question that I often have for institutions, all institutions, whether that be higher ed institutions, nonprofit institutions, religious institutions, are we being intentional about thinking how we are nurturing their sense of identity and belonging? It’s such a critical question that I think does not receive enough air time.

[00:34:21] Bonni: Thank you so much. Well, this is about to be the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations, but before we get there, I do want to say a word of thanks to today’s sponsor. That is SaneBox. Most of us can relate to feeling overwhelmed by email. This is a service that I have used for many years now and continue to pay for myself.

What it does is it’s got artificial intelligence that’s really, really smart about which emails deserve our attention right now and which could be best read later on. In fact, they have a folder that gets created when you set it up that’s called SaneLater, as in this could be stuff I could read later or SaneNewsletters, it’ll group together all of our newsletters and put them in an inbox. It’s very easy to get started with.

It’s very seamless. It hardly ever puts things in the wrong bucket, but if it ever does, it’s just click and drag and move it to where you want that to show up in the future, and it learns seamlessly. The other thing is it’s easy to get started with, but there’s other features like if I want to send an email out, and I want to be sure and hear back from someone and be alerted if I haven’t heard back yet, I can email a blind carbon copy, a special email box for three days later if I haven’t heard back or seven days later, or just remind me of this on Monday morning or what have you.

It’s a wonderful service. I thank them so much for their support. If you’d like to learn more about SaneBox and also get a free trial and a $25 credit, you can head on over to sanebox.com/tihe. Again, that URL is sanebox.com/tihe. SaneBox, thank you for supporting teaching in higher ed and also my email management, because you make my life so much better on a daily basis. Now we get to come back and head on over to the recommendation segment. I just have a quick one to share, and then I’ll get to pass it over to Norlan. The one I’d like to share is a gender bias calculator.

It’s a calculator where you can put in text, and it was derived from some prior versions of it, looking at gender biases that show up in recommendation letters. It was something that as soon as I saw it, I got to thinking, “Oh boy, I probably need to run some of my recommendations letters through because biases, we all have them.” The first step is becoming aware of them. I thought, “Oh gosh, how much do you want to bet that I probably have some of that inadvertent there that I just don’t realize is there?”

The blog post, and it’s also the link I’m going to send you over to, has a scientific paper that explains why this kind of gender bias is so important for us to consider. It also has some privacy protections in there so that nothing stays in your browser, nothing goes over to their servers or whatever. I’d encourage people to head on over to the gender bias calculator and consider pasting some of your text in there, whether that be on recommendation letters or other things that you do in your writing and just identify if you are having any gender bias show up in your writing in that way. That’s my recommendation for today, and now I’m going to pass it over to Norlan. I believe he has a few to recommend for us today, yes?

[00:37:39] Norlan: Yes, Bonnie, and talking about biases, there is this book that really has helped me, as an academic, think about the biases that I might have. It’s by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. It’s called The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of the Epistemologies of the South. This book did two things for me. One, it helped me identify myself in the way that I historically have thought, in the way that my people think and affirms it.

These are the epistemologies of the south. Secondly, it also helped me just think about the general field of higher ed and how we could be doing a better job at being introduced to different ways of thinking because our students are coming from these various backgrounds, and therefore it allows us, it gives us some tools to think intentionally proactively about how we can incorporate different ways of thinking and different resources.

The second book that I am going to recommend is a book by Orlando Crespo. Coming from a faith based background from a family who nurtured my faith really intentionally, his book, Being Latino in Christ: Finding Wholeness in Your Ethnic Identity, merges the faith element with my ethnic identity. It provided some really concrete tools on how to identify where I am in this journey.

There’s this model that he provides that assesses ethnic awareness versus assimilation. It was a concrete way for me to assess where am I in this journey of my ethnic identity development, along with my faith, because the book also incorporates that, and it affirms it. For my Latinas out there listening, I read this book and I thought to myself, “Can I start reading this book to my five-year-old already?”

It is called Hermanas: Deepening Our Identity and Growing Our Influence, three Latina scholars authors providing insights through the lens of female biblical characters on leadership. They merge that with their own experiences, and they talk about this process of coming to groups and leaning into their female ethnic identities in addition to also leaning into the possibility of leading and the affirmation that they too can be leaders, that they too have exercised leadership just like these women who are often overlooked in the Bible.

[00:40:23] Bonni: Norlan, thank you so much for today’s conversation and for yesterday’s conversation, and for tomorrow’s conversation. I’m so glad to be in community with you and getting to do what I consider to be such important work together. I’m grateful for every opportunity to collaborate, including this one. I’m excited for this episode to air and for people to get to learn more about you and also just to continue our work together.

[00:40:49] Norlan: Thank you, Bonni. … the feeling is mutual and I so appreciate the conversations. I so appreciate the partnership and just being, like you said, in community together, we have this concept, theologically in Spanish, en conjunto, in community together.

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[00:41:08] Bonni: Thanks once again to my friend and colleague, Norlan Hernández, for joining me on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. If you’ve been listening for a while to the show and have yet to rate or review the podcast on whatever it is you use to listen to it, I’d much appreciate it as it does help people find out about the show. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update from Teaching in Higher Ed, you’ll automatically get the show notes from the most recent episode along with the recommendations, some bonus recommendations that don’t show up on the show, some quotable words and other weekly email update goodness.

Head on over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe, and you can join that weekly update. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll see you next time.

[music]

[00:42:10] [END OF AUDIO]

The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning. 

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.