War, Identity, Hijab, and Education

Student Learning Outcome: 4- Sense of Identity

Description of Artifact: This is a deeper dive into the life events that have shaped who I am as a person, and what my identity is made up of.

Artifact Alignment: My cultural identity has been shaped by many impactful events that have occurred in my life. I know these moments define who I am, and I now better understand what I stand for. This will largely impact my classroom experience as a teacher because the inequality I have experienced has taught me the importance of equality of all my students.

Future Goal: My goal in my classroom is to create an environment where all students feel welcomed, appreciated, and heard. If students see how I bring my role and identity in the classroom, they will feel empowered to do the same with their own identity.

Sense of Identity Reflection: Through completing the artifacts in this section, I have learned many things about my own identity. Where I come from, where I live, the culture I am a part of, and the beliefs I have all share who I will be as a teacher. In order to understand others, you have to best understand your own identity. Through the work completed in this section, I now understand who I truly am and the things that I will fight for in my classroom.

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When the war broke out in 1992, my family was left to escape their homeland of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The small country in Southeastern Europe was founded in March of 1992. Prior to their founding and the war, Bosnia was part of the Ottoman Empire from the 15h century. As far back as I can trace my family, they have been located in Bosnia. My parents are from there, my grandparents, great grandparents, etc. Now that my parents have escaped the war and came to America, we have more of a mix as to where we are from. My older brother was born in Bosnia, I was born in the Netherlands, and my younger brother was born here in America. A lot of my identity comes from what my parents went through when their homeland was war torn. 

There are many different ways that I identify my cultural identity. Since my family was born and raised in Bosnia, it has a large part of who I am. My parents wanted to make sure that even though we did not live in Bosnia anymore, we still kept the culture of where we are from. Growing up my father only let us speak Bosnian in the home because he did not want us to lose our sense of that identity. We still continue to speak the language, make the foods, and attend Bosnian events in order to not forget who we truly are. Coming to America, that was my parents larger fear: that their children will forget who they are and where they came from. 

Although I strongly keep my Bosnian culture in my identity, I have lived in America for 19 years. I have learned to adapt parts of the American culture in order to find my identity while living here. I speak Bosnian in home and to my parents, but I speak English outside of home and at school. I eat Bosnian food in home, but I eat American food outside of home. For most of the time, I keep my two cultural identities separate because I can not mix my Bosnian identity with people who don't speak the language, for example. I am not fully one or the other, and that is a strong part of my identity. One thing that is the same through both identities, is my religion. My religion brings both of my cultural identities together. I am Muslims whether I am in my home, at school, at work, or out in the world. I can not hide my religion, but I can suppress my cultural backgrounds. 

The biggest reason as to why who I am today, has to do with the war that my family escaped. On April of 1992, Bosna I Hercegovina was attacked by Serbia. Just after a month of proclaiming our independence, Serbia was furious and bombed Sarajevo. This in turn broke out into a war, and a “cleansing of the Bosnian race and Muslim community”. Their goal was to kill off every Bosnian Muslim in order to take over the land. Had my parents stayed in Bosnia, and stayed alive, my cultural identity would be completely different compared to what it is now. I would have grown up in Bosnia, a war torn country, working on a farm and somewhere in a village. I would have grown up learning how to rebuild my home from dirt. I would have learned how to take care of my land and my farm. I would have had a lower chance of making it to college and had I went to college, the degree would have such low significance. I would only know the Bosnian language, and I would only know what Bosnia is and nothing outside of it. I am more than grateful that my parents did escape, and that now my identity is different than what it would have been. Although I still keep my Bosnian identity strong, I am American, and America gave me the opportunities that Bosnia would have not. 

Since I do strongly relate to both Bosnian and American culture, I hope to one day raise my children in both cultures as well. My father always told me that we can not forget what happened in Bosnia. We can not forget what the people did to our families, and our land. Had my father not educated me on what my family went through, I would not have that Bosnian identity that I strongly have now. I plan on educating my own children on what their grandparents and parents went through. I plan on teaching them the Bosnian language and having them speak it in the home. I spoke it at home and learned English off of the tv and at school. Now I can speak, write, and understand both fluently. 

There have been many times where my culture and religion have made me feel different compared to those around me. When I visit my homeland of Bosnia, it is obvious that I am different because of my American culture and identity. People can directly spot out that I am from America, because my Bosnian identity is not 100%, and not as strong as there's. Same goes for when I am in American schools and teachers see my name. Ajla. It is spelt differently than how it is said, and I carry a lot of my Bosnian identity behind my name. Its difficult to pronounce, and some people seem to be confused as to why my name is so different. 

My religion however, is highly different in America. I wear the hijab visibly on my head and some people truly do make me feel different because of it. There have been certain situations that people made it obvious that they did not like what I was wearing in my head. I have had rude looks, mean words, and even smoke blown in my face, all because of my religious identity. In the beginning, it made me feel worthless, but I have come to realize that those people are uneducated and disrespectful, so I pay no attention to them anymore. 

As I have grown, I have realized that I carry a lot of identities: Muslim, Bosnian, American, Female, Student. I have also learned how to accept and love all of my identities, regardless of all the people that are against any of them. The challenges that I went through with any of my identities has only made me stronger. 

I believe that the challenges I went through will strongly impact how I teach in the future. As a teacher, I know that I will look at my students as equals, but make sure that they know why we are all different and why our differences are important to us. I believe that the purpose of education is to teach. We need to teach kids math, english, social studies, etc., but we also have to teach children how to be good humans. We [the educators] are the people who are raising these humans. As a teacher, I know I will have a strong impact on how the child will see the world. Children are strong, competent, and smart. We should bring to them different topics and make them comfortable with knowing things about religion, race, and sexual orientation (LGBTQ). We need to be the people who bring these topics to them, so that one day when they are faced with someone different than them, they will respect them and their differences. 

I have learned that my identities come from all different backgrounds and I find respect for each and every one of the factors that impact my identity. I know that one day, when I am a first grade teacher, I will bring all of my identities to the table in order to make the children grow. I will expose children to topics that we should have heard when we were young, and I will raise respectful humans.