About Chong

My mom is my greatest teacher. One of her moral questions to my siblings and me is, “Seb koj puas tseem zoo siv xwb los mas. Are you being useful?” My writing heroes have said that the world is the world, without a name or nationality. That we give our mountains, rivers, and valleys names—not because the world is lost to us but that we are lost to the world. They say that once you leave home, you can never return again. But we do not get to choose where our home is. Rather, home calls us and pulls us to it whether it is where our people reside or where we find ourselves to be accepted and most useful. 

In 1977, my family and I left Laos to escape communist persecution and settled in a Thai refugee camp, where we lived for three years without direction or hope. Eventually, we settled in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where I excelled in education, with the goal of becoming a school teacher. I believed education was an equalizer and the proverbial key to realizing my dreams. My induction into the profession as a young high school English teacher in an urban high school was to be told by two of my department colleagues that I was an affirmative action hire. I was often mistaken for an interpreter, education assistant, math teacher, and certainly outsider. And so began my journey to prove myself as a teacher of English. I followed a familiar immigrant framework, which is assimilation. 

My identity was reduced to the operating ethos that if Whiteness is rational, logical, civilized, successful, and normal, then Hmong is irrational, exotic, and other. I hid my Hmong identity from my colleagues and students, especially my Hmong students, and wallowed in self-loathing and imposter syndrome. I was ashamed to show my Hmong identity, and I can trace the origin of this shame to my American education. From kindergarten to college–my culture, language, history, and lived experiences were absent. It was as if I sprouted from the ground with no roots. No scholarship, research, or shaman could find me in the curriculum or in the people in charge of my education. I was what our parents feared to become–a lost spirit, impoverished and hungry.  

I assumed two separate identities, where my Hmong identity was secret and tucked away at home. My public persona was silent and invisible, as I studied Whiteness in order to assume it.  In the meantime, I saw my Hmong identity through the shared BIPOC experience of trauma, colonization, and racism. Essentially, I knew who I was NOT but not who I was.

 I taught mostly advanced classes with few students of color representation in these classes, despite the school's majority BIPOC student population. I had proven my place at the teaching table at the expense of all my students. But my self-loathing manifested especially in the neglect of my Hmong students. A defining moment was when one of my Hmong students told me the first time he saw me he thought I was fake. I wasn't Hmong, he said. What my student knew and could not explain was that I was a traitor. I had sold my culture, sold my identity, sold my soul. In denying my Hmong identity, I had sold out. 

The hunger for connection and confidence in the classroom eventually coaxed my Hmong identity to show in my instruction.  I started greeting my students in Hmong and watched them do double takes in a combination of surprise and suspicion. In a lesson on Tim O'Brien's book The Things They Carried, I talked about my father's service and sacrifice in the CIA's Secret War and my family's exodus from Laos. I cried. Like that proverbial river my family crossed to safety and loss, my tears flowed with some embarrassment but without shame. 

In multiple and various ways, I continued to incorporate the Hmong story and myself into the curriculum and invited students to do the same. In doing so, I bridged my students' identities with the curriculum and gave them the language to talk about their own learning. I had begun my journey into culturally responsive teaching. I created a classroom community, where students could experiment with learning, bring in their linguistic and home culture, challenge me, teach me as I teach them and provide them the rigor and relevance they needed to become confident, independent learners. And they excelled. In the end, I became the teacher I had searched for all my life.

Recently, I have transitioned into a different teaching role as my school district's Culturally Responsive Instruction (CRI) Coordinator. As CRI Coordinator, I am tasked with changing the hearts and minds of my district and developing leaders and educators in culturally responsive teaching. In this role, I have come nearly full circle from my assimilationism into Whiteness to teaching education leaders to meet students where they are as wholly cultured beings. 

Education can still be an equalizer, if it fosters a sense of belonging and affirmation, which can improve students’ self esteem and confidence. When students see themselves reflected in the curriculum and feel valued and respected, they are more likely to actively participate, learn, and be ready to tackle rigorous content to succeed academically.  

I once heard a proverb that "rice cannot grow in the desert." If I were still in Laos, I would not be the woman I am today–actualizing through education. Education allowed me to change my social station, find my voice, and write my story. In education, I find myself to be useful.  Here, I have set down roots and found home. I am a teacher, and I still believe that no matter who you are and what background you come from, you can make of yourself what you wish through education. I hope to inspire my students to do the same, and I can show  educators how to give all students the same opportunity through a culturally responsive education.