Study Abroad Student Blogs

Unlike the many exchange students I’ve met in Singapore, who often tell me about how conspicuous they feel in their classes, I’m happy to say I’ve experienced the exact opposite.

As an aspiring teacher, I’ve done lots of reading about the positive impact teachers of color have on students of color. But as a Chinese-American, I’ve wondered why there isn’t much research on the subject with reference to Asian American students. Because of this, I decided to look back on my own experiences. Did having Asian teachers make a difference in my education? And then I realized: I had no idea, because I’ve had so few in my entire educational experience.

No wonder there isn’t much research about Asian teachers in America – they only make up about 2% of all teachers in the US.

Although the school district I grew up in has a relatively diverse workforce, I only had nine teachers of color out of the fifty teachers who taught me over thirteen years. Of these nine, although a few were Indian or Filipino or Asians of mixed race, none were the image of what I hope to be someday: a Chinese-American teacher.

This hasn’t changed in my six quarters at Northwestern, where I’ve had twenty-four professors. Only two of them were professors of color, and both were Black.

Now that I attend a school where I blend in and all of my professors look like me, I can genuinely say there is a small yet positive change in my learning environment. In a subtle way, I feel less worried about how my professors see me. Because I care about my academics and work hard in school, I know I play into the studious Asian stereotype. In America, this stereotype often makes my genuine interest in learning look like a narrow-minded attempt at making it to the top. I worry that my non-Asian professors falsely perceive me in this way. And even though the same stereotype is also prevalent in Singapore, I don’t spend nearly as much time worrying about how it looks on me, because my professors also know how it feels to be subjected to that stereotype.

So one day, when my genetics professor commented, “Most of us are Chinese, so our alleles differ…” I had to stop for a second to process what he said. “Us”? That included me.

In that moment, I felt freed of being noticed as “Asian.” For once, I was just the average student.