Small Group Work in the Real World: A Practical Approach

I belong to several academic co-cultures. As a student in a Great Books program at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, I earned a BA in Liberal Arts and was the recipient of the Thomas Aquinas Award for outstanding achievement in the Liberal Arts. At the University of California at Berkeley I earned an MA and PhD in Rhetoric. My doctoral areas of concentration were rhetoric and philosophy in the classical world, modern rhetorical theory, and the rhetoric of philosophy. After completing my doctoral work, I taught for about 4 years at several Central Valley colleges in three different academic disciplines, English, Philosophy, and Speech. I taught courses in basic writing, research writing, technical writing, public speaking, critical thinking, and Introduction to Philosophy. Some of my academic identities, therefore, are writing instructor, speech instructor, liberal arts generalist, rhetorician, and philosopher.

For the past 22 years, I have taught full-time as a Professor of Communication at Bakersfield College. For my first 5 years, I alternated with my colleague Helen Acosta as coach and assistant coach of the Bakersfield College Speech and Debate Team, so Helen and I first developed our professional relationship as members of the California Speech and Debate community. For the past 17 years, I have been teaching Communication courses at Bakersfield College, including Public Speaking, Rhetoric and Argumentation, Intercultural Communication, Interpersonal Communication, and Small Group Communication. Collaborating with my colleagues in the Communication Department, I am a principle coauthor of four Communication textbooks: Contemporary Public Speaking: How to Craft and Deliver a Powerful Speech; Small Group Work in the Real World: A Practical Approach; Let’s Get Personal: Creating Successful Relationships Through Effective Interpersonal Communication; and, now, Intercultural Communication: Building Relationships and Skills.

In addition to my academic co-cultures, the primary co-culture I am involved in outside of my college career is the conservative Christian co-culture. I have been an active member of my church denomination since I was a small child, and I have pastored a small church in Tehachapi, California, for about the past 20 years. For a large part of my life, I have travelled back and forth between this traditional religious co-culture and the secular academic co-culture. Studying and teaching Intercultural Communication has helped me to clarify and claim both of these major parts of my personal identity.

Studying and teaching intercultural communication has also helped me to discover my German roots. Although my last name is “Staller,” until 11 years ago (when I first started teaching Intercultural Communication) I only thought of myself as American—I had almost no ethnic identity. On an unconscious level, I had disassociated myself from anything German because I primarily thought of Adolf Hitler and Nazis when I thought of German culture. After researching my family background and my German heritage, I can now write proudly that I am German-American. The Stallers, I have learned, were German Lutheran farmers who immigrated to the eastern part of the United States in the late 1800s. I hope that my Intercultural Communication students can have similar experiences getting in touch with their own co-cultures and their own personal identities.

I wrote Chapter 1 (The Foundations of Intercultural Communication), Chapter 2 (Appreciating Both Sameness and Difference), Chapter 5 (Nonverbal Communication), Chapter 6 (Approaches to Conflict), and Chapter 7 (Values and Worldviews).

Andrea Thorson-Hevle is a dedicated professor and author. With community college work from Bakersfield College, a BA from Bradley University, a MA from California State University, Long Beach, and some doctoral work from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Andrea has collected a variety of degrees. Her favorite areas of interest include: women’s studies, interpersonal communication, disability, education, law, and language. She has published several books in the Communication discipline and enjoys giving invited lectures on issues of oppression, women, and education.

Andrea is currently teaching pubic speaking, small group, interpersonal, and rhetoric and argumentation courses at Bakersfield College in Bakersfield, CA. She thanks her parents James and Debra Thorson for their sacrifices and faith that lead her to a successful life, as well as her dear friend Sarah Crachiolo for her support and humor through the years. She is especially grateful to her loving husband Justin for his unwavering encouragement and for giving her the three greatest blessings of her life: Montgomery, Sebastian, and James.

There are so many events and experiences that have shaped me as a person and driven me to become more aware and conscientious of my communication with others, especially with those who might not come from a similar background. Many of these experiences I wear like badges of honor like being raised in a single-parent home by a woman, despite having four growing children, took full advantage of the support and generosity from family and friends to go back to school and become a credentialed teacher. Although some badges were apparent, chosen, and intentional, some of the badges that decorate my life are worn more proudly than others. There are three in particular that color me as an individual, a scholar, an author, as a professor, and as a husband and father.

I come from humble beginnings, much like many of the students who will read this text. Despite not always having the things I wanted and needed growing up, my participation in sport culture gave me a social capita that was worth its weight in gold. As I excelled in a number of sports within my community, the disparities of being someone without certain luxuries disappeared on some level. My involvement with sports and the culture of athletics propelled my life in ways that will forever be understood as nothing short of life changing. My friend groups and the way I was treated by others were often a direct product of my involvement and skills in sports. Even the friendships I was able to build with others from different sports were unique from the friends from other sports. Each sport culture is so different and rich. It is really the interplay between the sports, sport teams, and fandom of the sports I played that acted as my first training grounds for intercultural communication. The language and behaviors in one sport make very little sense on different fields and venues. It was not until college that I really started to understand just how different and special the culture of sports was. During my community college days I was a two-time All-American in water polo and swimming. Although I consciously made a decision to not continue after two very successful years at the community college level, Water Polo is still very much a part of my life. This culture has and continues to shape the way I see the world and how I understand others.

Secondly, another co-culture that has impacted and continues to impact my life is related to my ethnic identity. As a Japanese American I take great pride in my heritage and being part of a co-culture of racial mixed people. My minority status is often called into question because of my subtle Japanese features but ideologically I have always felt more in-line with other co-cultures that are on the fringes of society. As a fourth-generation Japanese-American, or yonsei, the experiences I share with others within my co-culture creates a bond that is very important for me to nourish and a bond I hope to pass onto my racially mixed children. My love for Japan and Japanese culture helps me to stay connected and grounded within my co-culture and since many of my students are interested in Japanese culture, I am often given a soapbox to share this love with them. Following graduate school, I took a visiting professorship position teaching at a private University in Japan. My two years teaching, studying, living, and learning in Japan has forever solidified my love for my father-land, as I call it, and my family that made the difficult journey to America a few generations ago. My affiliation and inclusion within this co-culture is something I have to work hard to maintain at times but it is through the struggle of reaching out to others, travel, and study that makes this membership so much more meaningful.

Lastly, I belong to a co-culture of loss. Without going into too much detail, my father died when I was eleven. A consequence of his death was in fact my initiation into a co-culture of survivors. At times I hide the fact that I am a part of this co-culture. It is not easy to talk about with others regardless if they too have experienced this kind of loss. It has shaped me in ways that I am still making sense of today in my early thirties. Although co-cultural groups for survivors exist out there, I have always been wary about making my membership known. It is not that I am ashamed or embarrassed, it is just that I reserve my communication about my inclusion in this co-culture to the people that I trust and with students when it is appropriate. This co-culture has helped to shape my goals, values, and in many ways helps me stay true to other co-cultures that I am a part of. Each of these three co-cultures has made and continues to make its imprint on me as a person, a community member, and a family member. I value each of these co-cultures despite my openness about them.