Your Cultural Autobiography should be a 4-6 page paper in APA format. Cover page, reference page, and abstract are not included in the page count.
Your cultural autobiography will focus on the cultural influences that shaped your beliefs and your feelings. In it you will analyze the assumptions, traditions, and norms that you have internalized as part of your upbringing. According to Dr. Marybeth Peebles, associate professor of education at Marietta College, there are nine micro-cultures: socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, gender/sexual orientation, language, religion, exceptionality (whether you are mentally or physically disabled or gifted), age, and geography. You can use these categories as starting points to explore how your family and home town(s) backgrounds, and other social environments through your life, have influenced your worldview.
Your cultural autobiography should also describe how you might now question, or reject, some beliefs of the cultures that you were exposed to, as well as your reasons for doing so. The table below can help you explore your own conscious cultural stance, however, you do not need to show how you filled-in the table in your response.
Source / Environment
Cultural identity of persons in that environment
Cultural Messages (beliefs) sent from that environment.
Cultural Rules of Behavior learned from that environment.
Affirm or Rewrite? If rewrite, outline the new belief and rule by which you choose to live.
Family of Origin
K-12 school(s)
Undergraduate school
Work/ job
Graduate school
Current family
Other social/cultural environments as needed
Do your best, but also consider your cultural autobiography a work in progress. The concepts that you will learn in this class, as well as new life-experiences processed through the perspectives that you will learn to filter through the values of the Counseling profession, will increase your capacity to reflect and self-reflect, and restate or discard, some of the cultural influences that contributed to shape who you are today.
Your Cultural Autobiography can include:
Your ethnic and cultural background.
Draw your ethnic/cultural genogram
Discuss what aspects/qualities of your ethnic/cultural background are prominent in your life (e.g., language, religion, character traits) and the childhood experiences that reinforced them
Describe the childhood and adolescent experiences or relationships that shaped your view of people who are culturally different than you. What is your current view of people who are culturally different than you?
The cultural values you currently hold.
What cultural values do you currently hold (address time, activity, relational, basic human nature, religion)?
Which of these values will be different from common values of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, or Native Americans?
How do you plan to manage values conflicts with your clients?
Describe your process in racial identity development.
What stage are you currently experiencing? Give examples.
What factors/experiences influenced your progression?
How do you plan to further facilitate your racial identity development?
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