Where do you fall on the following continuum? I have not Take a moment to reflect and think deeply about your own identities and how they relate to this module.Ĭonsider your own personal learning about the topic. Reflecting on our identities and acknowledging how they manifest in our education practice is ongoing work. We hope these questions help spark your thinking in new and creative directions. Throughout the module, we use this icon to suggest times to reflect on a concept, your professional practice, or yourself. What works/doesn’t work for you about the way the faculty in the example handled the difficult conversation?.How have you responded? What might you do differently if given the opportunity?.Have you had similar situations arise in your classroom or learning space?.I wrapped up the discussion by thanking the student for surfacing the issue and by summarizing the key concerns that his peers had raised. In the discussion, the class countered their peer’s position using literature. When the student affirmed his position, I then opened the conversation to all students and asked them to respond with reference to texts we’d read that semester on topics such as assimilation and culturally relevant pedagogy. Therefore, to give the student an opportunity to hear how outrageous his statement was and to clarify, I repeated what he had said and asked if I had understood correctly. I felt stunned but given that the student had made the comment in front of 49 other students, I also felt pressured to immediately respond. This conversation, initiated by a student holding dominant identities, could very well be described as difficult.Īs an instructor, I was forced to confront a perspective different from my own -one that I was shocked to learn my student held and one that I personally found reprehensible. During the final class, a student who identified as white, male, and upper middle class advocated removing poor children from their families and placing them in boarding schools. Years ago, I taught at a predominantly white institution. This is one example of a courageous conversation from the article On ‘Difficult’ Conversations By Derisa Grant
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