{"id":1198,"date":"2015-10-04T20:03:03","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T20:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2015-10-04T20:03:03","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T20:03:03","slug":"graduate-teaching-on-diversity-week-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/2015\/10\/04\/graduate-teaching-on-diversity-week-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had the second class for our pilot graduate diversity & ethics class<\/a>; I discussed the first class last week<\/a>. I asked the students to read Leaning In: A Student\u2019s Guide to Engaging Constructively with Social Justice Content<\/a> and to review the meaning of 16 words that we can use to talk about diversity, discrimination and oppression.\u00a0 Since these words are new to most students (I think) and even just their meanings can be difficult to internalize, we did an exercise that I picked up in our faculty difference, power and discrimination seminar<\/a>.\u00a0 Students were each assigned one word and wrote down a definition.\u00a0 Students then paired up and had 3 minutes to describe their definitions to each other. Now each student had 2 definitions.\u00a0 They paired up again and had 5 minutes to describe their 4 definitions to each other.\u00a0 They paired up a final time describe their 8 (or so) definitions.\u00a0 We then had an open discussion about some of the more challenging definitions (if I remember: institutional vs. structural discrimination, internalized oppression, hegemony).<\/p>\n

\"identity-map\"<\/a>I then had the students draw an identity map and to explain I showed them mine (right), and of course admitted that this is by no means complete (two glaring omissions are religion and body-type).<\/p>\n

My goal with all this is to have students realize the privilege they are granted based on their identity in addition to simply thinking about one’s own identity.<\/p>\n

Between talking about the diversity terminology and talking about identity, discrimination and privilege, there was a fair amount of discussion and some resistance to admitting access to privilege as well as denial of discrimination based on other identities.\u00a0 We talked a little bit about student resistance at the faculty DPD seminar, but I can’t say I was ready.<\/p>\n

I remember the first classes I’ve taught.\u00a0 I remember the times that I got stuck in a lecture or made a mistake or was unable to explain myself.\u00a0 And Friday’s class wasn’t dissimilar.\u00a0 However, I’m a trained theoretical computer scientist, so when teaching technical material I can draw on years of experience and know that I can probably do better next time; with this graduate diversity teaching, I don’t have nearly the training.\u00a0 There is also a lot more emotion tied up with ideas of discrimination and privilege.\u00a0 It is really difficult to see yourself as perpetuating systems of oppression.\u00a0 It’s important to not feel blame, but I think it is important to recognize that we are all a part of these systems of oppression and we are all responsible for fighting against it.\u00a0 I’m not sure I did a good job of explaining that on Friday,<\/p>\n

So, I left class with a lot on my mind and woke up the next day with it still weighing heavily.\u00a0 I only have 10 weeks\/hours to discuss these ideas explicitly with these students and I can’t help but blame myself for not doing the best job possible.\u00a0 Discussions this weekend with my partner, a colleague in Philosophy and (very welcome emails) with a student in the class have helped to digest this.\u00a0 I have a lot to learn and I am ready to accept that the first run through of this class is not going to be perfect.<\/p>\n

I just hope I have another opportunity to teach this in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had the second class for our pilot graduate diversity & ethics class; I discussed the first class last week. I asked the students to read Leaning In: A Student\u2019s Guide to Engaging Constructively with Social Justice Content and to review the meaning of 16 words that we can use to talk about diversity, discrimination […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[187582,187581,1000],"class_list":["post-1198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dpd","tag-grad-dpd","tag-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1204,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}