Co-Creating an Ideal Learning Community
In order to approach such a potentially controversial and
sensitive subject, it is
important to first, set up some guidelines to work toward an
ideal learning community.
Here are some examples that are pretty important. You may want
to add some more.
Encourage your students to help you with this list, as well.
1. Get to know each other. The more we build our interpersonal
relationships, the more invested we are in making the commitment to
staying in the room, taking
care of one another and being respectful.
2. Promote controversy with civility (Astin, p.59). The nature
of this material can be very close to many of us. It is important
to respect each other, as people, first.
Then it is possible to get to the richness of the topic.
3. Keep the discussion centered on your own cultural
location(s), speaking from personal experience. For instance,
sometimes a potentially problematic, yet
common, argument can be, "They treat their people way worse in
that country
than we do in ours"
4. Use I messages.
5. Listen.
6. Respect, Respect, Respect.
7. Take ownership and responsibility for the things that we may
say. Be accountable.
8. Be kind to one another. We have had our whole lives to learn
how to replicate and perpetuate an oppressive society. Together, if
we are kind and patient, we
can deconstruct it and change it.
9. Please notice these are not the "rules" for how to be
politically correct. These are some guidelines for respectful
communication. When we respect one another
because we want to, we are more willing to be respectful no
matter what the
response. This makes these communications a way of life as
opposed to being
contingent on the response of those around us.
