a lot of these come from various anti-oppression workshops, but we just did these recently at the Free Minds Collective "Educator's Institute" - a 28-hour anti-oppression training for educators in the Free Minds Collective Summer Enrichment Camp 2007.
the educators come from various backgrounds: me from brown u. and japan and suburban VA. WF (teaching bike repair with me and AS) from the Dominican Republic by way of the Bronx and now Greenbelt MD. Ms JM from 30+ years of teaching in the public school system. CC raised and educated almost entirely in Prince George's County... i would say that of the 30ish educators who attended the institute about 8 are college students at the University of Maryland, 9 are high school interns from the area, and maybe 9 or 10 are teachers who have been in the system for anywhere from 4 to 30+ years. Then there were a few random recruits from craigslist (the photography teacher, from El Salvador by way of FL) and other networks, like the capoeira instructor, whose name i did not catch unfortunately.
All exercises were designed to apply to the practice of teaching in a middle school classroom.
the educators come from various backgrounds: me from brown u. and japan and suburban VA. WF (teaching bike repair with me and AS) from the Dominican Republic by way of the Bronx and now Greenbelt MD. Ms JM from 30+ years of teaching in the public school system. CC raised and educated almost entirely in Prince George's County... i would say that of the 30ish educators who attended the institute about 8 are college students at the University of Maryland, 9 are high school interns from the area, and maybe 9 or 10 are teachers who have been in the system for anywhere from 4 to 30+ years. Then there were a few random recruits from craigslist (the photography teacher, from El Salvador by way of FL) and other networks, like the capoeira instructor, whose name i did not catch unfortunately.
All exercises were designed to apply to the practice of teaching in a middle school classroom.
- make a human tableau of words like "surprise," "privilege," "democracy," etc (so fun)
- role plays/skits of classroom dynamics - have group A sketch a successful intervention, group B sketch an unsuccessful intervention, and group C be the critical audience.
- i'm not a huge fan of the power line (or i don't know what other ppl call it but it's that exercise where everyone starts off holding hands and then each person steps up or back depending on their privilege) because i feel like it sets up hierarchies of privilege although this can be visually powerful tooooo....
- one person is the model, and everyone else receives a blurb with the model person's hobbies, personal history, height, weight, etc. then everyone has to write down their assumptions about the person's race, religious views, socio-economic status, gender identity, etc. based on the person's visual presentation and the blurb and nothing else.
- similar exercise: cut up photos from washington post or nytimes or whatever and give ppl the pieces. ask them to guess what the story is behind the photo. then give them the photo and ask them to either revise the story or give more details. then tell them what the newspaper story is and have them compare the newspaper story and what they assumed. (this sometimes can be problematic if participants end up thinking that the newspaper story is unquestionably accurate)...
- to get people energized and to encourage respect for youth culture: break up into groups according to the decade of birth. (eg: 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, etc) each group must answer the following questions: 1. what was the hottest music 2. what was the trendiest outfit 3. what was the most current slang ... when you were 13.
- draw a picture of your ideal teacher and explain the drawing. (have the "worst artist" in the group draw the picture). name the teacher.
- have a person walk around with a paper cutout of the person's self esteem and a pair of scissors. have people in the room read statements that hurt the person's self-esteem. after each reading, cut off the person's arms, legs, etc. with the scissors. then have people in the room read statements of affirmation and tape the arms and legs back onto the self-esteem.
- why this could be a good exercise: the dramatization of a diminishing self esteem is visually powerful. the scissors symbolize the power that the critic has, but also the power of the self to hand over or not hand over the scissors.
- why i think this exercise is problematic: this exercise does not make any distinction between personal suffering and systemic oppression. there are so many kids who don't hand over the scissors but still don't succeed in school because of the systems that police their psychological, intellectual, and even physical freedom in the classroom.
- on another note entirely, cutting off paper arms and legs when someone talks trash is somewhat absurd given that there are a fair number of students from countries where post-colonial civil wars produce thousands of casualties.
Comments
it seems like some of these exercises would be good for middle schoolers to do themselves in our classroom and some that are more appropriate for the “educators.” how did you all discuss this?
• role plays/skits of classroom dynamics – can you give some examples of classroom situations?
• one person is the model- One person in the room is the model? And everyone looks at this 1 person to make assumptions? So this person in the room just sits and has everyone look at them?
• similar exercise: cut up photos you cut the photos from the newspaper article into pieces? Or do you also cut parts of the story? Then you give them the complete photo? .
can you explain in more detail how it gets problematic if people think the newspaper article is accurate? Like they feel their own version is not “accurate?”
• draw a picture of your ideal teacher and explain the drawing. (have the "worst artist" in the group draw the picture). name the teacher.
Why is it important to have the worst artist draw the picture?
- i think that if you are a teacher, you can probably think of a classroom "situation" to role-play and discuss.
here are some examples from the Free Minds Collective Summer Camp Educator's Institute:
(1)
there is a student in the class who is very nice and considerate in a one-on-one setting with the teacher, but is very disruptive in class. the teacher will attempt an intervention with the student, which will reveal that the student's father has had to remain in (non-US country) and the student is stressed out about his/her mother's health.
(2)
the teacher attempts to break up students into more gender-integrated groups for team-building activities, but one group of students refuses to break up their clique. the leader of the clique is very disruptive and makes homophobic, sexist, classist, and/or racist comments. the teacher will attempt an intervention, which will fail.
- one person is the model. in our group it was the facilitator.
- photo: we never cut up text when we did this exercise, (developped by GV for the Engaged University) but that could be interesting.
what often ends up happening with this activity is that participants will come to recognize that the "bigger picture" is important to understand - that it is very easy to make assumptions when we see only part of the picture. when the participants receive the bigger picture, and later the newspaper's story, we are confronted by the discrepancy between the "facts" and our assumptions.
i'm saying it's problematic to present the newspaper's "facts" as unquestionably truthful, because throughout history newspapers have been accused of bias in one way or another.
- Brother V. asked that the "worst artist" draw the teacher, and i don't want to speak for him but my understanding of this is that we want to discourage people from always relying on "naturally talented people" for creative production. i think this exercise could be modified so that all the group members get to draw different parts of the teacher...