By Dr. Sarah Ropp

This is the tenth entry in our dialogic pedagogy summer reading series. For more on the series and a full list of texts, see here. 

Title: Democratic Dialogue in Education: Troubling Speech, Disturbing Silence (published 2004; $33; available for purchase HERE)

Editor: Megan Boler

Context of Creation: This edited volume arises from challenges, critiques, and extensions to  Megan Boler’s notion of an “affirmative action pedagogy” that deliberately centers historically marginalized voices in the classroom at the necessary cost of (at times) suppressing dominant voices, which she first presented in 1998. The volume contains essays from a selection of philosophers of education engaged with “the profound ethical questions of how to create dialogue within classrooms that, like it or not, are microcosms that reflect the social hierarchies of race, class, gender, and homophobia that shape the larger world” (viii). Contributors respond to one another in their pieces without ever reaching a resolution or consensus regarding these ethical dilemmas, thus performing “dialogue across difference” (of pedagogical opinion) throughout the book’s chapters. “Troubling” and “disturbing” are meant both as adjectives and as transitive verbs–acknowledging the difficulties of navigating speech and silence while simultaneously interrogating dominant assumptions about speech and silence. Published in 2004, the book is grounded self-consciously in the early post-9/11 era, particularly legal and social debates over civil liberties and affirmative action. Boler is currently Professor in the Department of Social Justice Education, at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto; at the time of publication, she was Associate Professor of Theory and Policy Studies at OISE. 

Context of Reception: I previously knew the work of Megan Boler only secondhand — from Brenda Daly’s account of her application of Boler’s notion of “testimonial reading” in an anti-racist literature classroom and from our own Difficult Dialogues faculty learning community member Danica Sumpter, who referenced Boler’s “pedagogy of discomfort” in a presentation she made to us in spring 2020. I was looking forward to her edited volume on dialogue, assuming both of these intriguing concepts would be addressed in Democratic Dialogue in Education. As it turns out, neither of them were, but I found this extended collective meditation on speech and silence in response to a third Boler concept, “affirmative action pedagogy,” a refreshing breather after reading so many books for this series that take for granted the positive value of a social identity-driven, participatory classroom “dialogue.”  

Overview of Structure and Content: Following a brief editor’s introduction in which Boler explains the volume’s genesis, a full introduction presents summaries of each chapter along with a series of synthesizing questions. Then, contributor chapters are divided into four parts. Part I, “The Challenge of Creating Spaces for Social Justice Dialogue,” begins with Boler’s explication of affirmative action pedagogy and contains two other perspectives on the role and importance of classroom dialogue; these essays diverge in terms of pedagogical approach to facilitating dialogue among a diverse group of learners but take for granted its value. Part II, “Complicating Speech and Silence,” contains three essays that interrogate that assumption by interrogating the (colonialist, Western) fantasies that attend the desire for dialogue and its assumed connection to “voice,” as well as contemplating the role and value of silence. Part III, “Moral and Philosophical Dimensions of Dialogue,” presents two essays reflecting on violence and ethical responsibility in dialogue. Part IV, “Dialogue in Practice: Risks and Benefits,” contains two essays that each explicate particular classroom experiences and what the respective authors both consider to be the pedagogical value of “trauma” during attempts at anti-oppressive lessons. This is a volume clearly written by and for higher-ed faculty, although most of the contributors teach in departments of Education, meaning they are training students who (will) teach in K-12 settings. And though the chapters are rich in anecdotes of practice, it is a work of philosophy/theory rather than a handbook.  

Three Thought-Starters for Teachers: 

• Affirmative Action Pedagogy (AAP). 

Boler explains that AAP “recognizes that we are not equally protected in practice by the First Amendment and that education needs to represent marginalized voices fairly by challenging dominant voices in the classroom” (4). In practice, this might mean prohibiting speech: outlining claims, language, and attitudes that will not be tolerated in the classroom, such as, for example, rejecting the existence of White privilege. It might mean prohibiting speakers based on identity. For example, Boler cites the case of Professor Mary Daly, who refused to allow two (presumed cisgender) male students to enroll in her women’s studies class. Boler herself argues that there are “justifiable cases” in which “white, middle-class male students” should not be permitted to speak, suggesting that self-disclosure on the part of these students is frequently a means of claiming the authority to “disprove” structural inequality in conversations about race, gender, and class by presenting their personal experiences and demanding the same validation for them as marginalized students (11). On the other hand, Boler notes that AAP can also be practiced as challenge to and condemnation of speech, rather than prohibition of it, referencing a professor of Black Studies who welcomes students to express any views they wish, with the understanding that all claims will be subjected to critical analysis and calls for accountability. The important thing, Boler writes, is that “until all voices are recognized equally, we must operate within a context of historicized ethics which consciously privileges the insurrectionary and dissenting voices, sometimes at the minor cost of silencing those voices that have been permitted dominant status for the past centuries” (13). 

• What is your reaction to the notion of affirmative action pedagogy? What, or whom, do you choose to silence in your courses (in the syllabus as well as the classroom)? Why and with what effect?  
• What do you imagine this might look like in practice? What do you imagine students’ reactions might be? 
• What are the potential pitfalls of this approach? How does one prevent an earnest attempt to “privilege” or “center” certain “voices” from veering into paternalism, saviorism, tokenism, etc?

 

• Voice. 

Alison Jones notes, “The key idea in contemporary praise of dialogue in education is voice — or speech — which is set in opposition to silence. . . . With a touching faith in the ‘talking cure’ of dialogue and self-disclosing narratives, emancipatory educators argue that, via a multiplicity of voices/narratives, teachers and students can speak and work across differences towards an egalitarian, multicultural, and democratic social order” (58-59). She observes how “disturbing” silence is to the progressive educator, especially when it is students who (are presumed or known to) occupy marginalized identity positions who are not speaking. In Jones’s analysis, exhorting “marginalized voices” to speak forcibly positions these students as the educators and redeemers of their peers; she begins the conclusion to her essay by asking, “Why, then, must the marginalized speak (engage in dialogue)? For whose benefit do they speak?” (66). 

Suzanne deCastell, in her own essay, pushes back against Boler’s persistent invocation of dominant versus marginalized voices, asking, “What is meant by voices here, and is it the substance of what is spoken, or is it the identity of the speaker that constitutes the basis of differentiated rights to speak? . . . Because of course identities are more often hybrid than pure. More important, identities that are ascribed rather than asserted work, again, to position the subject under the sign of passivity — the teacher, but not I myself, knows who and what I am” (51-53). 

I would add that it is telling that throughout this volume the “marginalized voices” most frequently referenced are related to race and gender — the identities that teachers often presume are most legible on sight, versus class, sexuality, religion, disability, and so on. There is thus an irony at work — if we listened more attentively to what students actually say about themselves, rather than how they appear to us (as a phenotype or as a list of identities), we would have a better, fuller understanding of what “voice” they are bringing into the conversation, both in terms of their identities and their ideologies. 

• What desires drive your inclusion of dialogue in the classroom? What are you hoping dialogue achieves, and for whom? In what fantasies are these desires based? 
• Think about students you have had who did not speak when you hoped or asked that they would. What feelings did their silence provoke in you? How did you respond? What conclusions did you draw? 
• How do you know what “voices” are present in your classroom, and to what extent those “voices” have been silent/silenced or not? Put another way — how do you go about learning who your students are, where they come from, and what their experiences have been?

 

• Trauma. 

The last two essays in the volume, by Ann C. Berlak and Ingrid M. Erickson, both conclude that some degree of “traumatization” of students occupying dominant identity positions is an a) inevitable and b) probably necessary component of anti-oppression pedagogies. “Crisis is essential in order for cultural secrets [such as racism] to be revealed,” Berlak argues (141); “I am increasingly skeptical about how much learning takes place in classroom settings where trauma does not occur,” Erickson writes (147). Both authors identify “trauma” as the result of challenge to preexisting worldviews: Berlak writes of her White students following a lesson led by a militant Black female educator, “Many students were traumatized by the encounter simply because Sekani challenged assumptions about racial hierarchy that . . . were fundamental to their conceptions of self” (137). Erickson describes how “responsible educators” are “compelled to induce trauma by challenging certain beliefs because they are wrong or destructive to self or other” (147). 

Accepting for a moment this arguable definition of trauma, I am struck by the continued focus on the learning experience of the “dominant” and in particular the focus on the trauma that those occupying non-marginalized identity positions in regards to a particular conversation might experience — that is, the focus on the trauma a White student might experience during a conversation about racial discrimination, which is the focus of both Berlak and Erickson’s essays, rather than a consideration of what the lessons they describe might possibly mean for students of color. (Berlak notes that the one African American student in her class responded resoundingly positively, but, though she identifies their presence in the class, does not discuss at all the reactions of her Latinx and Asian students, focusing on her White students’ journal responses.) 

I am also struck by the repeated reference to (new) trauma in the classroom without consideration for prior histories of trauma that students may bring into the classroom, whatever their identities, and the ways in which old trauma interacts with new. Berlak and Erickson describe or assume majority-White groups of students and seem likewise to  assume, based on White identity, that these students are uniformly psychologically “whole,” never having experienced previous humiliation, denigration, or violation, such that this fresh new trauma will be a painful, but straightforward and clean wound. It occurs to me over and over, reading these essays, that trauma is a very large missing piece from all of these conversations about student “identities” and “voices,” who should be exhorted or allowed to speak or exhorted or allowed to remain silent, who “needs” to experience trauma in the classroom versus who should be protected from it. Even if we know what every student’s list of identities are, we do not know the traumas they have or have not experienced, whether in connection to those identities or not. 

• What is your reaction to the notion that “crisis is essential” for learning? Is “trauma” here just another word for discomfort, pain, and struggle in the learning process, or is it something deeper and more impactful? 
• In your view, can you selectively target aspects of a person’s identity or selfhood to speak to/agitate/traumatize? If so, how? If not, what then is the approach? 

Two Concrete Practices for Immediate Implementation: 

• Invite Students to Critique Your Syllabus. 

In his essay, Ronald David Glass notes, “Educators routinely silence certain voices and amplify others through the selection of the curriculum, the design of assignments and assessments, and the structure of the classroom social relations and learning environment. . . . What most differentiates the liberatory educator/classroom is that these choices and actions are made subject to explicit critical examination rather than being left within hidden hegemonic practices. This includes making overt the moral and political commitments underlying the choices and shaping the intentions of study” (19).

It could also include, I suggest, inviting students to critically review your syllabus at regular points throughout the semester, starting in the first week of the course. Ask students to examine your reading list and identify which “voices” seem to be present and which might be missing. Have them review the course’s assignments and make comments regarding the kinds of learners who will do well with their format and the kinds who might not. Ask them to observe the physical configuration of the classroom as well as your methodologies (e.g. frequent pair work) and comment, again, on which learners might be particularly well-served by these choices and which might not, and why. Invite them to bring their own experiences to bear on these comments as well as exercise imagination.

In the first phase, their comments might be more speculative and prediction-based. As the course goes on, however, they will be responding from a location of more familiarity with the course’s goals and their particular experiences within it. You might leave several days’ or weeks’ readings as “TBD” or “subject to change” with the understanding that these texts will be nominated on the basis of what perspectives are deemed to be missing. You could identify 2-3 texts for the class to choose from, or invite students to contribute suggestions for texts. You might leave an assignment unspecified (or put in a placeholder), with the understanding that it will be designed in response to what students observe is needed. 

Inviting students to comment critically on your syllabus is not necessarily a promise to make all suggested changes or meet every demand (although at least some degree of adaptation in light of feedback should occur); you also have the opportunity to explain your choices, modeling in the process how it looks to seriously and respectfully consider challenges. 

• A Day of (Teacherly) Silence.

Here, I suggested practicing periods of silence as a whole class. In the first post of this series on Stop Talking, I suggested a “day without reading or writing.” I will suggest now a day of silence on the part of the instructor only — in which students talk and interact with one another, but the teacher remains a silent observer/facilitator/guest. A decade ago, when I was teaching ninth and tenth grade English, I made my own silence a regular part of my practice. During formal dialogues, I would always remain physically outside the circle and silent for the duration of the students’ hour-long conversation (though not totally silent: students would start the dialogue with questions I had written, and in some dialogues I would occasionally scribble a new question on the board, thus my voice was not completely absent). Other times, I would greet students at the door with a one-page set of instructions for the day’s lesson and smile wordlessly in response to their questions (again, they could speak and work together; the goal was not disciplinary silence but rather self-direction). Though I did not yet have a body of theory (or even the language) to legitimize my silence as anti-oppressive or decolonialist pedagogy, I was acutely aware of my power as the authority figure (the “dominant voice” above all others) in the classroom. I wanted students to speak to themselves and one another rather than to, or for, me. I loved those days. I recommend it, and though the authors featured in Democratic Dialogue in Education do not engage meaningfully with the teacher as a “dominant voice” that needs to be suppressed at times, I believe an occasional refusal to speak on the part of the instructor aligns very well with “affirmative action pedagogy.” (It works, too, if you feel particularly vulnerable in your classroom. If you are transparent about needing to remain silent on a particular day or during a particular conversation, you have an opportunity to validate “opting out” as a real option for self-preservation for students, as well.) 

One Resource: Why Silence? 

Huey Li Li’s essay in the collection, “Rethinking Silencing Silences,” is perhaps my favorite. In it, Li Li deconstructs the binary opposition of speech and silence by suggesting that they form rather “a continuum of human expression” (69). She also pushes back against the oversimplification of “silence [as] the inevitable consequence of oppression” (70) (or an expression of defiance and empowerment) by arguing for an understanding of the meanings and functions of silence in, especially, non-Western cultures. She notes that even when silence is deployed as a pedagogical strategy in U.S. classrooms (as “wait time”), its ultimate purpose is to produce verbal responses. This is not an invalid or “wrong” pedagogical use of silence; it demonstrates, however, both the communicative continuum of speech and silence as interrelated and mutually complementary rather than binarily opposed on the one hand as well as the investment, in a Western context, in speech as the highest value, on the other hand. Li Li suggests, “It is not necessary to structure teaching solely through talk/speech and foster students’ exclusive commitment to speech making. Furthermore, it is imprudent to ‘evaluate’ students’ learning according to their ‘verbal participation’ in in-class learning activities. In contrast, it is important for educators to inquire into silence” (75).

Inspired by this entreaty to “inquire into silence,” I have created this graphic, “Why Silence? Reasons We Choose Not to Talk,” which names eight basic reasons one might not verbally participate. It complements another graphic,”Why Speech? Reasons We Choose to Talk,” which I originally created for the second post in this series under the title “7 Purposes for Dialogue” but have edited and adapted. I think it’s useful for students to inquire into silence, too; thus, below are some questions to accompany these “Why Speech/Why Silence” graphics, after sharing them with students.

• Regarding “Why Speech?”: Think about a couple memorable conversations or interactions (in class, at work, at home, in a public space, or elsewhere) you have had in which you spoke up significantly. What motivated you to speak in these interactions? Is there a pattern in why you tend to choose to speak? In what contexts and for which of these reasons do you tend to speak the most? Which reason for speaking do you think is ideal, for you? Are there times you speak when you think you shouldn’t (or times you’ve spoken and wish you hadn’t)? Are there reasons for speaking that you don’t see represented among these seven basic reasons?
• Regarding “Why Silence?”: Think about times you have been silent in conversation. Are you typically a “talker” or do you more often occupy a listening role (in class, at work, at home, in a public space, and elsewhere)? Which reasons for silence are most recognizable or resonate most with your experience? Which are new ideas to you or reasons that don’t ever apply to your own silences? Are you more comfortable with your own silence or with others’ silence? What contexts of deliberate silence (or non-speech) can you name and how familiar are you with them? Are there reasons for silence that you don’t see represented among these eight basic categories? 

Next Week . . . We will be reading It’s Time to Talk (and Listen): How to Have Constructive Conversations About Race, Class, Sexuality, Ability & Gender in a Polarized World (by Anastasia S. Kim and Alicia del Prado, 2019).

By Dr. Sarah Ropp

This is the ninth entry in our dialogic pedagogy summer reading series. For more on the series and a full list of texts, see here. 

Title: Introduction to Intergroup Dialogues (published 2021; $73-$95; available for purchase HERE)

Editor: Stephanie Hicks

Context of Creation: This is a brand-new textbook designed for use in courses built around the concept of intergroup dialogue–“a form of social justice education that seeks to engage difference, social identity, and social justice” (2). It is a publication out of the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan, one of the most longstanding and best-known dialogue-based programs in higher education. It follows other volumes such as Intergroup Dialogue: Engaging Difference, Social Identities and Social Justice (eds. Zúñiga, Lopez, and Ford, 2014) and Facilitating Intergroup Dialogues (Maxwell, Nagda, and Thompson, 2011). Stephanie Hicks is a lecturer in the IGR program at Michigan. 

Context of Reception: I read half of this book on a picnic blanket in a park and the other half nestled in a window seat, both during the first week of living in my new home city of Philadelphia. The familiar concepts of the book came to me within a context of newness (the unfamiliar, exciting environment of a beautiful old city park), chaos (the unpacked boxes and disassembled furniture surrounding my window seat refuge in the new apartment), and difference (every time my eye wandered up, I saw something that contrasted in an immediate visual way with Austin, from the tall trees and Victorian-era rowhouses to the ethnic diversity of the people in my neighborhood). 

Overview of Structure and Content: The four units of the reader are based on the four stages of the intergroup dialogue model: 1) relationship-building, 2) social identity exploration, 3) hot topics, and 4) action planning. The units are not evenly balanced in terms of number of chapters or readings per unit: Unit 1 contains two chapters and one reading, while Unit 2 contains six chapters and 12 total readings. Unit 3 is a single, short chapter with no secondary source reading, while Unit 4 is comprised of two chapters and seven readings. Thus, although the introduction presents the textbook as a resource “created with student participants and facilitators in mind,” it is not primarily a skillbuilding handbook (there are really only two chapters that directly address the skills of participating in/facilitating dialogue — Chapter 2, “Affirming Inquiry,” and Chapter 9, “Exploring Conflict on Campus, in Communities, and Beyond,” both of which are very short at 2-3 pages). Rather, it is a collection of short readings, accompanied by pre-and post-reading reflective discussion questions and key term definitions, intended to introduce students to basic concepts related to social identity, oppression, and privilege. A number of these texts are drawn from Readings for Diversity and Social Justice (4th ed. 2018), such as the “-ism: An Introduction” texts and Bobbie Harro’s “Cycle of Socialization/Cycle of Liberation” graphics. Many of these texts are linked in our Difficult Dialogues resources at UT-Austin. Others come from people affiliated with IGR at UMich and/or are identified by the editor as “classic” social justice education texts (xiii), including particularly useful texts by (among others) Beverly Daniel Tatum, Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey, Derald Wing Sue, Iris Marion Young, Devon W. Carbado, and Eesha Pandit. 

Three Thought-Starters for Teachers: 

• Social Justice Education. As a dialogic model, intergroup dialogue is explicitly grounded in a social justice mission, with critical awareness leading into deliberate action towards change-making. Other models, such as Reflective Structured Dialogue, Story Circles, and Moral Conversation (all summarized, along with four other models, in this graphic), do not include action as part of the goals but rather focus on cultivating understanding and respect for difference. Given that Introduction to Intergroup Dialogues is a course reader, with the four stages of intergroup dialogue all presumably (necessarily) connected to a system of assessment, I wonder what structuring “action planning” into a course’s learning objectives means for student experience and engagement.

• What is your purpose for including dialogue in your course(s)? How do you know if that purpose has been fulfilled? 
• What do you think “authentic engagement” means (for what and how you teach)? (How) Can it be assessed? 
• What are the pitfalls of a dialogic pedagogy that does not require or encourage direct action as a component of engaging with others across lines of ideological and identity-based difference? 
• What are the pitfalls of a dialogic pedagogy that does require or encourage “action-taking” as part of the dialogue process? 

• Against Curiosity. The intergroup dialogue model distinguishes between three basic kinds of inquiry: interrogation, curiosity, and affirming inquiry. The last of these is a “facilitation approach and set of techniques” central to the intergroup dialogue model (8). Curiosity, located in what we can imagine is the middle of a spectrum between the obvious non-goal of interrogative engagement and the ideal of affirming inquiry, seeks “explanation or insight” into unfamiliar experiences and concepts, comes from an attitude of “naivety, assumed normalcy, [and] unexamined privilege,” and is likely to result in the subject of the inquiry feeling “tokenized, ‘othered,’ commoditized, exploited, or used.” Affirming inquiry, in contrast, stresses “the mutual exploration of experiences/narratives by sharing and inviting others to share” (9). I am intrigued by this characterization of “curiosity” as a style of engagement akin to “interrogation” and “inquiry,” not (just) an orientation or motivation. 
• What is your response to this description of curiosity as a colonialist sort of pursuit? 
• Is curiosity a predetermined mode of engagement and interaction with the other or is it an affect? That is — can curiosity be channeled towards other ends besides tokenization, commodification, and exploitation? Can we stimulate and encourage curiosity without implicitly affirming invasive or appropriative means towards its satisfaction? How? 
• If not — if curiosity is always already objectifying — what are other, better orientations or motivations for learning? How do we stimulate and encourage them in students?  
• Privilege Discourse. The readings in Unit 2, which are focused on social identity and various “isms” of identity-based oppression, are frequently directed at a reader who is presumed to be in a position of privilege relative to the social identity in question and unaware of their privilege. It’s clear that the editor has selected texts whose authors represent a variety of identity positions vis-a-vis the topic at hand, but the intended audiences seem a much less diverse group. (The final reading in the book, “Loving Ourselves” by Susana M. Morris, is explicitly addressed to people of color, but I think it is the only one written expressly for a non-dominant identity group.) Several follow the lead of Peggy McIntosh’s seminal 1989 “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” essay on White privilege by including lists of examples of privilege, written in first-person plural (“Being a young person with wealth gives us an unspoken advantage,” in a reading on class privilege (151)) or second-person perspective (“You can worship freely, without fear of violence or threats,” in a reading on Christian privilege (199)). I began thinking about the ways in which privilege discourse often seems ironically to (re)center privileged identities when reading Being the Change a couple weeks ago, and I continue to think this through, now in relation, especially, to issues of class difference raised in last week’s reading, How to Talk About Hot Topics on Campus. I am going to share the questions that keep reverberating in my head with you.
• Why does it seem to be so consistently assumed that anyone, especially any college student, who occupies a less-advantaged identity position is already fully aware of all of the disadvantages they experience as a result and has fully “unpacked” and come to nuanced understanding of those disadvantages? (Sometimes this is explicitly stated, as in “non-White people are already very aware of their racial status and its implications,” while other times it is suggested more implicitly through omission of consideration.) What might unexamined instructor assumptions related to the socioeconomic class, political ideologies, and national/geographic origin of university students have to do with it? 
• Why are so very few of these social justice readings for students on power and privilege directed at or “for” members of the less-privileged groups in question? To be clear, I think ongoing reflections on privilege are absolutely essential; I am not criticizing the existence of very useful “examine your privilege” texts or suggesting they be eliminated. 
• What would these readings look like if they were? How would the ensuing dialogue be different (in structure, in tone, in goal)? What does a social justice conversation look like that does not start with confessionals around privileges and disadvantages that seem, always, to focus on the learning experience or the “awakening” of the privileged? (I am thinking of those exercises in which participants are exhorted to step forward for every statement of privilege that applies to them, creating a visual representation by the end of just how “far behind” the least privileged folks are.) 

Two Concrete Practices for Immediate Implementation: 

• The LARA method. Intergroup dialogue advocates a four-step response pattern for both participants and facilitators in dialogue called the LARA method: Listen, Affirm, Respond, and Affirming inquiry. This means that, regardless of what someone has shared, facilitators should model deep listening for connection and understanding. They should affirm the contribution, which is categorically different from expressing agreement or approval; affirming the contribution means, at a minimum, acknowledging the speaker with thanks or by paraphrasing what they have said to confirm understanding. In my interpretation, it is an expression of trust in the speaker: that they have integrity, that they are good enough to want to learn from their errors and intelligent enough to do so. Only after affirming, according to the LARA method, should the facilitator (or participants) respond to the actual content of the contribution; here, disagreement, correction, or pushback can be expressed. The final step, affirming inquiry, involves sharing one’s own perspective and inviting others to share their own, to ensure mutuality and equal vulnerability. 

• Testimonials. “In intergroup dialogue,” Hicks writes, “we write testimonials in order to reflect on the impact that our membership in various social identity categories has had on our lives” (59). Testimonials are written with the understanding that they will be shared with the group. In this way, I suggest, “dialogue” expands beyond the merely oral and can continue asynchronously in written form. Testimonials can be integrated into dialogue in many ways, but I also suggest that it is powerful to offer a testimonial (or any other form of statement) without any response other than, perhaps, affirmation. bell hooks mentions using testimonials in Teaching to Transgress; Story Circles, as a dialogic model, is also based on oral testimony of a sort. Hicks identifies four parameters of a good testimonial that can be shared with students (I have paraphrased them here): 

1. 1. It is a specific story of something that has happened to you.
   2. You are willing to share it. 
   3. You remember it well enough to write about it.
   4. It focuses on an incident related to a particular social identity, but other social identities intersect and may be mentioned also.  

One In-Depth Activity: How I Got Here: A Testimonial

This activity borrows the notion of the testimonial and refers to Dori Laub’s seminal work on the topic of testimony and the need for an “addressable other” to stress the relational nature of testimony. Rather than introduce the testimonial as part of the “exploring social identities” stage of the intergroup dialogue process, however, as Introduction to Intergroup Dialogues does, I have designed this activity to be done in the first stage of relationship-building and dialogue skills development. Rather than speak to their experiences related to a particular social identity, students are asked to craft a narrative of “how they got here,” for the principal purpose of affirming everyone’s unique pathway to the university and right to belong, as well as practicing the critical dialogic skill of deep listening. The prompt itself takes inspiration from the Blanton Museum’s digital video resource “Belonging,” which could be included in this testimony activity. In leaving “how I got here” fairly open to interpretation as a prompt, I also intend the activity as a kind of assessment to gauge how students are (and aren’t) already thinking about (their) privilege, regardless of which identity positions they occupy. It strikes me that a great deal of the friction I am feeling with privilege discourse in these readings has to do with the way it is so (necessarily) generalized; this activity allows instructors (and participants!) to become aware of and responsive to the actual people in the room, where they come from, and how they are thinking and feeling. It also grounds an ongoing discussion of privilege and oppression related to various social identities in the one privilege everyone in the room is almost guaranteed to share, which is the privilege of a college education at (in UT’s case) a top-ranked, selective institution. Awareness of the privilege of being college students, spending part of their days in high-minded dialogues for the purpose of their own economic, social, intellectual, or moral betterment, is, in my mind, a good starting point from which to begin to empower students as critical agents. 

The dialogue that follows the testimonial sharing should ask questions that prompt critical self-reflection such as: 

• Now that you have listened to others’ testimonies, what do you notice about the approach you took in your own? Was your tone defensive, proud, shamefaced, apologetic, or something else? Did you focus on yourself as an individual or make a lot of reference to your family, your community, or your identity? Why do you think that is? 
• What did others express awareness about regarding their own history and journey that you did not? What did you express awareness about that others did not? 
• Why do you think I asked you to do this activity? What do you feel has been the result, for you personally or for the group as a whole? 

Next Week . . . We will be reading Democratic Dialogue in Education: Troubling Speech, Disturbing Silence (by Megan Boler, 2004).

By Dr. Sarah Ropp

This is the seventh entry in our dialogic pedagogy summer reading series. For more on the series and a full list of texts, see here. 

Title: Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension (published 2018; $25; available to purchase HERE)

Author: Sara K. Ahmed 

Context of Creation: The author is a K-12 educator who has taught in urban, suburban, public, independent (private), and international schools in the U.S. and abroad. She is currently a literacy coach at NIST International School in Bangkok, Thailand and has served on the teacher leadership team for Facing History and Ourselves. She wrote this book in order to help educators “create learning conditions where kids can ask the questions they want to ask, muddle through how to say the things they are thinking, and have tough conversations” about identity, ethics, unconscious bias, injustice, and violence (xxii). She defines “social comprehension” as the ability both to comprehend social issues “and participate in relevant, transparent conversations” about them in order to “make meaning from and mediate our relationship with the world” (xxv). 

Context of Reception: As a teacher who has worked in K-12 public school settings, adult education, and in the college classroom, I firmly and passionately believe that many of the pedagogies we think of as “for children” are equally appropriate and beneficial for older learners — high school, college, and beyond. As an ESL teacher in the U.S. and abroad, I have taught groups of children as young as four years old, groups of adults into their seventies, and virtually every age group in between. In my experience, adult learners respond just as well to playfulness, affirmation, collaboration with classmates, and scaffolded, differentiated learning structures as elementary-aged children do (and need them just as much). I wanted to include at least one text in this summer reading series that was geared at K-12 educators rather than higher-ed faculty, and I chose this one on a whim after having stumbled on it by chance in the course of some other internet search. I read the first couple chapters as the small plane I was in was preparing to lift off from West Yellowstone, Montana — felt immediately buoyed and excited by it — and then had to put it down to watch as stunningly beautiful views opened up outside my little window. The fact that I was literally soaring above a spectacular landscape for much of the time I was reading this book (as well as heading home well-rested and on a high from days of more intimate interaction with that same landscape) no doubt contributed to the figurative sense of soaring I experienced while reading it — but only partly. I found every single activity Ahmed described applicable to a college classroom, and the pitfalls and tensions she addresses are the same ones I’ve experienced in the course of dialogue facilitation with undergraduates and faculty. I will be referring back to this book again and again. 

Overview of Structure and Content: Ahmed has structured the book in five chapters, each dedicated to a core foundational concept for social comprehension: Exploring Our Identities, Listening with Love, Being Candid, Becoming Better Informed, and Finding Humanity in Ourselves and Others. Each chapter contains two to three scaffolded lesson plans related to the concept. In every lesson, in addition to a step-by-step plan, Ahmed also includes the lesson’s rationale and any relevant definitions; ideal moments at which to implement such a lesson; a range of suggested texts; sample student work; and an “Addressing Tensions” section at the end with suggestions for anticipating and responding to common points of friction. 

Every chapter is framed by an introductory section in which Ahmed shares her experiences, both personally and in the classroom, with the topic, referring often to her own identity as a child of Muslim Indian immigrants in the U.S. Every chapter ends with a short section entitled “Synthesis: Making Thinking Visible” with final thoughts to tie the lessons together. 

Resources for Teachers: 3 In-Depth Activities  

For the second week in a row, I am going to depart from the 3-2-1 structure. Instead, I’d like to offer a linked, scaffolded series of three activities, two of which are adapted for a higher-ed classroom from Ahmed’s activities and one of which is fully my own. These activities can each be done separately from the others, but are powerful as a sequential series and applicable across disciplines and topics. 

• Lesson 1: Where We’re From (Identity Webs + “Where I’m From” poem) 

Ahmed defines identity webs as “personalized graphic tools that help us consider the many factors that shape who we are” (5). In her example, an identity web is a basic cloud diagram, where each person clusters different aspects of their identities around their name in the center of the page. Importantly, Ahmed does not differentiate between personal identities (e.g. “hard worker” or “creative” or “soccer player”) and social identities (e.g. ethnicity; class; disability; religion) for the purpose of this activity, which is to explore and affirm selfhood as well as build community in a group of learners. 

While we may often have students name and reflect on their identities in a college classroom, in my experience, we commonly focus exclusively on a prescribed list of major social identities, and exclusively through a privilege/oppression lens (for example, having students name their social identities and then reflect on the degree to which each major identity they possess confers privilege or disadvantage in social institutions and situations, as in this basic activity). This is absolutely a valuable exercise and conversation in which to engage students (preferably many times over and with increasing complexity and nuance). The “Fish Is Fish” activity, below, is in fact a version of such an exercise. 

However, I suggest that we run a few risks in focusing immediately and only on identity through the privilege/oppression lens. One is that we might inadvertently communicate to students that their various identities only matter or have meaning through this lens. Another is that we might unintentionally center Whiteness, maleness, able-bodiedness, and other privileged identities through this exercise, since a common assumption is that members of oppressed groups already know they are disadvantaged due to these identities, but it’s people who possess a lot of privilege who really “need” the exercise (and it’s their epiphany moments we are often striving for when we facilitate the activity). 

An identity web, combined with a “Where I’m From” write-alike poem that explores objects and details related to the writer’s identity, focuses first on the student’s own sense of who they are, both personally and socially. Ahmed presents identity webs and “Where I’m From” poems as two distinct lesson plans, but I think they can be combined into one for a college classroom, particularly since the poem can be done as homework. 

Where We’re From Lesson (50-60 minutes, or 20-30 minutes of in-class time + homework)

• Introduce the concept of an identity web and model its creation by sharing your own identity web (you can have this prepared or do it in real-time; either way, perform a think-aloud so students can access your process of reflection). Make sure that your web is not just a simplistic list of your social identities but also includes personal identities related to your qualities, passions, and values. Not everything you include needs to be something you feel unequivocally “positive” about — and in fact, Ahmed stresses that it is helpful for students if you address aspects that you feel some sense of tension, friction, ambivalence, or conflict with. Ahmed notes that you can also model the right to assert privacy by, for example, including an aspect of your identity but declining to comment on it (“I’m not prepared to share about this one yet”). I’d add that you can also censor out an identity on your web with a black bar and let students know you included it for your own purposes but don’t want it to be public. You can see a version of Ahmed’s own identity web here. (5 minutes)
• Have students make their own identity webs (5 minutes). Let them know that they can modify the format if they like (for example, a more visual web that includes sketches). 
• Have students share their webs. Turn to a partner and present, or do a gallery walk in which webs are posted on the wall or to a digital whiteboard (like Padlet) and students can roam around, physically or virtually, checking out each other’s webs. Make it clear that students should not be critiquing or commenting on the contents of one another’s webs — just taking them in, and thanking each other for sharing. (5-10 min)
• Discuss as a whole group the experience of making and sharing the webs: what students chose to include or not include, connections they discovered with others in the room, how it felt to share them, etc. You can also ask students when they last did something like this and why they think they are being asked to do this in a college classroom (5-10 min).
• “Where I’m From” activity. This asks students to first take in 2-3 examples of others’ Where I’m From poems (5 minutes) and then write their own (10-15 minutes, or as homework). As the instructor, you should write your own version, too! After they’ve written their poems, come back again to debrief the activity. Share your poem, or portions of it, and invite students to share as well. Something I like to do when I am facilitating writing workshops is to invite everyone to share out their favorite line or section from what they’ve written, without disclaimers or explanations about the context. This can be done orally, in a go-around, or folks can copy-paste into the Zoom chat. It can also be done anonymously via Mentimeter, which will generate a real-time visual map that can be saved as a PDF.
• “Circle of Objects” is an activity that is a close cousin to a Where I’m From poem that could either supplement or replace the poem, depending on the time you have, the topic of your course, and your own style. 

• Lesson 2: Perspectives (Fish Is Fish narrative reflection). 

This activity moves from exploring identity and background to considering the limitations of the perspectives afforded by our identities, experiences, and environments, using the children’s book Fish Is Fish (Leo Lionni, 1970) as a framework for reflection and dialogue. I find endless reason to draw from children’s literature in my courses, whatever the topic is and whatever the age group and demographics of my students. In my experience, people never outgrow the pleasure of being read to, and it brings me so much joy to open a picture book and see my students first smile indulgently, and then visibly relax into peaceful, rapt listening and genuine engagement. Beyond this atmospheric, community-building aspect, children’s stories are frequently richly philosophical and allegorical, and a wonderful springboard for dialogue for this reason. 

In this story, a frog returns to the pond where he lived as a tadpole to visit his old friend the minnow, now a full-grown fish. He regales the fish with fantastic tales of life on land, but the fish, in trying to picture creatures like birds and cows and humans, can only imagine a fish with wings, a fish with udders and horns, a fish on two legs, dressed in a suit and carrying an umbrella….

This activity asks students to reflect, write, and discuss moments of “mis-imagination” they have experienced. There are multiple read-alouds of the story on YouTube (here or here, for example), but it’s nice to read it aloud yourself to your students, if you can. Ahmed stresses the importance of modeling and “making thinking visible” throughout Being the Change; like bell hooks, she believes that we should not ask students to be vulnerable in ways we are not prepared to be. Therefore, please do share the limitations of your own perspective with students. 

The activity as created is pretty basic, but there is plenty of potential for layering in nuance — by linking the dialogue more explicitly to privilege and oppression, asking students to create an action plan for further interrogating and addressing their biases and gaps in knowledge and experience, and so on. Other extensions include the following: 

• Ahmed has her students center their identity webs on a larger piece of paper, so that there is a border framing it. Inside this border, she has students write how they are perceived by others based on their identities (e.g. “terrorist” as a Muslim; “tomboy/not girly enough” as an athletic woman). She then has students craft “I Am” statements to reject these misperceptions and assert pride in their identities. 
• This video resource from the Blanton Museum uses Tavares Strachan’s 2012 installation I Belong Here to have students reflect on their journey from their “home pond” to the “UT pond” and articulate why they belong here.

 

• Lesson 3: My News. 

This final resource is lifted whole-sale from Ahmed, and is designed to “push forward from student-centered to socially minded classrooms” (77) by providing students with a framework for understanding how their reactions to the topics that consume their concern are related to their identities, as well as taking action to address gaps in understanding. 

Ahmed starts by having students list their “news,” which is not narrowly defined to news media but includes “any topic, event, feelings, or pieces of information that they have on their mind[s] and will most likely carry with them all day” (79) — from an upcoming party or recent fight with a friend to a police shooting or natural disaster, or anything in between. Using the first two columns of this chart, students record their reaction to their news: thoughts, feelings, opinions, and questions. 

Sharing her own news of the day, Ahmed models thinking through how the topics on her mind and her strong reactions to them are linked to her identities and experiences. She also models how her strong reactions might affect her ability to be more thoughtful or empathetic at times and thinks aloud through the process of slowing down and considering what she does not know about this piece of news. 

Finally, students are asked to craft a plan for action that might include further inquiry and research and/or mobilization to contribute towards healing for themselves and others, mitigation of the problem, etc. It might simply be to think and process a while longer through journaling or to take care of themselves/seek care through their sorrow. Ahmed gives students time in-class to initiate their action plan and then calls them to report back, reflect on how/if their initial thinking has evolved, and re-assess to determine new/ongoing action (e.g. are they ready to move into inquiry or mobilization now? Have new questions come up that they now need to research? etc). 

While this is a lesson that can be done as part of this series on exploring identity and perspective, Ahmed notes that it can be brought in or revisited whenever “the world hands us a curriculum the night before” in the form of large-scale events shared widely on social media, as well as “when there is any measure of crisis at school, as a way to address the issue without artificially smoothing it over” (80). If you have wondered how to meaningfully address such events and crises beyond a helpless and awkward acknowledgment, perhaps this will help.

Another option is to borrow Dr. Gloria González-López’s collective freewriting technique. 

Next week . . .

We will be reading How to Talk About Hot Topics on Campus: From Polarization to Moral Conversation (Nash, LaSha Bradley, and Chickering, 2008).