Rhonda Fitzgerald of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network joined us for the Nashman Center's Conversations on Community Engaged Scholarship Series on Thursday, Oct 17.
Community Engaged Courses are particularly fertile ground for student observations, reflections, and opinions that may be in conflict with those of other students or the instructor. By design, our classrooms create opportunities for students to share and discuss their ideology, beliefs, and values. Learning to handle "tricky moments" well can create transformational learning experience for students, modeling for them how active citizens can contribute to civil discourse in a diverse democracy. Even faculty who have solid facilitation skills can stand to educate themselves and learn from each other.
- How do you de-escalate when students are in an icy conflict in or outside the classroom?
- When do you press “pause” or have a one-on-one conversation
- When is it important to share our own beliefs?
For this Conversation, participants were encouraged to come to the workshop with specific examples of tricky classroom moments. Dr. Fitzgerald created a safe and supportive space for participants to share classroom moments in which they wish they had done better. A few issues discussed:
- handling the tension between avoiding "ganging up" on a person while also not letting bad behavior go unchecked (this included student comments/behavior as well as problematic guest speaker comments)
- addressing a comment or behavior without shaming
- when there is an unspoken norm on a campus that people must be called out
- being guided by both anti-racism and trauma-informed teaching - acknowledging that these can sometimes be at odds
- teaching on "the day after" (we all have examples: holding classroom spaces when all of our thoughts are clearly elsewhere - after the elections, January 6th, George Floyd's murder...)
In addition to handling classroom moments, we also discussed the benefit of preparing classrooms with discussions about group norms that help everyone be authentic in academic spaces. Some examples included discussing "calling out" norms and other responses that acknowledge hurtful comments while minimizing shame, acknowledging that we are all learning and may be at different stages of development that may occasionally generate conflicting opinions.
All involved were in favor of continuing this discussion, particularly with elections on the horizon.
RESOURCE SHARED!
Following this Conversation, Fitzgerald encouraged all GW faculty to consult a new resource: The Campus Conflict and Conversation Help Desk.
AAC&U’s Institute for Democracy in Higher Education (IDHE) has teamed up with the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network team to host a free “help desk” to offer timely advice—troubleshooting—to campus educators and practitioners facing difficult, confounding, new, frightening, nasty, threatening, and other conflicts and challenging conversations. These can come up in the classroom, in administrative decision-making, in cocurricular programming, and even when engaging communities off campus. And with a contentious election providing context for the fall semester, we anticipate a need among educators.
