Within the past two years my politics have become more radical, less compromising and less apologetic. This has been reflected in my curriculum and class room facilitation. I have learned new words to describe different parts of my ideology and I have met people who also subscribe to these aspects of my beliefs, which makes me more confident and more capable to enunciate my ideas properly to others. This does sound as if I am saying: 'I acquired new tools to push my agenda more effectively'. I guess to a certain extent this is right, considering that my agenda is total liberation. I just want everybody to be free and happy. Nothing wrong with that, right? I am not claiming though, that I have the one and only solution to emancipating everybody. In fact, this is what I hope my students will take out of my course: there is no
one way of making the world a better place.
Two weeks ago I started facilitating an International Relations module at a private school that prepares international students for a university education in the UK. This is the third time I am facilitating this course. Both, as an activist and as a learning facilitator, I try my best to empower people to make informed decisions, act autonomously and resist.
Laying the Groundwork
Introductions
The first thing we did was introduce ourselves to one another. I asked them to tell us their names, their
preferred pronouns and why they picked International Relations or what they want to study at university level. I made sure to write this on the board, so that they wouldn't forget what I am asking for:
Name, Preferred Pronoun, Why are you here?
I also made sure to clarify what a pronoun is and I introduced myself first, so as to lead by example. I did anticipate that typically some people would just skip the pronoun bit (this could be simply due to their cis-privileged inexperience of stating pronouns, or perhaps also due to previous experiences of discrimination against their personal choice of pronouns). What happened this time however, was that two people stated: 'I don't mind how you refer to me', 'Anything is fine'. I quietly smiled and continued to listen to their introductions, but inside I was angry with myself for not being able to deal with the situation properly, and failing to point out the injustice and what I assumed to be cis-privilege inherent in their statement. I had no idea how to even begin explaining what happened in that instance, especially considering that most, if not all of them, have never consciously considered any sort of privilege. I am really bad at spontaneous witty reactions, but later on, a friend of mine advised me to simply refer to them with a different pronoun to the one I would guess they actually preferred. I will definitely try this at the next best opportunity.
Safer Space Agreement
The school I work at is for international students and the module I am facilitating examines political, non-governmental, charity and grassroots work. This means that most of the students who pick my module voluntarily, have an interest in social justice of some sort. They are all very liberal, open minded, tolerant and respectful many times to the extent that they don't see race or gender! This has proven difficult with my previous classes, but this time I was going to make it clear from the start that our class room won't have space for post-race, post-gender nonsense.
Everything I say is aimed at making them talk, telling us their opinions, experiences and feelings. More often than not, it is a very intimate class environment (we are only 12 people, which makes it easier to facilitate a very personal dialogue). To create an environment where sharing, contributing, asking and questioning is possible we all need to agree on which modes of expression are OK and which ones aren't. Before drafting an agreement, I first wanted them to think about the different factors that might influence the way we perceive others and are perceived by others in the class room and outside. This was going to make it easier for them to come up with a set of guidelines for all of us.
To start thinking about difference I encouraged them to tell me what Identity means. What are the dimensions that make up our identities?
The board work for that looked something like this:
Identity
There was a lot of confusion about the distinctions between many of these identity dimensions, so it was up to me to clarify and talk about overlaps and intersections. Most of the items were named by the class, but when I felt that something essential was missing (like species) I tried to lead them towards it with questions.
The next task we undertook was 7 minutes silent work with a sheet of paper in front of us divided into three parts:
Myself My Classmates Class Facilitator
What am I prepared to bring to the class?
What do I expect of my classmates?
What do I expect of the facilitator?
After 7 minutes we fed back to the class, whilst I wrote their comments on the board. The most basic tasks came first, e.g. coming on time, being prepared for the class, explaining vocabulary. Every time a suggestion was made, I asked why it is important. I want it to be pronounced that being late is disruptive to my lecture and that it distracts other students. Being prepared for class is essential for smaller group work where if one person hasn't read the text it can not only impair that persons quality of dialogue but of course, also diminished the group's experience. I always make sure to actively listen when someone contributes, by which I mean that I keep an open body language with eye contact and when they finish their thought, I make sure to repeat their statement in my words and ask if I understood correctly. I make sure to value all contributions, even if they are placed inappropriately, perhaps better fitted to a different topic, which I make sure to point out. This is also something I tried to convey to the students.
A big key word they kept throwing at me was RESPECT.
I had to ask many times what respect actually means before we came up with a deeper understanding of how to interact respectfully with one another. Here are some of the things we noted on the board:
We will only speak for ourselves and not for anybody else.
We will not make assumptions about anybody else's identity dimensions (for example, introducing ourselves with our preferred pronouns and asking for people's pronouns instead of assuming).
If we are uncertain about somebody's view point we will ask them about it.
We will not use any derogatory language that could offend anybody based on their identity.
We will become aware of how much space we take up with our voices and bodies.
If we are being made aware of being insensitive, we will learn how to apologise.
If we see that we are taking up a lot of space, we will take a step back and try to give a platform to others, who might have not had the possibility to voice their opinions.
We will learn to give trigger warnings.
One thing in particular needed a lot of work during the draft of this agreement. Two of the more confident masculine students, brought up that we should 'not get too emotional' when discussing controversial topics. The phrase 'suppressing emotions' was also dropped as a favourable method for class conversations. I am glad they did bring this up because it gave me a chance to dismantle this myth, or misconception surrounding emotions and rationality.
So I gave them space to express their thoughts, however I said that I found that very problematic. I agreed that it will inhibit our dialogue in class if we all get really angry and start screaming at each other. I also said that of course, it is not beneficial to anybody if I came in crying my eyes out, hardly able to speak, as nobody would understand anything I would say. So in that respect, I said, we need to come to an agreement what to do about those emotions. I made it clear, that there is nothing wrong with being angry, being upset or very happy. All emotions are legitimate and valid and instead of suppressing them, we must express them (I did get a few nods from some of the girls for that). So this is what we added about emotions to our safer space agreement.
We will learn to express our emotions by speaking about how things make us feel, without pointing a finger and placing blame.
We won't discredit others' opinion for being emotional, and we will learn to accept emotional expressions as valid forms of expression.
Understanding Privilege
Understanding privilege is the most important thing we can teach anybody and it is relevant to any and all classes, even -or perhaps, especially- in the sciences. In my class, where I have the most privileged bunch of young people sitting in front of me, who all want to go into positions of leadership and political power, it is very important to me that they critically engage with the opportunities they are given in life, as well as with the opportunities they are denied.
Before going into much depth on the concept of privilege we did a little exercise (including a short definition of privilege and a trigger warning). I read out (and explained) one statement after another. Every time one statement applied a person, that person would stand up. I made it clear that this is not a test, that there are no right or wrong answers, that nobody should judge anybody else for standing up or not standing up and that you should only stand up or stay seated if you feel safe to do so. (below is the visualisation of the statements).
After the exercise we discussed how some of the questions made us feel, whether anything made us upset or happy or whether anything was surprising. It was productive and also served as a really good ice breaker! Last year I introduced the concept of privilege by showing my class a privilege circle that depicted categories of identity that indicate privilege at the top half of the circle and their direct opposites that depict oppression on the bottom half.
Unfortunately, beginning by explaining privilege through this dualistic and very simplified chart had the opposite effect of what I wanted to achieve. The three white male students in my class immediately got their defences up and were almost unreachable for me. On top of that everybody else aided them by confirming that they are very lovely people and could never oppress anybody! Last year it took me much longer to familiarise them with the concept. This year I feel they have already taken out much more, with regards to privilege, in three weeks of class than throughout the whole term last year. From my mistakes last year I realised that I need to create a community in which all of us first understand that identity is not a dichotomous concept but actually carries a lot of facets within it and then acknowledge that we are all in some ways oppressed and in others privileged, often involuntarily. This year, I only handed out this privilege circle (with the addition of speciesism, humans - animals, plants) after this first workshop. This way it makes it much easier for me to refer back to privilege and oppression in the sessions that follow.
I would love to hear from other educators, what their classrooms look like and how they create safer spaces! I still have a long way to come, in fact I believe as knowledge facilitators we must never stop learning and experimenting together with our students.
