Module 6

I watched the podcast Teaching Race: Engaged Scholarship Beyond the Classroom. I really enjoyed the speaker. She was easy to listen to and follow. She discussed confronting race and teaching race in the classroom. Race creates specific challenges in the classroom. Students get hurt feelings in class when discussing race. Cognitive and emotional feelings come out when deciding between color blind policies vs race conscious policies. Talking leads to a spiral in conversation so she gets the students out of the classroom. She took students on a service learning weekend trip to expose the students to what they discussed in the classroom. Talking sessions after a 8 hour work day opened the students up to deep discussions. The racial identity became less a factor when students were immersed in the scope of the work. They became advocates after all of the work.

Another of my favorite techniques for teaching was bringing back past alumni that have been successful and incorporating them into the curriculum.

It seems that there are so many ways to teach and creative ways outside the classroom. I wonder if the other universities are as open to outside teaching techniques as her university?