Dear all:

We just received the message from Jackie Taylor in
terms of sustaining success and not letting PD
initiatives go down the drain or keeping them in the
direction we intended them to follow.  Jackie asked
many questions but this is only one of them.  
I know that this is an obvious statememtn and at the
same time a tremendous challenge.  Keeping the gain to
me means a lot of work.  I think that as adult
educators research, good practice, class prep, and
initiative to do different things, all combined imply
a good part of our lives invested in what we believe
in.  Trying to keep the gain, trying to move forward
as an adult educator and knowing that sharing with
peers is crucial in the process of being successful in
our practice, I am asking for your help.  I have two
questions:
a) How would you prepare a hands on workshop on
diversity where you can touch upon issues that have to
do with ethnicity, class, gender, cognitive abilities,
sexual orientation, without offending anybody.  I do
have an activity for the students that I got from the
ERIC Clearinghouse.
Being a woman born and educated in Mexico, I have come
across quite a few times with issues that I 
would classify as "prejudice".  But, I have my own
prejudices as well.  
How can you approach colleagues and speak about
tolerance, respect, acceptance in the most careful way
so that the message gets through.  Do you have ideas
about activities that could open this very difficult
subject and that have been successful with colleagues?
I am sure that I would have to define diversity first,
then prejudice and steretype, and finally present a
rationale that validates why I think tolerance if not
acceptance is the only way through.  In fact, I am
wondering if the pedagogy of liberation and the
Theology of liberation (with all due respect to
different faiths) bring up the issue of universal
love?  But, can this happen when the powerful subject
big groups of human beings to unfair practices?  I
mean bottom line I am talking about weaving a respect
for human dignity in the curriculum.  I am talking
about critical respect.  Let me open my heart and my
sense of politics so that I make more sense.  I would
not teach my students to respect initiatives and
people who support them, such as the brick wall
between Mexico and the States.  My concept of
universal love has a twist.  My sense of politics is
absolutely secular and I am thinking that universal
love is "not doing to others what you would not want
them to do to you".   As a practicioner do I have the
right to include this type of approach in a way that
could even be considered by thinkers like Bordieu "the
hidden curriculum"?  By the way, I believe strongly in
this concept.  Once a teacher told me "don't forget
that civilization in this continent came from
Europe"... I thought of her students, most of them non
European descendents, some with a strong indigenous
background.  I thought what kind of practices however
good students learn do and does would prevent her from
stating with her whole attitude (maybe condescending
love...maybe "I am helping this poor people...) her
dismissal of the richness of her student cultures. 
Those are the practices that however subtle have an
impact and that I understand as the "hidden
curriculum".  Can I twist it and teach in the most
sublte way other values?  Do I have the right to teach
tolerance, acceptance and critical skills to my
students?
Thank you in advance for your input.
I am a teacher from New York.  I work at the City
College of Technology.

Sincerely,
Nadia Quiroz-Colby