PD List Colleagues:

Last week, Nadia Quiroz-Colby of NY subscribed to our list and posted a
request for help re: diversity training. Nadia is new to our PD
community (welcome, Nadia!), and she has asked us several key questions
because she is preparing a proposal for providing a diversity PD
workshop. 

 

Whether you are a teacher or PD facilitator, what interactive approaches
to diversity training have you found to be well-received by teachers?
Any facilitator guides, workshop agendas, or other materials you could
share? What approaches have _not_ worked? Please, take a few minutes
this week and offer advice, resources, and critical discussion of this
important issue.

 

Key questions include:

 

Discussing sensitive issues in PD:

1.      "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."

 

Diversity issues - Activities to open difficult topics

2.   "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?"

 

Right to teach tolerance

3.   Nadia also discusses a concept called "the hidden curriculum" where
hidden agendas send a second message to students and teachers.  She
cites an example of a teacher who once noted, "don't forget that
civilization in this continent came from Europe" to a classroom of
students who were mostly of non-European descent.  

 

She asks, "Do I have the _right_ to teach tolerance, acceptance and
critical skills to my students?" (emphasis mine)

 

Thanks in advance for your help, Jackie Taylor, List Moderator, Adult
Literacy Professional Development, jataylor at utk.edu 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-----Original Message-----
From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Nadia and
Kevin Colby
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 1:30 PM
To: ProfessionalDevelopment at nifl.gov
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 775] Sustaining success

 

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 statement 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.

 

b)   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 stereotype, 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 practitioner 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 subtle 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

----------------------------------------------------

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