Dear All:

Quite a few weeks ago I posted a message requesting
your ideas about teaching tolerance and diversity in
adult education.  I got plenty of responses and each
one of them allowed me to put together a
"disseminating" practice at the institution where I
work.  I would like to use the thread that came up a
couple of weeks ago, "creativity vs institutional
settings" in the context of my experience leading the
workshop on diversity.

I work at the New York City College of Technology.  I
am an instructor in the Adult Learning Center.  I part
time in the ESL and ESL/Civics programs.   I am also a
student in the Linguistics Department at the Graduate
Center from the City University of New York.  I have
been working in Adult Education for 15 years.  I
worked for the Board of Education in the Bilingual
Program in Early Childhood for 3 years.  I had the
opportunity to work in Family Literacy for a brief
period of time.  For a year I coordinated the ESL
services at an institution that serves youngsters and
adults in parole.

I wrote my MA thesis on Education Reform.  I graduated
in Political Science at the City University last year.
 It has been a pleasure to go back to work in Adult
Education after a year and a half devoted to the
completion of my thesis.  In my experience the
greatest challenge as an instructor has always been
connecting research, good practice and professional
wisdom in the classroom.  

I am thankful to have the opportunity to serve the
community and to work with an interesting group of
talented people.   I value them all.  I would like to
share with you my own learning experience and views. 
They do not reflect in any way the opinions of my
colleagues or students.  

Allow my to make a brief tour de force before sharing
the results of my disseminating practice.   Kearney
Lykins shared with us his experience with self
learning, and developing his own creativity as opposed
to following "steering committees" and institutional
approaches.   David Rosen, on the other hand, wonders
if in these times of meager funding and increased
"accountability" teachers have time for creativity.

While it is true, Kearney, that programs have to make
the extra effort to include instructors in decision
making to get the best out of their staff, and that
accountability demands can potentially harm a program,
the Kentucky and Oakland experiences shared
by Joyce Bullock and Bonnita Solberg are, in my
opinion, excellent examples of creativity and
accountability working as mutually enhancing
categories.  At risk of making a mistake, I would
advance the idea that a lot of us would not have found
this resourceful information so easily without this
discussion list.  This leads me to own experience.

ON LINE DEVELOPMENT, CREATIVITY, INSTITUTIONAL
SETTINGS AND PD DISSEMINATING PRACTICES:

When I posted my message asking for resources
concerning diversity, I had answers that came from
different venues and information that was invaluable
for me in order to approach the topic.   While I
believe very much in face to face mentoring, I
realized that the comments from the members of this
discussion list were crucial.  After a modest
presentation of the topic, I confirmed, for example,
that Federico Salas-Isnardi's insight was right on
target when he stated to me that what causes stress in
talking about prejudice is the unability to defeat it.
 But, truly, there is a lot more to it.

I started the sharing practice defining myself and
inviting others to do the same.   There were 2 senior
staff developers, 7 instructors, and the ESL/Civics
Program Coordinator.   What really triggered the
discussion were our self definitions.  I, personally,
emphasized ethnicity and disability in the way I
identified myself.   Some participants felt that
regardless of divisive categories they were people "of
the world" and by my own logical reasoning so were
their students.   I mentioned affirmative action to
elicit other responses.  One reply was "I don't know
what that is".  Another colleague responded that he
defined himself by the way his car insurance described
him...I must say, in all fairness, I found his self
definition very telling.   He was saying in an
indirect and clever way that identities are also
imposed from above.   Other female colleagues
identified themselves as blue eyed blond women and
seemed to recognize in their ethnicity and class a
privilege that not everyone has.
Someone else struggled with the idea that while we
want to define ourselves, the words used to define
from outside are always resonating in our minds.   The
Change Agent Issue that Judy Titzel recommended has a
beautiful poem that expresses the clash between our
rational need to assert ourselves and the fear of
confronting the misconceptions and irrationality of
hatred and words that demean us.   I read the poem to
my colleagues.

I proceeded to give out hand outs with pictures of
famous people and unknown individuals randomly pasted
on the paper.   I also gave out stripes with possible
identities of those people.   The exercise is really
for students but colleagues did it and provided ideas
on how to improve it.   The rationale is that students
will tend to reproduce established hierarchies when
matching picture and definitions.  They do, indeed. 
In the case of colleagues they could not identify bell
hooks, Amiri Baraka, Rigoberta Menchu or an important
member of the Klu Klux Klan.   The pictures included
Stephen Hawking who represents the power of will and
the talent behind an appearance and evident
disability.   I found this exercise in the ERIC
Clearinghouse.

Some colleagues stated that the sharing practice was
provocative.   Staff developers presented two
different ideas.  One of them suggested students could
write a little story  of the person in the picture
after matching it (most of the times erroneously) with
the stripes provided to them.   I thought the idea was
really good because their creativity and politics
could surface more evidently and productively from the
point of view of writing skills.

The other staff developer came up with a really
interesting idea.   She stated that she taught her
students the language of agreeing and disagreeing. 
She used the context of gender relationships.   She
asked students if it was more difficult to be a woman
than to be a man.   I asked her if she dealt with
issues concerned with domestic violence.   She did
not.   She was, as I understand, teaching students to
politely agree and disagree.   I understand she was
also trying to create empathy between men and women.  
I do not know if she delves into power and gender
relations at the domestic level, in the world of
politics and business, or in academic settings.

WHAT IS THE FEELING WE HAVE WHEN WE TAKE RISKY STEPS
IN THE NAME OF PRINCIPLES AND CREATIVITY, USING THE
HELP OF ON LINE PD:

If I confirm what Federico Salas-Isnardi stated, then
I might end up with the next scenarios:

a) Participants leave shrugging their shoulders.
b) Participants do feel true empathy (which probably
was there from the beginning).
c) Participants leave with the awareness that you can
be politely tolerant and use politically correct
language to avoid conflict.
d) Participants leave thinking that what is not
achieved through political correctness is bound to be
achieved through some kind of conflict resolution 
strategy with an emphasis on ethics. (my own opinion)

But, whatever scenarios emerge after a sharing
practice, an important lesson is that there is no
better learning experience than teaching itself, or
sharing good practices with your colleagues. 

HOW DOES ON LINE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ENHANCE
CREATIVITY?

I used this discussion list to learn about resources
and to take a small step in sharing a question, a
feeling, if this counts as a professional word.   I
got ideas and support from my colleagues on line.  I
also got the support of my program coordinator. 

Now that I went back to school I confirm that
creativity and good practice go hand to hand with
quality research.   Staff developers might not give us
the resources we need at the time that we require them
because of their own time constraints and heavy work
loads.   We may not be able to do specific research on
our own because at times we are overwhelmed by other
demands.
On line professional development becomes a crucial
resource because we can get help from colleagues that
specialize in different areas, say from funding to
phonetics and phonology.

Inclusive practices such as Kentucky's and Oakland's
experiences; personal commitment; and on line PD help
us grow.  Also discussion lists challenge us to
revisit ideas, and, therefore, to develop professional
wisdom as we exchange information with those who have
a lot more experience than some of us do in different
aspects of the complicated matrix that we define as
education.

Sincerely,
Nadia Quiroz-Colby