Race and Identity with Martin Morrison:
'We live in a race dominated culture'
'Race is a way to marginalized groups'
'Teachers hate talking about race'
Being a racialist individual- it is difficult to share lived experiences with ppl not from the same racial background because their lived experience will be different because of their race.
Community- racialist geography, who we are and where we are located
Family- a safe place where ppl will understand your lived experience
Group activity- the stranger - a great activity where we got the explore the assumptions we make about people upon first meeting them. We tend to make our assumptions about people purely based on appearance. It was a fun activity that really pointed out to me that we deduce a lot about a person from what we see. We also saw how a group dynamic can produce a hierarchy of power allowing members of the groups to easily judge other members.
The neutral identity: colour blindness, race based identities
Michael kimmel video- gender is political
Privilege is invisible to those who have it. I have not really thought about this before, but it is very true. My question is, how do we remove ourselves from this white privilege? Is it possible? Not matter how I feel about equality I don't think that I will ever be able to divide myself from my race and the privilege associated with it.
How I identify activity: It is difficult to reflect on yourself and try and self identify. All of my interested tend to be the first things that come to mind, not my race or culture. I think more about who I am rather than what I am. I think there is a big difference between the two. We develop who we are and have some choice in who we want to be. Perhaps it is easy for me to think this way because my race privilege.
This afternoons presentation was meant for teachers that are not guidance counsellors. We talked about vulnerability and how space becomes an important part of the conversation with have with the people around us. The theme of the talk started as 'Close Encounters' and quickly moved into a talk about the Acadia guidance program. We did return to the original theme and got back on track.
'We need to work on the personal as well as the practice in order to be successful in the professional.'
I think this is very true as we can't expect people the be successful professionally if they do not have their personal life in order. I think this might even be more true for teachers because it is important that we do not bring the issues of our personal lives into the classroom where students may be effected.
We also discussed the relationship between teachers and students and the three characteristics that are necessary to exist: availability, truthfulness, trust. This brought about some personal anecdotes that allowed us to discuss our lived experiences.
This session reconfirmed for me that I do not have an interest in counselling students. I think that I would often feel conflicted as to what information I could and could not share. I prefer the role of classroom teacher where I can have availability, truthfulness, and trust with my students and if they are in need of counselling could make the recommendation to guidance and assist them in getting the appropriate help.
I also felt similarly during the "How I identify" activity Ainslie. I too think more about who I am instead of how I visibly look to others. This is something I take pride in because it is more of a choice for me and perhaps it is easier to do this coming from a more advantaged background. I will say that I also identify as being female which is still the gender of disadvantage in the world. Did this come to mind for you during the activity?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I agree with your comments on guidance. I too am more comfortable with the responsibilities of a classroom teacher. Maybe we will change our minds later in our career, however, I am definitely not there yet. Thanks for posting!