This was my face prepping my hegemony lecture for my media arts class full of mostly white people. Not only that, most of them are upper middle class and have not responded to much of my instruction. I think back to how bell hooks argued for empowering marginalized groups through the use of critical communication, but what do you do when your classroom is full of privilege? Furthermore, how do you teach them about subjects such as hegemony that recognize the privilege in the room? I'm not saying I anticipated my class getting hostile, but I thought they might shut down.
SO, I took a different approach. I started thinking of something else hooks mentioned.
"In regards to pedagogical practices we must intervene to alter the existing pedagogical structure and to teach students how to listen, how to hear one another." I started gearing the lesson more towards recognizing one's own privilege and focusing on the listening part. I still planned to do the privilege walk, because I figured most of them would all be in the same spot. Granted, I have wonderful students in there, but I still pictured them shutting down because they couldn't relate to the material. Even if they remotely understand their positionalities, I would be happy.
Ultimately, I was nervous about planning the entire thing, but I value what we do as comm teachers because we're addressing things like hegemony. We have a chance to teaching a class full of white media arts majors about power structures that exist within our society, or at least to understand where they stand.
I was also nervous while prepping for language, culture, and power day. For the first time since the first day I felt unsure of my place in the classroom and concerned with how I was going to get mostly middle class students to understand privilege. I thought for sure the privilege walk would be a perfect fit for my class. The privilege walk did not yield the results or at least promote the thoughts I was hoping for. A phenotypically white female was positioned the furthest back and many of my students interpreted that as white privilege must be a myth is she can have less privilege than the minorities in the room. I spent the rest of class explaining is just one of the many forms of privilege and the effects of socioeconomic status of positionality. My second class went smooth. My students were open with asking questions and using personal experience to answer each other’s questions. One of the most important things I have learn is: no two classes are alike, there is just no way to know if your prep is going to go over well. All you can do is try your best.
ReplyDelete