Diversity in Global Studies

[Arlo Hettle]

Like others in the blog, my Global Studies classroom at a glance is fairly non-diverse, so the few incidents around issues of diversity have been especially striking. One of these I already described in detail in a previous blog post. The students were coming up with policy recommendations for the UN around how countries should handle migrants. Mrs. McDonald emphasized that they were working from the fundamental premise that all human beings deserve fundamental rights, like safety and shelter, and that their recommendations were to build on those. However, two White boys in one of the groups ignored her directions and were arguing for and making comments about how countries shouldn’t have to take in immigrants or refugees and how those people should fend for themselves. This rightfully upset a Latinx student who was a fairly recent immigrant in the group who excused herself to go to the bathroom. Mrs. McDonald noticed she was gone and went to check on her and learned what was going on. In conversations with me, Mrs. McDonald has emphasized her goal to push back on the dominant culture. She wants her class to expose students to a global perspective and build students’ understanding of their fellow humans. She talked about how before 2016 she would have immigrant students tell their stories if they felt comfortable and how she found it was a great community building exercise, but after 2016 she doesn’t feel comfortable asking her students to do that and she knows her students would be much more scared to share their stories. I think this anecdote shows how trying to construct a classroom that pushes back on the dominant culture is difficult, especially if it is not a schoolwide effort. Those boys felt comfortable making those comments because they knew they had power and they knew there would be no lasting consequences. They had to have a conversation with Mrs. McDonald where they were likely chastised for not following the assignment and then move on. Meanwhile, the Latinx student now knows there are students in the class who don’t respect her background. Even though Mrs. McDonald has affirmed that she is on her side, it is still not a comfortable learning environment.

 

Another incident that I think Mrs. McDonald handled less effectively came up last week when the students were beginning to learn about Israel/Palestine. She was giving the class background information and asking them to jump in where they knew more. When she was showing some of the cultural sites in Jerusalem, a Jewish student volunteered that she had been there and described the process of moving through the partitioned city. However, later on Mrs. McDonald warm-called only that same Jewish student when talking about the different perspectives that Isralis and Palestinians have about who owns that land. I think I was particularly sensitive to this incident because I had a very similar experience to this student, growing up as often the only Jewish student in class at my small-town Midwestern high school. I know teachers almost always have good intentions in doing this kind of thing, feeling like they can tap on the unique knowledge or lived experience of their students, particularly when their classrooms are so homogenous otherwise. However, it is always a super awkward experience to have to speak on something like that, especially since it always seems to be around something like Israel or the Holocaust that is far removed from the lived experiences of a teenage American-Jewish student. It speaks to the way that the dominant culture is upheld and non-Christian religious identities are othered. A student of German descent (of which probably half the kids in Midwestern high school classes are) would never be asked if they had relatives on the German side of WWII, for instance, but I was always asked that question in history classes. Mrs. McDonald should be more conscious of that when lecturing, by allowing and encouraging students to volunteer information when their backgrounds could add powerful insight or context, but never forcing them to share or making them speak on behalf of everyone in their identity.

 

This week I also learned some interesting insights about teacher evaluation in Northfield. At one point on Tuesday, the students were working independently and the principal and superintendent walked in. They stood there for a few minutes, walked around the classroom looking over students’ shoulders and asking them a few questions and then left. Mrs. McDonald came up to me after and joked that she was glad they caught her at a productive moment. She told me about how she was on the committee to redo teacher evaluation about 4 or 5 years ago. Previously, Northfield schools had done the model where the teacher knew ahead of time that they would be evaluated and the principal would come in and sit in for the entire lesson. Now they’ve switched to this drop-in model. All teachers will get at least a few visits a semester, with new teachers and probationary teachers getting significantly more than veteran teachers. Mrs. McDonald says she strongly prefers this way of doing things, because even as a well-established teacher, she would still find herself dedicating huge amounts of time to preparing for the days when the principal was going to be coming in. She said that she would reflect back after and not recognize herself because she was so focused on being prepared. In this new system the principal might catch them at a good time or a bad time, but at least it is honest. I found this interesting because I would have imagined that most teachers would prefer the option of evaluation where they can be more prepared. My school growing up definitely did the preparation model. I wonder if lots of other schools are making this switch and most teachers feel about it.

[Chris O’Mara]

Arlo, I really appreciated reading about the two different times Mrs. McDonald was faced with issues around diversity and student opinions in a Global Studies class and seeing how she handled the different situations. It’s such a challenge because those two white students need to be educated on why their views in that situation are not inclusive of the latine student, but then should that education come at the expense of the latine student? It seems like the obvious answer is no, but then the question arises of how to get at these topics in a class composed of students with a variety of backgrounds. The second situation also gets at this, as it seems to be such a fine line between giving students the opportunity to share their own experience if they want versus demanding that they share their experiences and effectively tokenizing them. I’m not sure what the answer is to this predicament, but it seems like what is key regardless is teachers establishing a good relationship with the students, perhaps to the extent to that the teacher can ask the student ahead of time if they would like to have their voice centered in the class around the given subject. But even that could be harmful! A very challenging situation for sure.

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