Tips from the AEJMC Teaching Committee
Strategies for Leading Discussions of Race and Diversity in the Classroom
By Karen M. Turner
AEJMC Standing Committee on Teaching
Associate Professor
Department of Journalism
Temple University
(Article courtesy of AEJMC News, November 2017 issue)
My original idea for this month’s column was to focus on recapping and providing advice from a robust teaching panel discussion I participated in at the 2017 Chicago AEJMC Conference entitled, “Your Candidate Is a Loser – Strategies for Leading Discussions of Race and Diversity in the Classroom.” And then Hurricane Maria slammed into the Caribbean and I got another idea.
Since both are important, this column will address two issues.
Strategies for Leading Discussions of Race and Diversity in the Classroom
The idea for the AEJMC panel came from Iona’s Mitchell Bard. He said the spark was watching the now president make racist comments during the presidential campaign and emboldening people with similar views to speak so openly. He questioned what he would do if a student said something offensive or insensitive in his class. As teaching chair of the Political Communication Interest Group, Bard said he approached the Minorities and Communication Division’s Melody Fischer about co-sponsoring and the panel collaboration was born.
All four panelists provided tips from their well-worn teaching toolboxes and strategized with audience participants about specific classroom challenges. I shared many of the teaching strategies I wrote about in my March 2017 column:
http://www.aejmc.org/home/2017/02/conversation-about-race/
What made the panel so valuable was the diversity of the panelists and their institutional environments.
Here are some words of wisdom from panelist Katy Culver, Wisconsin-Madison ():
• Pay attention to your course materials. I realized my readings in a technology class tilted almost entirely male. One of my lectures on visual communication included only one example featuring a person of color and that was in a negative context. Things like the names you include in assignments or quizzes matter. Diversify across the board.
• Recognize that group projects can be a problem. Students’ implicit — or explicit — biases can make these projects thorny, yet problems are often invisible to you. I set up surveys at different mile markers in a project and ask students about the dynamics in the group. I don’t make it explicitly about race, gender, class or other variables that can raise bias concerns. Instead, I ask things like, “Is there anything I can do to help you be successful within your group?”
One time, an adult returning student used this opportunity to tell me she felt shunned by her group members because she worked two jobs to put herself through school, which made meeting times tough to coordinate. I was able to both advise her on how to respond directly and alter my schedule, so class time could be used for meeting.
• Talk about bias early and openly. I have students take a survey at the start of the semester about the kinds of qualities they think they have and the kinds they value in other people. I talk about how we may think we value others regardless of our differences, but what we think and how we act can be at odds.
I have them do a reading on unconscious bias, and we talk about it in class. I haven’t had much luck with readings that are academic in nature. Instead, I use more popular ones, like this Fast Company article: https://www.fastcompany.com/3044738/7-simple-methods-to-fight-against-your-unconscious-biases.
I also use current examples, saying things like, “I watched CBS News this morning and got ticked off because they went 21 minutes before I saw a female source used in a story. Do you guys ever notice that? Why do you think that happens?”
The Importance of Leading Discussions about News Coverage
I always teach a media literacy module focusing on what stories are missing from the news; or perhaps were covered in depth just weeks ago and have disappeared from the headlines; or those stories covered but perhaps not completely.
A day or so following Hurricane Maria’s destruction in the Caribbean, I was scheduled to begin this literacy module. We talked about the top stories in the news including the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and the devastating conditions reported on the ground in Puerto Rico.
I pressed them to tell me about the condition of the other islands that were in Maria’s path. Then I asked them to check their various mainstream media sources for hurricane reports. What we found were numerous stories about the worsening situation in Puerto Rico. At this point I shared with my class a friend’s personal story to illustrate the reality of stories not covered.
The weekend following the storm, a colleague was desperately trying to get her daughter and fiancé off the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. That group of islands had suffered devastating damage, too, resulting in no electricity, lack of water and limited access to medical care – just to name a few of their challenges. However, the story of the U.S. Virgin Islands was missing from U.S. mainstream media reports.
When I personalized a situation where reporting was lacking, the students seemed to grasp how the gatekeeping function of journalism can fall short. I admitted that my personal connection to the Virgin Islands made me more aware of the reportorial shortcomings. We then identified other stories that had disappeared from the headlines such as the latest about ISIS, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
What’s encouraging is we then looked at several reputable social media sources where we found stories that were outside the reporting of mainstream outlets. With so much media attention to low-hanging fruit and shiny objects, it’s always good to remind ourselves and this generation of news consumers to be aware of those important issues that are under-covered or not covered at all.
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