Dolson’s reflections on classroom community

There are different ways to think about the question of “what can I bring to the class?” The identity article helped us see the importance of unique viewpoints to creating a rich learning opportunity.  Many students are thinking about the dual roles of listening and speaking, and their comfort with either or both.  A few, like Maria, wrote about how their experience and background might give them a different perspective on our readings.

I feel that part of my role is to construct a safe community for people to take risks and make mistakes and form relationships.  We have less than 3 hours a week together.  How can I help make them count? One specific question to consider is: how do we decide who talks and when?

Let’s face it: having 17 people in a conversation is awkward!  For many (not all of us) the protocol for talking is putting your hand in the air until the teacher calls on you.  The advantage to that is that one person talks at a time.  The disadvantage is that the instructor has all the power.  Well–that can be a good thing because I do have a background in group facilitation so I can steer the discussion.  But is that best?  What is the effect of giving me all that power over our precious face-time?

I think we could try some different strategies, like think-pair-share, small-group-reporting-out, and even, as the Native people did, use a talking stick which one speaker passes to the next.  Let’s experiment and see what works for our group.