Total time: ~12 minutes
Object: A solo writing activity which walks participants through any sort of internal/reflexive question. The iterative nature promotes deeper, narrowed introspection with each round. After completion, participants have new materials and thoughts to share with the group. You can facilitate this in your workshops and classrooms, or use it for your own journaling/reflection processes. This writing exercise is borrowed from a radical social justice advocate before me. Thank you.
Next:
This concludes the activity! This is a great jumping off point for discussion, and people generally want to discuss the process and/or their findings afterwards.
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Beautiful workshop this morning. Many thanks to the UNC Feminist Geographers for hosting this fantastic conference! This workshop came together to discuss the hard conversations: how do you tell a fellow feminist that their behavior is out of line with the ideals they promote? How do you deal with racist or sexist comments that come up in important fieldwork relationships? How do you stand up for yourself as a grad student, especially as a woman or woman of color? Here's our final board. To give you an idea, here's the order of events, and an idea of what we workshopped together:
From Steps 2 and 3: Concerns include:
Here's the NVC we discussed. When you _____(action without interpretation)_____. I feel __________________________________ And as a result I _______________ OR I would like _______________________. When you: respond to me in discussion with "No, but" I feel: unheard and unappreciated as a fellow graduate student As a result: I am not likely to engage you in conversation. **Key notes
But how do I know when to engage?An excellent question raised at the end of our session. My simple response? Just ask.
There's something powerful and respectful about allowing the other person to consent to receiving feedback.
This is also good so people can say, "Yes, absolutely, but I'm on the verge of hangry. How about we get coffee tomorrow?" It would be sad if all of your NVC effort and planning was rendered ineffective because that person skipped breakfast. This good effort does not guarantee the outcome you're hoping for. Honestly, the first time someone ( a co-president of my student organization) said, "No, I really don't have mental space for that," I was taken aback. But from there, I was able to reevaluate my options, and decided to let that go--she had made it clear that our relationship was not one that was going to operate on that level of honesty. However, using this level of honesty and openness allows me to move forward in faith that I am living the feminist life I want to live, and that I am showing up in the relationships most important to me. |
AuthorWoman of color, surviving the academy, writing myself down Archives
March 2018
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