Learning Associated with Teaching a Difficult Topic
Barbara Harris Combs
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Southern Studies
University of Mississippi
Room 306, Leavell Hall
P.O. Box 1848
University, MS 38677-1848
While I only recently (May 2010) obtained my PhD, I have been teaching for a number of years, and I have had some experience teaching difficult topics. In addition to teaching at an HBCU, I taught Sociology at a conservative Christian college in north Georgia, and I currently teach race related class at a predominantly white institution with a legacy or race related issues. Over the course of that time, I have learned that some topics are per se “difficult” while others are what I term “situationally difficult”—perhaps based upon timing with other social issues going on in the world, the audience, or the location. Whatever the case, I have found that the best way for true learning to occur is to gently facilitate the students to a place where they can provide the all-important insights about the social world. Today, I want to share one of the tools I have successfully used to move students to a fuller understanding of a social issue.
Exercise Title: Why are People Poor
Goal/Objective: At the end of the unit, students will be able to describe and discuss various explanations for poverty including individual, cultural, and structural causes of economic disparity.
Activity: Reflection is at the heart of this exercise. At the beginning of the semester (if you forget, just ask students to do this before the lecture on social class or poverty), ask students to write a journal response to the following prompt” Why are people poor? You will give them the same prompt at the end of the unit.
I arranged to have each of my students work a 4-hour shift in housekeeping* at the university where I taught. They worked from 6 am to 10 am. They were required to wear the housekeeping uniform, do the same activities as the staff, and take a break with the staff. They were also required to prepare a budget (based on their housekeeping salary) and submit it along with documentation about the costs of their living expenses (i.e., quotes on car insurance, certifications from parents that they could live at home and under what circumstances, bus routes, apartment costs, etc.)
We set aside a class day for the students to dialogue about their experiences. All of this information became data points that the other students could then use and reflect upon for their assignment. This modeled the kind of informal networks that often emerge in communities.
Tools: Journal (or pen and paper), budget template, Internet access, willing university partners!
*Note: If you cannot arrange something like this, I have had my students work pulling weeds in a community garden. You could also pick up trash on the highway or participate in some other regulated activity. Be creative!
If time permits, I will share two other tools—a social location exercise I used at the University of Mississippi to help students understand the effects of food insecurity an a visual/cultural arts PowerPoint on the Great Migration I used to stimulate discussion on the effects of the Great Migration on American society, specifically issues of race relations.