Question: What efforts can educators make to foster student collaboration and teamwork that encourages students of different groups to work together and promotes positive relationships?
Quotation: “By implicitly pitting one group against another, such policies may cause each group to brew stereotypes about the other that are more pejorative than the ones they would develop in personal encounters” (Pinker, 2002, p. 206).
Connection: The previous quotation motivated me to reflect on the current practices at universities and schools that we encourage students to engage in with the hope that it will foster positive relationships for our students. This statement presents the idea that we may in fact hinder positive relationships for students of differing groups (with the best intentions of course). It therefore presented the question of how do we, as potential future educators, promote positive relationships for students of different ethnic, economic, religious, ability, etc. backgrounds. By highlighting differences between groups, do we create prejudices or divides between students that may not have existed in the first place? Instead, should we concentrate our efforts on demonstrating similarities between different groups, while acknowledging the different values, abilities, lifestyles, etc.? These are important questions that I have experienced firsthand in working with the schools, especially in the area of promoting relationships between students with and without disabilities. In various social skills groups that I lead in the schools, we incorporate typical peers within the group so as to provide a model of appropriate behaviors, as well as to establish positive relationships between those students. This method not only provides students with disabilities a constructive peer relationship, but also allows typical peers the opportunity to find similarities between themselves and students with disabilities. Through these groups we discuss various important social skills and values, while allowing students to share their ideas and work in a collaborative environment with someone who is different from them. In my opinion, the opportunity to work and have open dialogue with someone who is different from you is one of the most valuable things we can do to help promote positive relationships and open mindedness of our students.
Outside Connection: A second connection I made from the reading this week directly related to the question posed above. Trepagnier’s (2006) Silent Racism discusses the idea of passive racism that exists in us without our knowledge. Trepagnier examines the idea of the detriment of suppressing any and all racist thoughts, as it does us more harm than good as cultural beings. Instead, Trepagnier argues that continued exploration of any unspoken or unconscious prejudices is necessary to better understand ourselves and provide insight into how we may work to ameliorate any incorrect thoughts. This idea has significant implications for the work that we may do as educators to promote positive relationships between students of different groups. As opposed to telling students that it is important to not be racist, we should instead encourage students to discuss and value their own cultures, be aware of other cultures, values, and abilities, to acknowledge any hidden prejudices they may harbor, and then work to eliminate those thoughts or ideas. Open dialogue that occurs in a safe, encouraging environment in preferably small groups is necessary to allow students the freedom to discuss their opinions. By allowing students these opportunities, we can hope to create a safe learning climate that incorporates ideas of social justice, therefore fostering an environment that values and respects students of all ethnic groups, cultures, sexual identity, religion, disabilities, economic standing, etc.
References
Trepagnier, B. (2006). Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
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