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George
Padgett,
Associate Professor - Communications
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Targeted at teaching diversity to beginning journalism
and communications classes, I incorporated
"Listening Post/Making Connections" exercises
in my JCM 218 Writing & Information Gathering class.
I modeled the assignments after larger projects conducted
by Keith Woods, Poynter Institute, and Ruth Seymour,
Wayne State University. While my project, limited to a
few weeks in one semester, was significantly smaller than
either of those mentioned, it was successful in that it
got students out of the classroom and out of their
personal comfort zones.
Woods' project, called "Making
Connections," sent reporters out into communities
with the primary goal of uncovering new story ideas. They
visited an Asian Community Center, a Muslim cultural
complex, a leather factory which employed a large number
of Bosnian, Mexican and Cambodian immigrants, a seafood
processing plant, and a neighborhood funeral home. They
observed, asked questions and listened.
Seymour's "Pushing the Edges" project
paired community and journalism fellows who promised to
spend time getting to know "the other side."
Journalists spent time in the community where they
"dug city gardens, photocopied at Arab community
agencies, and served as lobby greeters at a gay and
lesbian community center." Community fellows spent
an equal amount of time working in newspaper and
broadcast newsrooms.
I required three different activities of my students.
First, they were required to interview and write a
profile of an international student on campus. Secondly,
they were assigned as a group project to research a
particular uncovered or undercovered group -- African
Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, gay men and
lesbians, Native Americans, and people with disabilities.
They presented their findings to the class.
 Finally,
all students in the class were assigned as a part of a
group to make a connection with a targeted population
either on campus or off. One student group met with Asian
students and faculty on campus. A second group had a
discussion on racial profiling with members of a law and
ethics class I was teaching at North Carolina A&T in
Greensboro. A third group met with members of Spectrum on
campus to talk about media coverage of gay men and
lesbians. The final group provided a shelter meal for
residents at Burlington's Good Shepherd
Kitchen.
The only negative comment I heard from any of the
students was that the sessions were "too
short," or that they wished the connections had been
more involved over a longer period of time. The students
who went to A & T with me commented that they had
never been in a situation where they were a minority. We
walked around campus including the student center and
they participated in the profiling conversation with my
class -- all African American students. Every single one
of my students came away commenting that the experience
was "awesome," interesting and
beneficial.
Similarly, students in the other groups reacted
positively to the experience and suggested more
involvement with the exercises in the future. Following
the sessions, we spent a class period debriefing and
talking about the sessions. I was impressed by the
students' observations and the story ideas generated
by these brief encounters. Funds provided for the project
were used to buy food and soda for the discussion
sessions and to buy food and supplies for the shelter
meal. The second part of the project and expense involved
the writing, editing, and production of a booklet about
teaching diversity in journalism and mass comm classes.
The booklet reports on what I did with my project this
semester, discusses the state of diversity in U. S.
newsrooms, provides a sampling of diversity exercises
that can be used in various classes, and provides a
fairly comprehensive list of resources to use in teaching
diversity in mass comm classes.
As one measure of effectiveness, I asked students to
respond to questions about the need for diversity
education in journalism classes, to provide thoughts on
the exercises we conducted during the semester. A few
follow:
"The diversity project completed this semester was
a great experience for us to see how life is for others.
We rarely get the chance to be the minority or to just
talk frankly to those whose lifestyles are different from
ours. I was amazed at the openness and the struggles that
my diversity group dealt with everyday. I really did
learn to look at issues from another side."
"I personally found the listening post project most
rewarding. While I consider myself to be privileged
enough to be exposed to many different groups of people,
I realize that for many people at Elon, that is not the
case. I'm glad there are programs such as these to
encourage students to reach out a bit and to really
listen."
"After doing the listening post project on the gay
community, I personally went up to my professor and
reflected how pleased I was with the project and how much
I truly learned. It is such a valuable learning
experience for students to have, which shouldn't be
passed up. . . . As my classmates and I described our
experiences, I found many so interesting and unique I
wish I had attended more than just one group."
"Students shouldn't study diversity, they
should live it, but since Elon provides a limited
experience in this field I suppose the best we can do is
study it. However, I applaud the Listening Post project
in its approach. Getting students who have probably never
been in contact with minority groups out into the
community and experiencing life in its true form is just
about the best way that one can study
diversity."
I personally learned a great deal from the project and
plan to continue incorporating these and similar projects
into my classes. I also hope to design a new course
called Writing Across Differences, which will build on
these exercises to create a new learning
experience.
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