 George Padgett, Associate Professor - Communications | Listening Post/Making
Connections 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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