October 29, 2018   It has been a week

It has been a week—the mail bombs sent to prominent Democrats and then the shooting in the Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The mail bombs were intercepted before anyone was hurt and the person who sent them has been identified and is in custody. Of course, you can google all of this. The shooting in the synagogue reminds of the Sandy Hooks Elementary school shooting (2012) and the Charleston church shooting (2015). I wonder how the survivors and organizations are doing. I am sure there are articles to google. It takes a long time to recover from tragedies like this and unfortunately those who are not involved forget too soon.

However, these events happen too often in my country.

This blog is about my experiences in my online and face to face classrooms, and even prior to these events tensions were high. “It is that time in the semester” as I say this time of year. Students have lots to do now-assignments, quizzes, deadlines, and I have lots of grading and making sure that my class activities align with the purpose of my courses. In my experience, I’ve seen that things get a little disruptive this time in the semester, and some of it is with me-losing control of my own schedule.

This semester I’ve also been encouraging (requiring) students to do community and university activities related to leadership and diversity. I’ve been doing many of these activities myself. And did I say that midterm elections were looming? Our university and community have had candidate visits and candidate forums. And, early voting has begun.

For me, many of these events have involved diversity issues, and I thought I was pretty aware. But, I keep learning more-more about others, more about structural discrimination and more about myself. I don’t like talking/writing about race. It is awkward and it is easy to “make mistakes.” To step in it, as my father would say.

I have never said I was color blind because I am not color blind. I do see race-like I see gender, body size, age, ability/disability, appearance, ethnicity, accent (I hear accent), social class and all sorts of demographics. But, one thing about what I see is-I’ve been wrong in my perceptions. Wrong about how a person identifies themselves, wrong about what I think they believe/want based on their appearance or other characteristics, wrong about how they express themselves, wrong about how they communicate, and wrong about what they are feeling.

There is a series of programs at my university called “Brave spaces” which has provided a forum to discuss these issues of diversity. I agree with the title “Brave spaces” because that is what it takes-the bravery of a Griffindor.  Not the bravery of stupid physical actions, but communication, dialogue and relationship building. It takes time, energy, patience, willingness assertiveness and love to get your feelings and ego scuffed up—for the sake of learning and building community.

Now is the time for peaceful, non-violent, loving and authentic communication.

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