• I will examine the racialness of the space I create by the subtle gestures of my course description, my syllabus, my assignments, my class preps, the way I frame things.

• I will try to figure out ways I can open up lines of communication to students of color so that they feel freer to tell me how I am marginalizing perspectives of color.

• I will speak more directly about "whiteness" in the spectrum of ethnicity and class

• I will ask, in ways that are appropriate and contextualized, how individual students see themselves as racialized, gendered, and classed. This, I imagine, would be in the context first of issues brought up by the readings;

• I will consider developing an action research component to one of my race courses in line with existing research that suggests that perspectives on race are changed by experience not by reading.

• I will pay more attention to my body language in class. I will try not to send signals with my eyes, my hands and my body movements.

• I will reframe a problematic comment or point by exploring the underlying issues.

• When I am dealing with a highly charged subject in class, I will try to anticipate the issues/emotions that will come up and think about constructive responses, ways to open the discussion, create space for everybody.

• I will try to monitor carefully the responses of students who AREN'T talking, contributing. Perhaps speak with them after class to check on their thoughts, concerns, feelings.

• I will devote considerable time and energy in the early days of a class to creating a safe environment for all students to have both an intellectual and an effective experience: In addition to having students work in small groups to get to know each other and develop trust/comfort, I think it would be valuable for me to meet with all students individually early in the term to establish a connection and to determine how best to foster an optimal class environment.

• I will prepare students for conflict: As we've discussed, strong emotions and conflict are a necessary part of discussing race. Letting students know in advance that strong emotions will be evoked and that conflict among students is likely-and productive-shhould help us all to learn from each other with less fear.

• I will give students alternative methods for expressing their opinions, beliefs, and experiences: Not all students are comfortable speaking up in an emotionally-charged discussion. Expecting everyone to do so seems disrespectful at many levels, however letting some students dominate discussion and/or "speak for" others is equally disrespectful. I intend to use journaling and electronic discussion lists (e.g., NiceNet) to allow students to contribute in their own ways and in their own time.

• I will assign appropirate background reading: It is crucial for students to realize that there is an academic literature associated with race. Reading even a small sample of this literature provides the students with a concrete stimulus to spur discussion and reminds students that classroom conversations are meant to have a strong intellectual component. The structure of an assigned reading also allows students to anticipate some of the issues that may come up in class (and therefore allow them to think ahead about what they'd like to contribute in class) and also allows the instructor to titrate the level of personal vs. academic dialogue (i.e., if the discussion seems to have veered in too experiential a direction, the instructor can use the reading as a device for striking a more intellectual balance).

• I will more actively work to form groups outside class, based on common political/social/textual issues from class. Students have volunteered these in the past, and I have always suggested these, but I could ask students to see how class is connected to their interactions in other spaces.

• I will work out a structured system of interaction outside of class, with the following goals and procedures in mind:

GOALS - Often students learn more outside of the classroom than they do over the hour or so of interaction with faculty during class. A main idea behind discussion partnering is to help structure how some of that time outside of class may be spent. Another goal of discussion partnering is to expose students to the diversity of experiences and opinions that might not always be expressed during a class conversation. Some students are better able to communicate during class periods than others; discussion partnering requires all students to be able to articulate their ideas with at least one person in the course. Also, as the semester progresses, the possibility exists that individuals may solicit the opinion of persons with whom they have been discussion partners regarding particular subject matter in the class.

PROCEDURES- On a weekly basis, students can be paired with someone else in the course with whom they will discuss a specific question related to the topic for that week. I would recommend that students be paired randomly and that care be taken to ensure that no two students are paired more than once over the entire term. The students should be required to meet outside of class and discuss the question(s) of the week. The written work associated with the discussion partnership should consist of two parts. In the first part, the partners should create a summary of the discussion that occurred. (Nothing so detailed as a transcript, but more than just a short paragraph.) The students should be encouraged to work together to create this summary. The other part pertains to reactions to what was discussed. Here, the students should have an opportunity to reflect upon

1) what they learned from the conversation,

2) what they became confused or did not understand about particular points of the conversation, and

3) how aspects of their conversation might have related to course material.

Each student will be required to submit his or her own discussion partnership paper.

* It is vitally important that students engaged in discussion partnership be provided with discussion guidelines. Without such clear, written guidelines, discussion partnerships have the potential to lead to misunderstandings and behaviors that can adversely affect not only the relationship between the students involved, but the class as a whole.

GOALS - Discussion can be a key component of the learning process in many courses, so attention to the ways in which students may interpret explicit

and implicit information shared in discussions may improve the experience of

students in the course. Also, discussion processing can empower students to

confront assumptions that may inadvertently be made by the instructor and

fellow students and establish class norms that facilitate a respectful

learning environment.

PROCEDURES- I would recommend that discussion processing be done after the

first or second class conversation. Students should be asked to write down

their thoughts about 1) any features of discussion that they appreciate, 2)

any problems that they have experienced during discussions, 3) possible

solutions for the problems that they might have encountered. After students

have had an opportunity to commit their thoughts to paper, the papers should

be collected, randomly redistributed, and read aloud by whoever now has the

paper. Care should be taken to not have individuals receive their own

discussion process paper. The instructor should write on a marker board or

transparency the comments from each of the three categories. The class can

then discuss each of the comments and arrive at norms that should govern

conversations as a group.