As a facilitator, you can help maintain a sense of respect in the room by being an active facilitator. While the goal of many conversations around racial equity and social justice is to give the floor to your students and let them practice civil discourse, you can help guide them.
Before facilitating discussions on racial equity, it may be helpful to review questions that may arise so that you are prepared to answer them accordingly.
Some questions you may encounter are:
What about reverse racism?
Can people of color be racist?
Why aren’t we talking about oppression LGBTQ+ people face?
I don’t see color.
What’s wrong with All Lives Matter?
Along with preparing responses to popular questions, ways to be an active facilitator include:
Reword
Rewording questions from students and asking for clarification.
Correct
Correcting misinformation using facts (see two tips on how to do this, below)
Synthesize
Synthesizing main ideas from discussion and repeating them back to the class.
“Engage audiences in scrutiny and counterarguing of information:
Educational institutions should promote a state of healthy skepticism. When trying to correct misinformation, it is beneficial to have the audience involved in generating counterarguments.”
“Introduce new information as part of the debunking message:
People are less likely to accept debunking when the initial message is just labeled as wrong rather than countered with new evidence.”
Activity
Review the facilitation tips on pages 7-8 of the 21 Day Equity Challenge discussion guide for groups (below).
What strategies do you already use in your classroom?
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What more would you like to begin to use?
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Teachers want to make sure they are engaged and listening so they can also address breaches in community agreements if they occur.