by Michelle A.Wolf
How can your understanding of shy, anxious, uncertain and marginalized students help them participate in class and group discussions and projects?
Did you watch the 2020 Grammy Awards? Alicia Keys spoke about diversity and inclusion, a thread that she reinforced throughout the ceremony, repeating phrases like “being respected,” “feeling safe in our diversity,” “shifting to realness and inclusivity,” and “showing our true selves.” She spoke directly to many artists who grew up feeling shy, anxious and marginalized, and struggled to be included. Attention to this point – and more broadly to social justice for everyone – has accelerated throughout culture, for example the Me Too movement, and most certainly in teaching.
I’ve been developing and refining strategies to engage my students in a variety of teaching settings at three different universities for over 40 years.[1] In my Media Literacy class, a blend of theory and practice, I begin each term with two assignments based on a seemingly simple question that I ask of all students – Who are you? The Intro Survey is designed to collect basic and personal information. A short essay titled My Invisible Identity is my main focus here.
My Invisible Identity is the first of two I, Me, My essays where students write about very personal experiences growing up that contribute to who they are now. They recall experiences that are often painful, feelings, thoughts and actions that shaped their self-conception by the time they were 16 and continue to affect who they are now. I’ve been more than surprised, and sometimes shocked, as they share details about the loss of grandparents, parents and siblings, homelessness, and abusive attacks such as rape.
In their minds, these are experiences that leave them feeling uniquely different from other people, including other people in the class. Some share explicit details of encounters they have never shared with anyone else as they describe the pain of dismantling trauma, anxiety and marginalization that “broke” them. They are afraid of more than talking in class. They wear hats and clothing that cover their faces and bodies and sit in the ‘margins’ of the classroom. In some cases these are hardships they have overcome, and others confess that they are ‘stuck’ inside what they write about.
They key to these essays is tied to how I respond to them. When I grade the essays, I pull out key points and create a feedback sheet that I review in class and post after class for everyone as assigned reading for the next class. I explain that because many students don’t ‘jump up’ to answer questions, I’m giving them more time to raise a hand in class. I ask students who have not spoken to answer this or that question. I also ask some students to see me before, after class or in my office hours, and that I am quick to respond to email.
From these assignments and other activities, I have learned that some shy, uncertain and marginalized students are often very engaged with the material, but they generally don’t feel powerful in their classes. Some are afraid to speak because we won’t understand them or give them enough time, and others are convinced they are not prepared for college education. Other things that emerge are growing up in environments where no one listens to them, an unsettling divorce, and a myriad of other painful experiences growing up. While some students use these experiences to develop a voice and personal power, others tell me they have not found a voice, are afraid to speak up in class because they don’t want to be ridiculed, an experience that is all too familiar for them (not only in school). (See Medaille, & Unger, 2019).
[1] This is the first of a series of blogs about strategies I have used to engage all students, particularly those who are quiet in class for a variety of reasons.
Medaille, A. & Unger, J. (2019, March). Engaging quiet students in the college classroom. College Teaching. DOI: 10.1080/87567555.2019.1579701 [ResearchGate link]
Michelle A. Wolf is a Professor Emerita who taught and conducted research at San Francisco State University from 1983 to 2018. Her focus then (and now) is on the range and diversity of mediated images of groups without power in the United States. She has written extensively on connections between body image, media literacy and, pedagogy, and she completed phase two of a long-term project on how messages from media and other people shape how people think and feel about their bodies and themselves in 2013. This publication is based on focus groups with women with physical disabilities. Before this Wolf conducted qualitative research with transgender and bisexual men and women, gay men, lesbians, and heterosexual women and men.
