Charlotte, N.C./April 12, 2023 – Johnson C. Smith University made a special effort to inform students, faculty and staff about how they can build braver community practices during a workshop at noon on April 11.
The facilitator was Lauraberth Lima (they/she), MFA, a professor of Museum Studies at New York University and a cultural consultant with more than 12 years of experience. Their focus was to educate about building these spaces specifically in the academic and workplace settings to cultivate safer settings for students, faculty and staff to express themselves.
“Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students,” they said, quoting an excerpt from Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. “Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow and are empowered by the process.”
A major part of the program included instructions on creating community agreements. These agreements are created through a consensus-driven process by the entirety of a given group to identify what would be needed to make each member feel supported and safe.
It also taught about:
- Informed consent, or making sure an individual has all of the knowledge they need to make the best decision for themselves.
- Positionality, or the social and political context that creates someone’s identity. This can include class, race, gender, sexuality and ability status.
- Intersectionality, or the idea that each person falls into multiple categories of privilege, oppression or both. This can impact how groups approach a given issue or topic.
The event ended with a group discussion about how to implement community agreements in classrooms and departments and how they can be used in modern work culture.
