One of the central appeals of CI/TPRS classrooms is the mutual negotiation between teachers and students over what to talk about, and the details within those discussions. Stories details, like who a class talks about and how to describe those people, are usually chosen by the students. This gives the students agency over their own learning experience, and it promotes motivation and engagement with the lesson.
One drawback to giving students too much control was pointed out by Rachelle Adams and Anna Gilcher, discussed at this years NTPRS conference: learners often bring to these discussions ideas that reinforce social stereotypes and ideas which work against diversity. So here is where a teacher can add content that promotes values of diversity and inclusion. Eric Herman posted a very useful video showing how collaborative storytelling can work it classrooms. It also gives us a glance at the kinds of ideas that students bring into our classrooms: "fat girls," "eating hamburgers at McDonalds." These are the regular kinds of ideas we see students contribute in CI classrooms, toward which the other students often respond with laughter because the ideas are funny to them. I want to be clear that my intention here is not to take away from what Eric posted, but to add to it. In the kinds of stories that develop in classrooms (note: though not in Eric's video), letting students propose that a man wants a "fat girl" because it makes everyone laugh, or that a woman likes a "short man" because the idea is so ludicrous, puts teachers in a important societal role. A teacher can decide between: (1) reinforcing these prejudices, or (2) teaching diversity-positive values. In their presentation, Rachelle and Anna recommended using such descriptor words as "short" and "tall" to describe buildings and other physical objects, instead of people. "Fat" and "skinny" can describe animals in the story, instead of the women and men. When students propose that non-normative events occurred, like, "The man wore women's clothing, hahahaha," the teacher can choose to say, "Ok sure, but it's not funny. Many men do that. It's really normal, and not funny. But we can include him in our story because he might be interesting." Rachelle and Anna advocate that teachers work with students to generate a new word list. This list will contain the words that students use to describe the people they admire. After thinking and discussing (5 min. max), each student calls out who they want to be like (e.g. Mother Theresa, Lady Gaga, their grandmother), and what one attribute made that person so model-worthy (e.g. compassionate, brave, smart). These then become the words the teacher and students use to describe the people in their stories. This allows them to promote diversity-positive thinking while also using the language necessary to do that.
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Reed Riggs (Author)
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