A Lengthy List of Relateable Fears

I had the opportunity to work with a group of 70+ teachers this week on creating an inclusive culture in their schools and classrooms. This workshop was one of the standard offerings that come out of my Social Justice Education office and was tailored to meet the needs of the K-12 educators who attended.

Although I was there to share important information with participants, I am also a strong believer in reciprocity, and hold dear the value that we are all teachers and learners.

One of the greatest gifts I received as a result of my being there came in the form of the teachers’ honest sharing of some pre-work they completed prior to the day of the workshop.

When I met with the organizers to structure the day prior to the event, one of the things I mentioned that would be important for participants to do was to embrace discomfort. So for their pre-work, the educators were asked to identify some barriers that prevent them from embracing the discomfort necessary for critical self-reflection and action as an agent of change in their schools. They made a word cloud of their results.

A Relateable List, with Fear Rising to the Top

A common thread that connects all of these barriers is fear. I once wrote a little about some of my own observations about how fear has shown up in my work over at Notes from an Aspiring Humanitarian and revisited the topic of pushing through fear in an old talk on the importance of critical self-reflection for social change. Acknowledging the fears that we have by naming them out loud, writing them down, or identifying them in another intentional way are very important actions on the road to addressing them.

What I also appreciated about this pre-work exercise is that they came back together to revisit them as a group after reflecting on them individually. I think there’s something really grounding about that. We are situated differently after all, and the things we find hard to address may look differently because of that.

Now that you have gone through them, ask yourself if you can relate to any of them in any way. Are there things that have been barriers to you that you would add to this list? Are there things that were listed here that you’ve had some experience with working through?

Feel free to talk about this topic with someone you trust in your social justice journey, and use it as an opportunity to talk about ways you can support each other.

Ubuntu,

From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins-Jones

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