Friday, October 17, 2014
Script Analysis: No Screaming Matches, No Riot Police
HowlRound: Minutes before going in to teach my first Script Analysis class, with butterflies in my stomach, new to this university, new to this community, I was troubled by the predictable hustle-and-bustle of a new school year—business as usual. I was struck by how easily we move on with our own lives without acknowledging loss and turmoil elsewhere. In this case, though my feet were in Salt Lake City, my mind was in Ferguson, Missouri.
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I give this professor a lot of credit for her approach in tackling the difficult but important conversation about Ferguson. I have been in classes where teachers try to discuss current events, and it comes off as hollow and obligatory. I appreciate that this professor recognized the possible downsides of approaching this topic, the idea that it could come off as self-indulgent and her recognition of the effect her own privilege has on her perceptive. But integrating the potential for conversation into the curriculum seems like a smart approach. She isn't starting a conversation just because she feels like she is supposed to, she instead found a way to make it relevant to her class.
Julie Rada does a great job of examining her responsibility as a teacher to her students, and as an individual to the members of her community. Her back-and-forth about how to bring opinions into the classroom, how to discuss sensitive material and remain semi-impartial yet responsible for the discussion is super interesting. She clearly did a great job of fostering thoughtful, essential discussion between her students about a topic that is controversial and very important. The first step of change in any community is to start a dialogue, educate people and provide a platform to exchange information and opinions. It’s pretty great to think that one single class might have caused some of Rada’s students to become aware of certain facets of a situation they might not have thought about before, such as the student who said that extensive discussion in the media can lead to becoming desensitized to the story, and then was herself shocked by some of the facts that the teacher brought up.
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