I wanted students to be able to bring their own experiences to the session, in line with education as the practice of freedom discussed by Paulo Friere (1970, p.54) and bell hooks (1994, p.19. I designed activities that would allow this, for example, the second task where students talked about stories to be important to them and why. I could see I had met the aim when students were able to share moving and important information regarding their childhoods, relationships and coming of age transitions regarding race, gender and sexual identities.
I wanted the session to be dialogic as when Friere talks about teachers and students ‘become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.’ (1970, p.53) So, I made student contributions an essential, frequent and ongoing part of the workshop using multiple platforms such as the whiteboard features, chat functions and padlet. I knew I was successful in this, as participation and engagement was high.
I wanted the workshop to promote ‘multicultural sensitivity’ (Vaughan et al, 2008). This was achieved through tasks that highlighted and celebrated differences in experience, culture and perspectives. Success could be seen in students engaging and commenting on each others contributions in a way that was respectful, enthusiastic, kind, sensitive and self-reflective.
I wanted to challenge prejudice and hierarchies. This was done through analytical tasks and resources such as those from Chinamanda Ngozi Adichie (TED, 2020) and Alan Brooks (TEDxMileHigh, 2020) The success could be seen in high quality student reflection where underlying messages and themes were highlighted and linked to wider social dynamics and hierarchies.