I taught a class on diversity this semester and it really did not go as well as I expected. I could tell from reading the final papers I need to make a big change in the course. I was hoping that my students would be able to engage in some perspective taking, but its clear to me that I did not accomplish that. My textbook and my approach just failed. Looking back, I did too much talking at them and not enough on providing them with learning experiences.
This morning, I’ve been thinking about how I can challenge my student’s views and make them see the world from the perspective of someone whose race, ethnicity, SES, gender identity/expression, nationality, religion, and/or immigration status is different from their own.
Then it hit me: Literature. Instead of using a textbook to teach them about human diversity, I can give them first person experiences to read and discuss in class. When I taught high school history, I used books to teach about genocide and religious oppression and it worked really well.
The problem is that I really don’t know of many books. So I am asking the Daily Kos community for suggestions. I’m looking for real-life stories about growing up in contemporary America. I want them to read about somebody with whom they can identify. I don’t want the story to be really extraordinary so they dismiss what they are reading as a rare occurrence. They also need to be relatively easy reads. This is not a literature course—I’m not qualified to teach literature. I also want to be able to do more than one book a semester so we can tackle more one big issue.
I did some searching this morning and I found How Does it Feel to Be a Problem? My library doesn’t have this book, so I have it coming on inter-library loan. Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!