Testing Tolerance Offers Teaching Tips for Classroom Controversies
By Tracy Everbach
AEJMC Standing Committee
on Teaching
University of North Texas
everbach@unt.edu
and
By Candi Carter Olson
AEJMC Standing Committee
on Teaching
Utah State University
candi.carterolson@usu.edu
(Article courtesy of AEJMC News, October 2020 issue)
What happens when a student in your class discusses her own sexual assault? How do you moderate a classroom discussion on Confederate statues on campus or in the community? What do you do when a student asks questions that are offensive to other students? How do graduate instructors handle hot‐button student discussions?
We aim to answer these questions and provide a guidebook for instructors in our new book, Testing Tolerance: Addressing Controversial Topics in the Journalism and Mass Communication Classroom, published by Rowman & Littlefield. It’s part of the AEJMC Master Class Series (see p. 19). As former heads of the AEJMC Commission on the Status of Women, we conceived this book from a teaching panel we hosted for several years at the AEJMC annual conference in which we discussed gender, race, sexuality, disability, mental health and other topics. Several of those panelists contributed chapters to our book. Each chapter is designed to tackle specific issues, problems, and discussions instructors and administrators might have to handle.
• Candi Carter Olson writes about teaching media literacy and its importance in addressing race, class, gender, disability, sexuality and other differences. Her chapter walks readers through three exercises, each increasing in the discomfort students may feel, and recommends ways to help students through the exercises.
• Tracy Everbach focuses on how to manage controversy and conflict in the classroom. She has been teaching a class on race and gender in the media for more than a decade and offers answers to the question, “How do we discuss highly emotional personal and political topics in a civil, intellectual manner?”
• Meredith Clark offers strategies to manage the emotional labor that faculty of color face on primarily white campuses. She discusses the invisible labor involved in supporting students and fighting for social justice while completing the everyday work expected of tenure‐track professors.
• Chelsea Reynolds provides advice for navigating the increasing mental health issues that both students and faculty are feeling across college campuses. She leads readers through her proactive approach to mental health in the classroom.
• Rebecca Hains, who has extensive experience as a public intellectual on the internet, gives practical advice for other instructors and writers on coping with and handling online harassment. She focuses on how to protect one’s mental health, reputation and job when attacks come from the digital public sphere.
• Former AEJMC President David Perlmutter offers an administrator’s perspective on public perceptions of university employees. He discusses the balance that administrators must strike between the public and the institution, which can create high levels of stress and strain on university leaders.
• Marquita Smith and María Len‐Ríos provide practical advice on engaging students by flipping the classroom and by using the “difficult dialogues” framework to address critical examinations of race, gender, class, sexuality and other sensitive topics.
• Steve Fox gives tips on how to tamp down the classroom and student media “bro culture” that permeates sports journalism and outlines his advocacy for women students and sports journalists.
• Meg Heckman addresses pressures on advisors regarding campus sexual abuse and mandatory reporting requirements. Instructors are being forced to reveal information students give them in confidence, and she offers specific advice and resources for advisors.
• Three leaders from the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) discuss approaches to teaching and reporting on Indian Country. Victoria LaPoe, Lenzy Krehbiel‐Burton, and Rebecca Landsberry outline how to accurately portray tribal communities, with the goal of reducing stereotyping and erasures of Native identities and perspectives.
• Laura Castañeda takes on “mansplaining,” which is the act of over‐explaining something to a woman in which she is an expert. She offers class activities to draw attention to and prevent the phenomenon.
• Khadija Ejaz discusses the ways that identity, student perceptions, and instructor authority collide in university classrooms for new graduate students teaching courses. She shares personal reflections and those from other graduate students on teaching difficult topics for the first time, especially as a woman and a racial or ethnic minority.
• Nathian Rodriguez focuses on ways to use mediated texts of LGBTQ+ representations to foster discussions of intersectionality in classrooms. He suggests various pop culture texts, including videos, podcasts, streaming shows, and music, through which to do so.
• Paromita Pain offers ways to create a classroom environment that supports and encourages intersectional conversations. By breaking it down, she makes intersectionality approachable and usable by both students and professors.
Finally, we provide resources for teaching tolerance, including books, videos, films, academic journal articles, popular articles, and interactive online projects, and offer tips and tricks for making your classroom a safe and challenging space for approaching tough topics.
For details on how to order Testing Tolerance and other books in the AEJMC Master Class Series, and receive a 30% discount, please visit: http://www.aejmc.com/home/resources/master-class-publications/
