Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone: Learning to Rethink Biases
Course# TD1324

NOTE: You must pre-register for lunch and each concurrent session you plan on attending.

During this session, a panel of 4-6 JMU students (secondary education and exceptionality minors) will present their Community Exploration Projects, a required assignment for Educ 310 Teaching in a Diverse Society. The assignment guides students to step out of their comfort zones for a minimum of 8-10 hours to gain insight and exposure to a community or experience that is new to them. Students completed reflection journals that included expectations of what they believed they would experience in their selected activity and detailed descriptions of what they witnessed and learned about themselves. To complete this project students attended religious services of varied denominations, assisted English Language Learners in public schools and adult education programs, cared for infants of teenaged parents in a high school daycare program, participated in Boys and Girls clubs, attended a Deaf school, and volunteered to serve meals at local shelters, to a name a few examples. From these experiences, students made connections to the literature in multicultural education and considered lessons learned that would benefit them in their future profession of teaching. In this panel discussion, presenters will honestly discuss their misunderstandings, the challenges they faced during these experiences, and the benefits they gained from taking risks to get to know others whom they considered different from themselves.

Those who attend this session will gain insight into the process of prejudice awareness for these presenters. As they hear testimonies of how these future educators grappled with challenges, they will gain a deeper understanding of the value of pushing themselves out of their comfort zones in order to become more empathetic, informed, and aware of misconceptions they may hold about others. Attendees may also acquire ideas to keep in mind when working with youth or adults from diverse backgrounds. In addition, participants will gain some awareness about the diversity that exists in the Harrisonburg area.

Presented by Mary Beth Cancienne-Acgtblu, Lisa Schick, Stephanie Wasta

Monday, April 6, 2009
9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
Alleghany Room, Festival Conference and Student Center

Register For Workshops Here