My Problematic Teaching Activity Example

Each semester that I taught my own section of the U's School & Society course, I included an activity called "The Race."  Based off of Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" (just a few adapted/applied versions of this article can be found here, here, and here), the activity (found on pp. 64-70 of the Finding Our Voice resource guide, though I didn't use the video discussed here) has students consider elements of unearned privilege and disadvantage that have influenced where they are in their lives.  I'll describe it briefly here, but it'll make more sense if you check out the resource guide too.

The activity has students listen to a series of statements on different types of privilege and disadvantage and make columned tallies of the ones that apply to them, adding each column up at the end (so a sum of advantages they've experienced and a sum of disadvantages) and figuring out their total number by subtracting the disadvantages from the advantages.  The exercise can be done so that students just make tallies on paper, either to share with the class or for their own consideration, or so that students physically act out their placement on the total number spectrum, so that students with more privileges are closer to the front of the room/the teacher/etc.

I think the activity is valuable in that it raises some of the many advantages and disadvantages that people encounter without always realizing and in that, even in a classroom of mostly white, mostly middle-class, mostly female students, we still ended up with a wide range of results.  However, there's an obvious risk of upsetting students whose totals are lower, particularly if they have to verbally share or physically demonstrate their numbers and relative status within the class.  So I've tried the end of the activity a few different ways, always starting off with students listening and creating their tallies while sitting at desks, since I've never had enough classroom space for my students to physically act out the entire activity: once with students lining up in the hallway outside class based on their total, symbolically "racing" to get a prize from me, and following up with some brief discussion; once with students voluntarily sharing their totals and discussing the issues and activity; and once having students close their eyes and raise their hands so I could write a list on the blackboard of how many students had each total number, and then having a discussion in which students could speak generally about the range of numbers in the class and the activity itself, or could voluntarily reveal their number and what they felt about it.

Each of these versions had their good and bad points.  The physical lineup was much more visceral (by definition, I guess) and had more impact on students.  One commented that I should never use the activity again because he was so upset at having to display his low total.  Another said the activity was uncomfortable but valuable in opening these issues, but that we didn't have enough time to discuss the activity, which would have made it (maybe) less uncomfortable for those with low totals and more uncomfortable for those with high totals as they confronted their privilege.  Ultimately I think the final version I mentioned above was most successful in discussion, since I had a few students with low totals who were willing to "out" themselves and talk about the problems they'd faced and how they'd gotten to the privileged position of being in higher education and sometimes graduate school.  There were also some students who didn't think some of the things I listed as privileges had had any impact on their lives, which opened a different side of the discussion.

This activity relates to a number of things we've been talking about in class, including risk-taking in teaching, confronting privilege, entering into (or attempting to enter into) dialogue with our students, and the ethics of publicly challenging our students.  I'm still chewing over all these issues regarding this activity - it's definitely the most risky activity I used when I was teaching that course.