Educational Technology: Difficult Conversations

A list of readings originally designed to broach conversations in the classroom about the shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. More broadly, the readings cover slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, post-reconstruction and Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Era, racial violence, white supremacy and white racial identity, race and religion, and the confederate flag. Also includes literature/fiction and titles for young readers.

"A teaching resource for sociologists of race and ethnicity. Bibliographies about race, racism, and whiteness." --description from the website.

Compiled by Elle Magazine (yes, really), this brief list helps contextualize the recent Women's March.

While this page is geared towards K-12 educators, many of the strategies covered are easily adapted to the college classroom.

This guide from the University of Michigan discusses how to deal with both spontaneous mentions of hot topics, and planned discussions on controversial issues.

The UAA Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence has produced guidebooks for teaching difficult subjects. Start Talking covers managing the discussion of controversial topics in the classroom, while Stop Talking explores key differences in indigenous and mainstream western pedagogies. Both can be downloaded as free PDFs from the linked website.

Similar to the University of Michigan page, but with an expanded focus on questions to ask yourself as you plan the course, long before you meet the students.

Yale's CTL offers tools to reflect and explore concrete classroom strategies, no matter what the topic.

Afshan Jafar teaches sociology at Connecticut College. In this column for Inside Higher Ed, she shares the three most important things she's learned about teaching difficult courses.

Originally meant for a faculty mini-course at CUNY, this 8-page handbook combines links to a variety of readings, as well as concrete activities you can do in your classroom.