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X
real, bold, self-aware
formative
transformative
challenge, challenging, rewarding emotional, reflective, catalytic
and uncomfortable
and enjoyable, and surprising
it's surprising because
you go into staff class meeting
eight, nine, ten new people you people never met before. You come in with a lot of assumptions
about what they're like, where they're from, what experiences they've had,
and when you get to know them, you realize that
a lot of that is not true at all. It was definitely surprising. I'd say formative because I think
one of the great
goals of staff class
is to utilize the strength of the people that are there, so there a lot of
different ways to be a successful contributor to ResStaff, and to
be a person who builds communities as well.
The goal of the class isn't to
make robots of identical RAs. It's going to take the skills of people and
form them and guide them to use those strengths, and recognize those strengths
for themselves, and making
tools for building a good community. Uncomfortable because it's messy work,
it's emotional work, often we don't want to feel the emotion of
having privilege or
being the person who has oppressed someone else, and so that feels
uncomfortable
It also feels uncomfortable to have to share so much of yourself, when you
potentially have never done that before. It is also a rewarding because when
there's that moment when
your participants finally understand that these
identity and power dynamics do play out
in the community
and
that learning about these topics really do apply to the job
in building multicultural inclusive communities
when they see that connection i think it's empowering for both
the resident
and also the
resident advisor or other staff member
I think the thing that I learned most from staff class is that everyone has the story
and whether or not they want to tell you that story is up to them
My thinking is this, so students get into this work
because they generally want help because they care about each other, and the they are
interested in learning more
about "how can I make a difference?"
so we start there. That's what I believe about all of our students
and so
I think that our challenge in this, and my takeaway is
so how do I help them in their journey of learning about themselves, and how their
identities impact others in their communities?
So, ResStaff has
really been instrumental in
in me starting a group on campus called rXs, which is a dialogue
group for *** people of color because,
staff class really focuses
in on the
identities that are well- represented as well as marginalized in our
communities so
I've really taken
that skill set in analyzing which identities are represented or not represented
in creating
rXs, so that
the issues of people who are marginalized are
being addressed on this campus
Generative listening has been a really great skill that I've learned to utilize with
my student staff
It's an opportunity for you to both hear and listen at the same time and in
hearing someone's story that
may be really regular to them, you're able to hear their skills. You're able to hear their
core capacities that they have. You're able to hear what they value, and from
that, translate that into a transferrable skill, core capacity,
or value
in the work that they do. I think it really,
one of the benefits of being with a such a diverse group of people
that are like-minded is that we still come at different levels, and
one of things that
I carried from staff class, and one of the things that I was
taught
in being in that group is that were all at different levels and this is kind of
true in communities, and
not just in levels of who's you know who's better worse, but in terms of what
skills on a spectrum of skills are are at our disposal to building communities. So it's
meeting people and acknowledging what they have that's conducive
to building communities and identifying that and then
tapping that potential and those skills because that's what we do in the staff class,
we're talking to people,
we're in our generative listening
In our conversations we're pointing out skills to people that
they may not
know about themselves that's very subconscious, and so
taking that to communities, people who are, for example, first-years and
kind of think that
all the community building is going to be done for them
As someone who's on staff telling them you have actually a huge role to play in
being
a fundamental builder of the community yourself, and that takes
identifying skills and
and relaying that