Collaboration Meeting Focus on Single Story Epidemic

 

ELIAS ALMAREZ-HERRERA Editor in Chief

 

On Jan. 30 what seemed to be a typical collaboration meeting revolved around the topic of equity. Teachers were asked to talk about stereotypes and how they have been affected by them. Furthermore, they depicted the history of stereotypes and how to take steps to resolve this problem.

This is part of a new trend teachers have participated in, focusing on what is called the Single Story. A Single Story is a stereotype, name or action designated to an entire group of people. These meetings were designed to help improve the school culture by having teachers speak about subjects such as racial discrimination. Each of the three Wednesdays focused on a different theme.

This was introduced to a group of about ten teachers,each asked to share his or her thoughts and experiences based on the topic. Spanish teacher Joshua Moreno designed the Single Story meetings to help teachers understand why certain things they say or do could be attributed to stereotyping and why students may take it this way. It was also to help teachers work together, and to help share ideas from teacher to teacher. The reactions so far have been positive.

“Most teachers felt this was powerful,” social science teacher Travis Corona said. “At first they did not know where we were going with this but soon they were excited about what we were doing.

The best case scenario is for teachers to be aware of the idea of the single story and to build counternarratives to start going against that.” Some of the topics at the meetings include thinking about the different single stories on campus and the physical space in which these stories are happening. The most recent meeting was about taking a personal look at teachers’ own upbringing and childhood and whether they learned single stories from the media, from their families or from other sources.

Some of these single stories include assuming an Asian student is good at math. If he is not good at math, this could mean he would not get the attention he needs.

“I’m curious about what they plan on doing with this input and why students have not been invited to join the discussion,” English teacher Rachel Farfsing said.

The next step, according to Corona, is to work on breaking away from the single story mentality. These meetings are intended to be implemented in teacher classrooms and help them get a better understanding of why racial discrimination and stereotypes might take place in the classrooms.