I’m a teacher! The second week of the program, my “teacher shoes” started to fit a bit more snug. One core aspect of the SEGL experience is simulations that could represent real-life political crises. In an effort to not spoil the tradition, I’ll refrain from naming the scenario, but might I say it was my first “acting” experience? As one of the political figures, it was my role to work as an actor to keep the storyline flowing but also to act in a particular way that prompted the students to ask questions and truly learn from the experience. I had to balance playing my role well while also keeping an air of mystery. This was a tad difficult, as I often felt the urge to chuckle; it’s hard to be in character with the students because half of their personal goal is to beat us at our own game. 

Besides my acting skills, I also spent concrete time in the classroom. Academic production made another feature as I planned out a rotating discussion group curriculum. RDGs are a series of discussion topics that about 4 student groups rotate between. We give them critical information and the environment to have a rigorous dialogue. Tasked with planning a discussion related to our Rwandan Genocide case study, I crafted the discussion to be centered on reconciliation in Rwanda after the genocide. The key goal of an RDG is to cover the case study at hand and also prompt students to shape their own discussion. As faculty, we don’t want students to direct their comments at us, but rather direct them to each other. In planning this RDG, I combined a series of multimedia and literature content to prompt discussion and crafted open-ended questions. Additionally, I tried to find supplementary materials across all aisles of the political spectrum so as to prevent a biased discussion. Although the discussion went relatively smoothly, I learned that for the next time I should pick shorter readings/videos in order to give students more time to discuss.

Academic production isn’t easy, but it is definitely worth it.