Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Guidelines for Leading "Discussion & Making Connections"






Here are some general guidelines to follow when you are preparing to lead a discussion on an assigned text.


1. Orientation.
This is a nice tool to hand your classmates. Give us a map, an image, a sense of what communities are being studied and where they are located. Give us a sense of perspective: indigenous perspectives, Native and Indigenous women's histories, biases of the state against local indigenous peoples, local struggles, current political issues, claims, debates...(this may require a little bit of internet research--take risks, go outside the lines.)


2. Give us a general understanding of a 'power mapping' or power relations in the reading. I.E., how do the indigenous women position themselves to different sites and discourses of power in relation to how colonial institutions and classes benefitted by their oppression.

3. Overview:
What are the main ideas covered in this selected text? How does(do) the author(s) orient the reader to themes, issues, main topics? Give a brief summary of what those are, to help organize the discussion. This will help you and the class have a foundation to build from during the next part...

4. Quotes & Questions:
Give 2-3 quotes to help give us a sense of issues, problems, concerns raised by the author(s) that we should pay attention to and talk about.

Give 2-3 questions that you want us to think about together and to discuss as a group.