Think of Building a House: How Creative Reframing Invites Others Into a Conversation

I recently completed a first-round interview for a job, and was asked the question “Tell me about a time when your commitment to DEI led to a celebration of underrepresented voices.” I chose to talk about an experience I had while I was a teaching assistant at the University of Delaware. I’ve been exploring how creatively reframing a concept can be a powerful pedagogical tool. I think this story illustrates that idea.

While at the University of Delaware, I was the teaching assistant for the 100-level undergraduate art history course World Architecture. This was fall 2020, so it was taught asynchronously. All of the students were new to art and architectural history, many of the students were first generation college students, some had learning disabilities or neurodiversity, many were international students for whom English was a second language, and all were struggling to adapt to the pandemic. The professor had assigned the students a writing assignment - they were to discuss a question related to the course material in an online forum. They had to write an initial response to the discussion question of about 250 words, and respond to two of their peers’ responses. My job was to grade their work. While doing this, I noticed that their initial responses to the question were very weak, because they didn’t really engage with the central focus of the assignment, and weren’t very analytical. Additionally, their responses to their peers weren’t very engaged; they didn’t respond in-depth to ideas presented by others or move the conversation forward.

I asked the professor if I could share feedback with the entire class, and he agreed. I realized that the core problem was that the students were never told what the point of the exercise was.  This isn’t a knock on the professor — he is a really good teacher. I think it was an example of a very human thing: there are times when we do something so often or so well that we assume that what goes into doing that thing is obvious. As an undergraduate and graduate student, I thought it was so interesting to watch this happen with experts in their field who are teaching newbies. They sometimes know their field so well that they don’t remember what it is like to totally start from zero, knowing nothing and trying to figure out what is needed to do an assignment or participate in the discipline. As a TA, I had a chance to fill in a gap in instruction that at first glance, didn’t even seem like a gap. Some professors might have responded defensively to me identifying such a gap. He did not. Instead he saw value in my perspective and let me share what I was observing. Inso doing, was a good teacher to both me and the undergraduate students. I deeply appreciated his response to this.

I wrote some feedback that I shared in the discussion forum with the class. I chose to write this feedback for everyone because I kept seeing the same struggles over and over again, so I wanted to make sure that the students all got the same information, and were working together with the same intention in mind. I also thought that it might be a good way to avoid some defensiveness that happens when giving people critical feedback — I figured that giving feedback to the whole group, pointing out larger trends and asking for a new approach for everyone would allow them to all address it in their own way, without getting stuck in the weeds about any one comment.

I explained to the students that the point of the exercise — thinking deeply about a question, developing a point of view on it, and responding to one another’s perspectives — was to practice having a scholarly conversation. Put simply, and perhaps optimistically, a scholarly conversation in which we all work together to build shared knowledge, even if we disagree. I asked them to think of it like building a house. Each thing said is like a brick, and the mortar between them is the connections you make to what others have said. It is not only the bricks themselves, but the way they relate, that lend the house its structure and strength. 

In this feedback, I made sure to not assume knowledge, of either the purpose of the assignment or what constituted a job well done. I know that many times, in school, some students do well and others do not because some have a “leg up” - they know what success look like, so they can perform it. As an educator, I had a responsibility to give all students the tools they needed to succeed.

In describing the scholarly conversation like building a house, I used a simile to describe a concept central to the assignment. Because I have ADHD, and I know firsthand that for students who think differently or have a different background than other students, their engagement with a discipline can be cut short if someone isn’t able to creatively reframe a concept. I’ve had a number of experiences like that, and I didn’t want that to happen here. Additionally, I generally think that if someone understands and values the point of the exercise, they tend to be much more engaged with it.

The professor valued the feedback I shared, and let me create the next writing assignment. I created a discussion question that encouraged students to think through a historical issue in comparison to a contemporary one they were familiar with. This let them springboard from a place of strength to one of unfamiliarity, and make connections intellectually with what was going on in a historical time period. To me, this seemed like a good way to let students experience that they already possess some of the traits of a good historian — the ability to observe cultural context of an event, compare and contrast two different scenarios, and establish a perspective on a historical issue. Yes, those skills require much honing to become an expert historian, but the point of the exercise was to get the gears turning. My choice to let the students use existing strengths to build new ones is connected to the idea of “strengths based” community work — I have not done this kind of community development work, but I learned about this idea and it stuck with me. Basically, the idea asserts that community work should not take a paternalistic view of “helping” compensate for a perceived weakness, but instead, orient to existing strengths in the community, and use those strengths to empower community members to further strengthen their community. To me, true DEI work has this spirit in a range of contexts — it is about honoring and understanding the strengths that others bring to the table, and doing what is necessary to let those capacities flourish.

Now, I will come back to the interview question I was asked: “Tell me about a time when your commitment to DEI led to a celebration of underrepresented voices.” The discussion that the students had in response to the second question was full of insight, questions, respectful disagreement, and robust discourse. It was absolutely a celebration of their capacities, individual perspectives, and curiosity for architectural history.