This page was created by Patty Ahn.
Community Agreements / Ground Rules
- Avoid making generalizations about an entire people or community by using "I" statements. While we can name certain normative regimes and systems of power that are articulated along lines of gender, race, ethnicity, age, class, nationality, sexuality, geo-political location, and so forth, each person's experiences of them invariably differ.
- Respect each others' gender pronouns. If you don't know what pronoun they use, just gently ask.
- Don't assume what people know technologically, historically, experientially, politically. Everyone enters the classroom with many different kinds of knowledges and skills. We value each and everyone one of them in this space.
- If you see another student struggling around a specific skill, theory, etc., find ways to lift them up. Just remember to ask first about how they'd like to be supported.
- Remember that participation in class does not look the same for everyone.
- Step Up / Step to the Side – If you happen to have more experience than others with a specific technology, area of study, or generally feel more comfortable with speaking up in class, try and make room for others by stepping to the side or stepping up to help/support.
- Practice active listening as much as possible. Active listening is "a structured form of listening and responding that focuses the attention on the speaker. The listener must take care to attend to the speaker fully, and then repeats, in the listener's own words, what he or she thinks the speaker has said. The listener does not have to agree with the speaker--he or she must simply state what they think the speaker said. This enables the speaker to find out whether the listener really understood. If the listener did not, the speaker can explain some more."
- Give feedback that aims to build up, not tear down. Engaging in a creative practice is really hard and makes you feel vulnerable. Always provide suggestions from a place of love and wanting to see your classmates' ideas and goals realized to their fullest potential.
- Affirm one another as much as possible!
