Event Title
Controlling the Bull in the China Shop: Addressing privilege, power and identity in Externship teaching and programming
Location
Hirsch Hall, Room B
Start Date
9-3-2018 2:45 PM
End Date
9-3-2018 4:00 PM
Description
Externship placements and classrooms are one of the few spaces within a law school where students experience what lawyering looks and feels like in practice. However, frequently unacknowledged is that student experiences, both in school and in the workplace, may vary widely depending on their backgrounds and identities, and that this can result in both harm and alienation for our students. Despite modest progress towards greater diversity in law schools and the legal profession, law schools and legal workplaces are still largely normed around the historic privileging of whiteness, maleness, straightness, and wealth (among other categories). As Externship teachers, we bring our experiences from practice into the classroom, and have a unique opportunity to instill a critical and reflective lens -- encouraging students to be self-aware, conscientious, and measured when they find themselves in positions of power, and conversely to be self-assured, reflective, and untempered when they are feeling insecure.
This panel aims to address ways externship faculty, staff, and administrators, can integrate a more critical and inclusive lens into our externship programs. First, we seek to share strategies for cultivating inclusive classrooms that better support and address the experiences of students from historically marginalized backgrounds. Second, we will highlight how these practices can help to instill a more critical and conscientious lens into ALL of our students, which, ideally, they will carry forward into practice.
Our panelists are all former social justice practitioners and teach in a range of law school settings. We will each share examples of how, given our own identities (professional, personal) and the composition of our classrooms, we strive to unpack and confront systems of power and privilege, address the ways these systems impact the experiences of our students, and equip students with strategies for resilience and resistance both in the classroom and the field.
Controlling the Bull in the China Shop: Addressing privilege, power and identity in Externship teaching and programming
Hirsch Hall, Room B
Externship placements and classrooms are one of the few spaces within a law school where students experience what lawyering looks and feels like in practice. However, frequently unacknowledged is that student experiences, both in school and in the workplace, may vary widely depending on their backgrounds and identities, and that this can result in both harm and alienation for our students. Despite modest progress towards greater diversity in law schools and the legal profession, law schools and legal workplaces are still largely normed around the historic privileging of whiteness, maleness, straightness, and wealth (among other categories). As Externship teachers, we bring our experiences from practice into the classroom, and have a unique opportunity to instill a critical and reflective lens -- encouraging students to be self-aware, conscientious, and measured when they find themselves in positions of power, and conversely to be self-assured, reflective, and untempered when they are feeling insecure.
This panel aims to address ways externship faculty, staff, and administrators, can integrate a more critical and inclusive lens into our externship programs. First, we seek to share strategies for cultivating inclusive classrooms that better support and address the experiences of students from historically marginalized backgrounds. Second, we will highlight how these practices can help to instill a more critical and conscientious lens into ALL of our students, which, ideally, they will carry forward into practice.
Our panelists are all former social justice practitioners and teach in a range of law school settings. We will each share examples of how, given our own identities (professional, personal) and the composition of our classrooms, we strive to unpack and confront systems of power and privilege, address the ways these systems impact the experiences of our students, and equip students with strategies for resilience and resistance both in the classroom and the field.