North Seattle Community College—

Rememberings: The Roots of Our Voices
Cultural Interview 2: Due Monday, May 10, 2010

Communication skills for Personal Awareness or Empowerment

For this interview, you have two choices.

Using the ADRESSING model (developed by Pamela A. Hays and expanded upon by Letitia Nieto), you can choose to complete this interview in two different ways.

Social Rank Category / Agent Rank / Target Rank
Age / Adults (18-64) / Children, adolescents, elders
Disability / Able-persons / Persons with disabilities
Religion (relates to religious culture) / Cultural Christians, Agnostics and Atheists / Jews, Muslims, and all other non- Christian religions
Ethnicity / Euro-Americans / People of Color
Social Class / Owning and Middle Class (more than enough and enough) / Poor and Working Class (less than enough)
Sexual Orientation / Heterosexuals / Gay men, Lesbians, Bisexuals
Indigenous Background / Non-Native / Native (First Nation)
National Origin / US Born / Immigrants and Refugees
Gender / Male / Female, Transgendered, and Intersexed

Exercise 1: Personal Awareness Interview

For this exercise, you will choose one social membership area where you currently hold Agent status and want to practice Personal Awareness skills. For example, if you are between 18-64, you could use Age. If you currently have no disability, you could use Disability. If you were born in the United States, you could use National Origin.

Your task: to find a person in our class or someone you know pretty well who holds Target social membership in that category, interview them, and report on your communication. For example, if you are working with Age, you could interview a youth or elder. If working with Disability, you could interview a person who currently has a disability. If working with National Origin, you could interview a person who was born outside of the US.

You need to be sure that your interviewee is clear about the nature of this assignment, is willing to talk to you about their experience in this area of their life, and is aware that you need to tape your interview. You could ask a classmate, a family member, someone you work with, or another person in your life. Do an interview with them, using the central question “What is it like for you as …?”

The purpose for this exercise is to practice applying and integrating the listening skills, in particular empathy. Your job is to really listen deeply to the other person, to give them a chance to feel fully heard, and to learn about what their reality is like. Review the list of listening/communication skills (listed below) and the handout on empathy before the interview and practice applying as many as seem helpful.

As you listen, practice staying present in your awareness of what the other person is describing as their reality. Avoid sending messages like “something just like that happened to me once,” which signals similarity. That is not the goal of this exercise. To practice empathy, you may feel some discomfort – this can be a signal that you are staying fully present to the other person and their experiences. It’s okay to acknowledge those feelings, but stay with the process and don’t shift the focus to yourself. Keep focus on the other person, their voice, and their reality.

Stay with this process for at least 30 minutes (1/2 hour). When you have finished listening, thank the person for sharing their truth with you.

Exercise 2: Empowerment Interview: If you hold membership in three or more of the Target groups, you may choose to do Exercise 2.

For this exercise, you will choose one Rank channel, where you currently hold Target social membership and want to practice empowerment skills. Your task: to find a person who also holds the same Target social membership, interview them, and report on your communication.

For example, if you have a Disability, you could use Disability. If you were born outside of the U.S., you could use National Origin. If you are a member of a religious culture that is not Christendom (such as Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism), you could use Religious Culture. The specific reason the person is a member of the Target group might be different from you. They could have a disability that is different from the one you have, or be a member of a religious culture that is different from yours, or come from a different country than you do. Nonetheless, you share membership in the Target group.

Choose a time and place to meet that you will both be comfortable and have some privacy.

Your task is to interview the other person, using the central question “what is it like for you as a…” Your job is to listen to the other person, to give them a chance to feel fully heard, and to learn about what their reality is like. After twenty minutes or so focused on listening, you can choose to share your own experience if it seems right to do so.

Avoid minimizing the impacts that this Target membership has on you or on your friend. Don’t try to figure out who is more oppressed. Acknowledge the reality of their experience and your own. See if common themes, concerns, or problems emerge from your discussion. This exercise could make you feel angry, or sad, or charged with energy. Acknowledge any feelings that arise as part of the process.

Review the list of listening/communication skills before the interview and practice as many as seem helpful.

Stay with this process for at least 30 minutes (1/2 hour). When you have finished, thank the person for sharing their truth with you.

To Hand In (Both Exercise #1 and Exercise #2)

The format of your case study is the same as the previous interview with three specific areas of development and analysis:

1. Description (context). Describe fully for your reader the context of your case study. Who did you interview? When and where did the interview take place? Why did you select this particular person? What Agent/Target memberships were present?

2. Analysis. Using the listening skills from the class lectures/handouts, analyze what occurred in your listening experience making sure to cite the concepts and skills involved.You can refer to specific parts of your transcript to provide documentation of specific awareness or skills.

3. Application and Reflection. Reflect on what you learned from this listening/sharing experience. Are you changed from this experience? If so, how? Be specific. What was hard for you? What did you do well? What would you do differently?

Your interview must be word-processed, double-spaced, and fully developed. Your paper should include three headings: 1) context; 2) application and reflection, and 3) analysis. Your paper should also include a well-developed transcript. (Remember in your first interview that students who included a major portion of their interview scored better in this category.) Like your first cultural interview, we will apply a rubric to evaluate your paper (see end of this assignment).

Listening/Communication Skills

Use this list to remind you of strategies for listening and to write your interview.

·  Creating a safe experience/environment so the other person can be fully authentic

·  Being aware of the other person's feelings (expressed and hinted at)

·  Paying attention to the other's person's nonverbal communication (what are they saying to me nonverbally that is important for me to notice?)

·  Using strategic questions to seek deeper meaning (open versus closed questions)

·  Using paraphrasing (so what I heard you say) and encouraging skills (nods, supportive sounds)

·  Practicing being fully present through maintaining a centered presence (calm presence, open mind and heart)

·  Cultivating empathy (do I seek to understand or am I just doing this exercise to get the assignment done?)

·  Maintaining self awareness and a quiet mind (watching for "red flag" words and being able to let go of my own agenda or beliefs)

·  Establishing resonance (dropping into my own vulnerability and humanity) through empathetic listening

Assessment Rubric for Interview 2
Element / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1
Assignment: Completion / Follows completely the assignment instructions creating a holistic, well crafted (with both evidence and reflection), and grammatically correct writing on the complex intersection of culture and communication from a personal perspective. / Provides the reader with a well crafted assignment that follows the assignment format and develops for the reader a clear sense of what the writer did and learned through this assignment about culture and communication / Somewhat follows the instructions of the assignment showing the reader a beginning understanding of difference, complexity, sensitivity and curiosity
/ The assignment demonstrates a rudimentary level of completion and complexity
Skills: Empathy / Interprets intercultural experience from the perspectives of own and more than one worldview and demonstrates ability to act in a supportive manner that recognizes the feelings of another cultural group. / Recognizes intellectual and emotional dimensions of more than one worldview and sometimes uses more than one worldview in interactions. / Identifies components of other cultural perspectives but responds in all situations with own worldview. / Views the experience of others but does so through own cultural worldview.
Knowledge: Cultural Self Awareness / Articulates insights into own cultural rules and biases (e.g. seeking complexity; aware of how her/his experiences have shaped these rules, and how to recognize and respond to cultural biases, resulting in a shift in self-description.) / Recognizes new perspectives about own cultural rules and biases (e.g. not looking for sameness; comfortable with the complexities that new perspectives offer.) / Identifies own cultural rules and biases (e.g. with a strong preference for those rules shared with own cultural group and seeks the same in others.) / Shows minimal awareness of own cultural rules and biases (even those shared with own cultural group(s)) (e.g. uncomfortable with identifying possible cultural differences with others.)

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