Cultural Plunge Part 1 - The work for culturally responsive practices

Cultural Plunge Part 1

Background

The work for culturally responsive practices starts with you. In this assignment, you are to engage in a cultural immersion experience that will provide individual exposure to persons or groups markedly different in ethnicity/culture/lifestyle from your own.

The focus of this activity is to provide you with an understanding of self-reflection as it relates to personal biases with opportunities to gain new insight into other cultures, what it feels like to be in an environment where you are culturally different and to reflect upon your own reactions, observances, and biases. The cultural plunge should include the conditions specified in the assignment document.

View this Ted Talk video "Recognize Your Own Implicit Bias to be Inclusive." While viewing the video, identify which of these traits you possess and what biases you may have related to groups that are different from you. This activity will provide you with a memorable experience with a person(s) who is different from you (age, religion, gender, socioeconomic, culture, nationality, etc.) so that you reflect and learn more about yourself and your implicit biases.

Recognize your own implicit bias to be inclusive | Adela Sánchez Askeland | TEDxUiO - YouTube

After watching the video, do your research, and challenge yourself to learn about different cultural experiences. Explore specific cultures, religions, languages, etc., that intrigue you, and make a list of things you would like to learn about them, history, norms, cuisine, holidays, celebrations, etc. Use sites to study different cultures. This will be the first part of the cultural immersion experience.

As you view the video, start to think about some experiences that might have shaped your perceptions of others. Our unconscious bias emerges from our lived experiences; thus, the next step in awareness is to think of ways to challenge some of your assumptions deliberately.

This two-part assignment will unpack individual implicit biases that have been shaped by a need for the familiar. It is normal to want to be with people with the same background, experience, or personal traits; it makes us comfortable, and we feel safe. However, on the flip side, we avoid people who are unfamiliar or different in any way—effectively "other" -ing them, and many times, we are unaware this is what we’re doing. Bias itself isn’t always negative it serves as a useful survival mechanism that helps us filter information.

This assignment will be taking you out of your “comfort zone” so that you can identify biases that you have and are not aware of.

Instructions

For this project, you will need to plan ahead, and your preparation for the entire assignment will include:

Research, i.e., websites literature or interviews

You will need to plan to spend 2 hours conducting observation, interaction, and or interviewing at the location site you have selected as your cultural immersion activity.

Part 1 - Cultural Plunge

Complete the Checklist Template and provide an abstract of four to five sentences summarizing the research, and literature review and, present your rationale as to why you are choosing this setting, identify your priority for self-reflection and how this benefits advocacy.

Cultural Plunge Part 1:

Step

1

Submit and brief abstract (5-6 sentences) and APA citation from your research, journals, article etc.   

2

Define the question, why is this new to you, what to you hope to gain from this experience, emotionally and intellectually

3

What is the setting that you are conducting your cultural plunge activity at, consider parental rights, and minors’ rights

4

Read the position statement 

https://schoolcounselor.org/Standards-Positions/Position-Statements/ASCA-Position-Statements/The-School-Counselor-and-Anti-Racist-Practices

Explain in this template your potential course of action for nurturing anti-racist practices.