Community Dialogue Reflection

Document the session: The topic I presented was on Cultural Humility and Accompaniment. The themes of Cultural Humility and Accompaniment were based on the readings on Cheryl Hyde’s Challenging Ourselves: Critical Self-Reflection on Power and Privilege. Paul Farmer’s On Accompaniment, Jill Stauffer’s interview on Ethical Loneliness. It was a process developing what I wanted to discuss in class with my peers. This topic resonated with me because I feel that cultural humility and accompaniment is very important not only on service learning but in life itself. They are very applicable to many various situations and has personally helped me look at the world in a new lens. I decided have a powerpoint that went over the different terms and quotes that seemed fitting and also powerful. Then I decided to create a worksheet for them to reflect on these subtopics and relate it back to themselves and their community partners.

Reflections: Doing the community dialogue presentation, I learned a lot about what it takes to plan a whole lesson and trying to convey the message you want to relay to your audience. It doest take a lot of time and effort and it was also eye opening to see what teachers go through daily. Also I enjoyed listening to what my fellow peers had to say about the topic from my point of view. It was neat seeing my work flow together with the class.

Connections: One of the quotes I used in my powerpoint was on accompaniment from Paul Farmer’s reading: “To accompany someone is to go somewhere with him or her, to break bread together, to be present on a journey with a beginning and an end” (Farmer, 1). In class we discussed a lot about what the true meaning of community service and we also go to put these lessons into practice. It is evident that our class is able to understand their roles within their community partners and their impacts on the community. We were able to not only learn about topics that were related to community action and social change but to show each other our perspective about certain themes and talk about it. Being able to gather all of the knowledge that I had and be able to do a presentation and to have an active and honest conversation with my classmates is a powerful thing. I’m so glad to be apart of this experience!