Community Dialogue Reflection

For my community dialogue, the topic of discussion included identity, positionality, and vulnerability. My primary focus was on identity. For an exercise, I asked the class to make a list of five things that they believe identifies who they are today. Then I asked them to make a list of five things that identified who they were three to four years ago, and compare the two lists. The purpose of the exercise was to look at how our identities change with time, but it is those experiences that we bring to the community that helps us to be good service providers. I think that comparison of the list worked well. I think that the class saw how our identities have changed but we are still the same people. There were two questions that I asked the class during my session that didn’t work well. I think part of that was that my nerves were getting the better part of me, and I didn’t frame the questions very well.

One of the concepts that I attempted to connect the discussion with was that of connecting with the community that we serve. I focused on the article by Abraham Verghese titled “Close Encounters of the Human Kind.” I feel like this connection is important so that our communities feel respected and that they are being treated with dignity. I also attempted to connect to Beverly Tatum’s article “The Complexity of Identity” to show how we can use our identities to help people. I wanted to show how our identities are constantly evolving.

For more information on the topics, there is a short video on YouTube titled The Complexity of Identity: Who am I? by Sarah Morris. The video discusses a lot of the topics that Beverly Tatum covers in her article.