CAMPUSPEAK

A campus training that goes beyond diversity!

For many campuses, diversity is the elephant in the room. Each year, we have new students coming to our campuses from every walk of life, and we struggle with how to best prepare our communities to respond in a progressive, respectful, constructive way.

As diversity morphs into something bigger—social justice—you might be struggling for a positive, proactive way to train those students and staff who work on the front lines with your diverse student body. You may also be looking for something different than just diversity training – something that really facilitates a better understanding of how we as individuals “show up” and how we can take responsibility to being better change agents.

Elephants & Onions is a workshop based on the seven elements of The Social Change Model of Leadership incorporating individual, group, and community responsibility. It’s appropriate for any student or staff audience that needs to move from tolerance or acceptance to advocacy.

Elephants & Onions is a starting point for the difficult discussions that surround social justice and social change. As you peel back the layers of dominant identity privilege, marginalized life experiences, patterns of assumptions and behaviors, and the widely varying values sets that each individual holds dear, it can be uncomfortable. A few tears might be shed – kind of like peeling an onion.

Get it?  Elephants in the room.  Peeling the onion.  Elephants & Onions.

Jessica Pettitt, a CAMPUSPEAK speaker and widely acclaimed social justice trainer and facilitator, created the Elephants & Onions curriculum. She made sure that it included the most cutting-edge, thought provoking activities, so your students spend more time talking and interacting, and less time listening. These activities and resources can be easily replicated by participants as on-going programming for your campus community. Your team will get a highly interactive experience that will leave everyone feeling empowered to create a stronger, safer, more nurturing community for people of all walks of life.

Some of the discussion points your team will discuss include:

What is social justice?
What assumptions and judgments do we culturally make about others and how does this impact relationships and conversations?
How do others label us? How do we label others? 
What is the difference between intention and impact on others?
How can we stay congruent with our sense of integrity when working across difference?
What is the root of the messages I have learned?
What personal qualities are we attempting to foster and develop in those who participate in a leadership development program?
What personal qualities are most supportive of group functioning and positive social change?
How can the collaborative leadership development process be designed not only to facilitate the development of the desired individual qualities but also to effect positive social change?
Toward what social ends is the leadership development activity directed?
What kinds of activities are the most effective in energizing the group and in developing desired personal qualities in the individual?

Best of all, these questions are dealt with in the context of your team’s mission, be that new student orientation, first year experience, emerging leader development, residence life community and paraprofessional staff development, or student life departmental training.  This is not a program that focuses on race, sexual orientation, or other identity groups; instead the focus is on each participant and how they show up consciously and unconsciously.  We invite EVERYONE on your team to use this space to reflect on themselves and create goals with our Being Better! Action Plan that allows for as much imperfection as it does growth.  Lastly, resources are provided for the professional staff to conduct follow up conversations and additional resources for on-going staff development.

Elephants & Onions also will address:

• team building/bonding
• confrontation/difficult conversations skills
• communicating across difference (sexuality, race, class, religion, ability, nationality, veteran, age, first generation students, transfer, non-traditional students, mental health, etc.)
• intersectionality of identities
• being a social justice advocate
• making judgments/assumptions and writing back stories
• self care and dealing with unpopular emotional reactions to being uncomfortable
• ethical decisions aligned with integrity
• customer service and open dialog
• oppression/privilege
• dominant and subordinated identities
• responsibility and leadership

Workshop Details

There are two versions of Elephants & Onions:

• an abbreviated 3-hour workshop, perfect for weekday evenings or as part of an existing training.
• a longer 6-hour version is for those who want to go deeper and reinforce the messages of social justice with more interactive activities and team builders, more “now what?” sharing, and more “next step” planning.

Who Is This Ideal For?

Orientation leaders, staff training in residence life, for peer educator training, and for fraternity and sorority leaders.

To learn more about Elephants & Onions, please call 303-745-5545 or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).  We are able to pull together a workshop quickly for your Spring 2010 needs.