- Gear Ups are an intentional and continuously integrated part of the Turing curriculum. They are used to instill the purpose of our mission and aid the student body in building a diverse and inclusive community.
- Gear Ups provide students with knowledge about intersections of identity and institutionalized systems of power, along with data and vocabulary connecting those topics to tech specifically.
Depending on the cohort that you're in, Facilitator should pull up the attendance spreadsheet and quickly take attendance. If in a mixed group, pass around a sign-up sheet.
Explain rationale for racial caucusing.
"White people and people of color each have work to do separately and together. Caucuses provide spaces for people to work within their own racial/ethnic groups. For people of color, a caucus is a place to work with their peers on their experiences of internalized racism, for healing and to work on liberation. For white people, a caucus provides time and space to work explicitly and intentionally on understanding white culture and white privilege and to increase one’s critical analysis around these concepts. A white caucus also puts the onus on white people to teach each other about these ideas, rather than constantly relying on people of color to teach them."
White people are often uncomfortable with the idea of white caucuses as part of racial equity work. A typical comment is “if we are working on racism, isn’t it better for us to learn together?” It does feel awkward to separate by race. Yet such separation occurs all the time in real life, and many times that reality is not understood or interrogated as it is when participating in a caucus. Since white people often find learning about whiteness and white privilege a steep learning curve, taking advantage of caucus time to do this work can be extremely useful." From racialequitytools.org
The focus of the above statement is around white people's experience not because we believe white people should be centered in this discussion but because it is often white people who experience more discomfort seperating based on race because they are socialized to think of themselves as individuals and not based on their race.
Four separate rooms available for small group discussions.
Body check. Reminder of Norms. Acknowledgement that this is scary and we aren't experts.
Go around-how do you self identify, how are you feeling coming into this session? (each student should share for up to two minutes)
PoC group:
- What has it been like to be in this space with white people learning about this for the first time?
- What was your reaction/ reflections on sessions 1 and 2 (Norms & Empathy and Intersectionality).
- What was it like selecting this group?
- Have you felt that you have had to educate others on race and social justice in your life?
- How do you feel about the idea of emotional labor as a PoC in tech?
- How has this shown up at Turing?
- How do you anticipate this showing up in your future work? -Review HW assignment of choosing the other perspective
White groups:
- What have been your reactions to the first two sessions?
- What does it feel like knowing some of your cohort is not here?
- What was your initial reaction to selecting this group?
- How often do you/ have you relied on PoC to teach you and relive trauma in order for you to learn?
- Can you identify a time you did something racist or that you saw someone else do something racist? How did you respond?
- What is your role as a white person to examine your race/address racism? What does your role look like in tech spaces, with your families, in white spaces, in multiracial spaces, etc.?
- Fight/Flight/Freeze - what are you feeling right now? Is this real trauma? Or just discomfort? -Review HW assignment of choosing the other perspective
Not comfortable identifying as either:
- What have been your reactions to the first two sessions?
- Why did you choose this group?
- Fight/Flight/Freeze - what are you feeling right now? Is this real trauma? Or just discomfort?
- How do you feel race plays into your daily interactions? -Review HW assignment of choosing the other perspective
Ten minutes to reflect on how you think this relates to our mission and future work in the tech industry. In notebooks!
Please have students complete the Gear Up reflection in their personal Gear Up gist, answering these questions:
- What are you left thinking about from today's session?
- How do you think the concepts covered in Gear Up today will impact you as a software developer? 3-5 sentences
- Any additional thoughts on the session today?
These reflections will take the place of Gear Up Surveys, and students should continue using that same gist to reflect throughout the module.
Final takeaways from staff facilitators. Grounding exercise - guided meditation TBD.