Mouth Related Musings

I often put a lot of thought into what goes into and comes out of my mouth. One will go in to nourish my body and the other is an outward reflection of my internal ideas and values.

Each week here we have a student led reflection session. This is a time where instead of listening to mine/ThinkImpact’s ideas on a topic or how to approach the curriculum, the students have free reign to direct their own conversation. I’m meant to be a silent observer, which gives me a fascinating insight into the influence the community and I have already had, as well as what is clearly not getting through.

As we have now entered the Inspiration phase of the Innovation Institute, the students are working in pairs to form teams with at least twice as many community partners as students—after which they will produce a Design Challenge and potential solution. More on that later as it deserves its own post.

This week’s reflection session focused around the use of language as the students selected community partners. It went something like this, “Guys, I don’t know if anyone else is feeling this way, but I’ve been catching myself talking about community members in a way that is too impersonal and is making me uncomfortable. We are talking about ‘using’ one person or another in our team, and I know if I were forming a team at school of my friends, I wouldn’t ‘use’ them. Also, we haven’t been thinking about which community members might want to work with each other, but instead just the resources and assets that they bring to the table. I think we need to ask our community partners who they feel would make up the most effective team.”

While I could have easily stepped in and told the students that we need to be careful about the language we use when referring to community members, I’m glad that I didn’t. The message got through and in a much more organic way that the students will hold more tightly because it came from their peers. Our approach to a community driven project fits this mindset, too, so I’m hoping this was an early glimpse of things to come as projects get off the ground.

While I don’t see a lot of value in nit-picking specific words to PC our language to death, this carefully thought out reflection rang true for the way we should be thinking about our partners here. Interestingly, in the same day, a young boy at one of the homestays in passing said to a Indian student in the group, “Hey, you’re a [N-word].” My student was essentially dumbfounded, gave a confused half-smile and kept walking. His reasoning for not retorting or getting angry at the boy was because he assumed that in this cultural context, it did not have the same meaning as in America—and he was right. We later asked the boy what he thought the word meant and why he had said it—he thought my student looked like a rapper. He thought that the N-word was meant to refer to someone who was cool since he only heard it in rap songs, it had to mean “cool,” right? We explained that it would be best not to use it when referring to any foreigner as it might be misinterpreted, but left out the true meaning of the word for him. Wisely, my student felt that we shouldn’t give such a young boy the tools to use that word in a divisive way.

I’m thankful to be leading a group of students astute enough to step back from situations to recognize the meaning behind the words we use every day. After all, it is pretty amazing that we have been able to communicate across so many potential barriers, we might as well be sure the right things are coming out of our mouths.

You might be wondering how food and nourishment fit into this conversation about language and words…stay tuned for part two.