For most FYW teachers I’ve talked with, the Remix is not a problematic assignment. It’s more of a break and a reward after the hard research work of the Disciplinary Literacies project: a chance to revisit ideas from the semester, express them in a new way and share them with others at the First-Year Writing Conference (spring) or Symposium (fall). It’s also an opportunity to practice skills of team building and maintenance, and project management. As time permits, I like to share some tools from the University of Minnesota, such as “Six Teamwork Myths,” the “Strengths Identifier” questionnaire, the “Team Policies Agreement Guide” and the “Project Task List” (or, as one student actor refers to it, the “project plan document thingy”). In the Learning Reflection that follows the project presentations, I ask students to reflect on how they used these tools, or didn’t, and how they might use or adapt them in the future. They also return to the now-familiar tools of MAPS (for project planning and/or reflective self-assessment) and CRAP (for design).
If a class has been doing anti-racist work all semester, then it will not be hard to create an anti-racist Remix. What can be difficult is narrowing the focus. If students work on teams, whose previous assignment gets Remixed? And which assignment? So I invite the teams to choose an anti-racist or DEI concept that we have studied during the semester, and teach it to visitors at the FYWC/S. I ask them, How can you draw on the work you’ve already done to communicate this concept more effectively than, say, a website that your visitor would find in an online search?
So, for example, students are familiar with the Wheel of Power and Privilege. They won’t simply copy it to a poster and then talk about it, but ruminate on what they could add to it. In terms of Bloom’s revised taxonomy of learning, they have worked their way up through all the levels and are now at the top of the pyramid: Create. One group of students built their own spinning Wheel of Power from box cardboard, and added a new spoke to the wheel, one for students: in-state; out-of-state; international.
FYWC 2022 and afterward, “smashing” the Wheel of Power..
When visitors approached the exhibit, they were asked to spin the wheel and then talk about their identities in the category that came up. This interactive activity engaged not only other students, but faculty and staff. Dr. Joyce Meier observed:
I recall the two students whose Wheel of Power helped initiate [a] dialogue about race between two custodial workers: one white male, the other African American female (and clearly the subordinate). From what I could hear, the white man (the boss) was trying to assert his lack of privilege, while the other three were gently, but firmly, suggesting he might in fact be more privileged than he thought.
Another group also chose the Wheel of Power, but decided to create an online game: after spinning the wheel, visitors were asked factual questions about DEI statistics in the U.S., within the category they landed on. Dr. Meier noted:
I also loved that game with the eye-opening stats (e.g., what percentage of Latinx people go to college, compared to the same percentage of whites) that still another student […] shared.
Indeed, the statistics were “eye-opening,” and I also got answers wrong, repeatedly.
A group with strong interests in web and game design created a Minecraft game with the theme of redlining in real estate. The game was a hit at FYWC, and First-Year Writing director Dr. Julie Lindquist said she was “amazed by the creative imagination shown,” while Dr. Meier said it was a “stand-out moment”:
that utterly amazing (group-authored)
Mindcraft [sic, but I’ll leave it in because it’s such a wonderful Freudian slip] version of redlining and race-based housing segregation.
Many students chose to build a game. One group simply ordered the old Game of Life online, then changed the rules so that players beginning with privilege were helped to keep it, while others “had the cards stacked against them,” so to speak.
“The Game of REAL Life” and its Remix team, spring 2022.
Other groups went with more traditional format, such as posters, but innovated by sticking 3-D arrows into the poster, adding elements of their own experience as well as statistics, and engaging the audience in dialogue.
Representatives of teams “Bias & Stereotype,” “Stereotypes” and “Glass Ceiling,” spring 2022.
During the Remix project and at the First-Year Writing Conference 2022, we saw not only DEI- and anti-racist-themed projects, but diverse and inclusive self-selected teams: Black and Latinx American students working with international students; LGBTQ students working with Muslim women in hijab … And this experience alone, I believe, made their Remix projects worthwhile.
What about you? What are your ideas for using the free-spirited and liberating Remix project to reflect on and share anti-racist concepts?