Summary: Safe Space In The Classroom

Response to Dean’s Handout Beginning the semester with the handout titled “Safe Space in the Classroom,” written by Rica Garcia, was a great way to prepare for a positive learning experience at Richland College. I find that learning to work together in a group is challenging, especially when members of the team do not have similar goals. For example, in a group project in a World History class, the assignment was to create a presentation about an event during the Civil War. The teacher assigned the groups to divide up the work among themselves. I tried to work on my part of the assignment, but I was too distracted. During the second group meeting, we were to discuss the assigned project, but Tom, a member of my group, decided to chat about what he watched on TV the night before. Tom insisted on talking for almost the whole one-hour class period about the television show. I tried to be brave and asked Tom to get back on task, and it worked for about five minutes. Unfortunately, Tom then started talking about another episode of the television show. Because I was frustrated by the bad experiences working with my group, I agree with the suggestion from Associate Dean Paula Eschliman that students should follow the safe space guidelines in order to get more out of their educational experiences. As a consequence of not
following the safe space guidelines, members of my group received a failing grade for the assignment. Even though I felt like screaming at Tom and the group members in frustration, I decided to stay calm. The off-topic distractions from Tom kept members of the group from finishing the project on time. I was very disappointed that I received a failing grade since I usually made very good grades on most of my coursework in school. An additional outcome from this learning experience was that I did not receive the reinforcement needed to learn information for the tests in the class; thus, I struggled when it came time to study for the final exam.
Although the group project situation was not resolved to my satisfaction, I learned that I could have taken actions that would have made the result more satisfying.
For example, I could have asked for help from interested members of the group to finish the assignment with me. Also, the outcome might have been different if I had asked the teacher to assign me to another group. Another option that might have changed the situation was to ask the school counselor for help. Overall, from the World History class experience, I learned that using the safe space guidelines can make a huge positive impact on the learning environment for everyone going to
college.