In what way has your upbringing and/or current situation limited your exposure or increased your exposure to other cultures and races?

Understanding Others Essay

The purpose of this assignment is to help you develop your Six Areas of Diversity
Consciousness, as discussed in Chapter Four of the Bucher book. Specifically, it is designed to help you examine yourself and your world, explore your knowledge of others and their worlds, step outside of yourself, and gauge the level of the playing field.

You should answer the following questions about yourself and then ask the same questions of at least one other person from a different demographic identity group. Your goal is to first get a deeper understanding of your own experience and then to understand the world through the eyes of someone from a different demographic group. Give special attention to others’ workplace or school-related experiences. I encourage you to choose a target group outside your own comfort zone. You may ask to interview another class member or someone else from the school community, your community, or the workplace.

Template and Specific Instructions for your paper:

Students should use the bold items below as headings for the paper:

Introduction: Give a brief introduction of the person(s) you chose to interview and why you chose that person. You should also describe in what way the person(s) you chose are from a different demographic group as you, using the course material to describe the different demographic identity groups. Be sure to also explain why you chose someone from that particular group and what you hoped to learn from interviewing that particular person.

Analysis of Answers: Analyze the results of your own answers and the answers of the person(s) you interviewed to in order to describe the differences and similarities of your experiences and viewpoints to another from a different demographic

Differences and Similarities: Describe your thoughts and analysis of the difference and similarities between your answers to the questions and the answers of the person(s) you interviewed. Explain why, in your opinion, the answers are different or similar. Explain, in your opinion, how your and the other person’s dimension of diversity affect the answers and explain the similarities and differences.
Relation to Course Concepts Ties your explanations to the concepts in the class. How did the information from the questions relate to the course concepts or help you understand the course concepts better?

Learning Experience: Describe what learned about yourself, your world, and others and their worlds?

How does what you learn help you develop your own cultural awareness and competency. Explain
Conclusion: You should conclude by explaining how what you have learned through this assignment will help you to understand cultural competency and the importance of diversity in the workplace. You should also identify strategies for increasing awareness of multiculturalism and personal and organizational cultural competence.

Length and format:

Your paper should be typed, double-space spaced, between paragraphs. The assignment will be graded on both the student’s reflections and the student’s writing in terms of grammar: sentence structure, punctuation, coherence, and spelling. The paper should be at least 4-7 pages in length, although you will not be penalized for a longer paper. Grammar and spelling do count as part of the grade.

Am looking for more than a paper restating your answers and the other persons’ answers. I am looking for an analysis of both the similarities and differences between the answers and your explanation of why those similarities and differences exist, using course materials and your own thoughts. The analysis and thoughtful reflection are more important than the summary of answers to questions.

Example of questions you can ask yourself and in your interview:

Some of these are on page 102 of the Bucher Book. You do not have to use all these questions and you are free to use your own questions or a combination. You can also modify the questions as you see fit as long as you can get the information you need to meet the requirements of the paper.

What is your name? Does your name have a meaning or significance? What is it?
Where and when were you born?

What is your family background? Who raised you? Whom did you consider ”family” growing up? Where did you spend your childhood? What place in which you lived has influenced you the most?

What kind of community did you grow up in? Where do you currently live (ie rural, suburban, urban).

How do you think your family and community environment in which you grew up affected you?

What was your social class background when you grew up? Describe the level of education and types of jobs held by those who raised you. Did you and your family experience upward or downward mobility?

How did that affect you? How have your experiences in the United States influenced your ideas of the “American Dream”?

What schools did you attend? Did you feel like you belonged or were an outsider in your school? Why?

Did you feel like you had to “leave your culture at home” in order to be accepted at school? Were the values you learned at school similar to the values you learned at home?

How has your identity been influence by your race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation (dis)abilities, and/or social class? How important were these to your identity, goals, and values?

Cultural Encapsulation: In what way has your upbringing and/or current situation limited your exposure or increased your exposure to other cultures and races?

Diversity Consciousness: In what ways do you think your family background, life experiences, and education influenced your diversity consciousness? What do you think your most difficult challenge will be as you work on developing your own diversity consciousness? What is your greatest strength in developing your diversity consciousness?

Sphere of influence: Whom do you “touch” or influence at the present? Whom do you think you will influence in the future? Whom would you say has been your greatest influence and why? Whom do you admire, professionally (it could be someone you know or a famous leader)?

What motivates you? What are your hobbies and interests? What are your goals in life? How do you want to be remembered?

What kinds of learning experiences are memorable for you and what are not?

What about your personality makes you unique? What makes you different from your family?