African American Group Teaching

On Thursday, April 7^th my cooperative group led a presentation on African Americans. When we were assigned this topic, I was quit excited. I have grown up with African Americans since I was a kid, and I got along with every one I knew. From my past experiences with African Americans, I had nothing but good happen between us. I have always looked at them as a regular person and that is how people should look at everyone.

Doing this presentation, I realized that there are so many stereotypes towards African Americans, and they are used so many times we do not even realize it. I have also realized how certain African Americans have had a huge impact on our society today. My perception of African American really did not change after we presented this to the class. I do not think it changed because I had a great perception towards African Americans. From hanging out with black kids my whole life, I saw what they went through and how they lived their life, so it was nothing new to me.

Like I said when we were assigned African Americans, I felt really excited and eager to share the information and experiences we had for the class. I did feel a little nervous about our guest speaker at first, but she was awesome and the best part of our presentation. When she was speaking to the class, I could not believe what her family went through, and the crazy part to me was that it happened right here in our hometown Mankato, MN. After the presentation, I felt that I should have talked more about African American religions, and Jesse could have had a lot more information on African Americans being oppressed. I felt those two topics were the low point of our presentation. Angie did a wonderful job on the overall presentation; she took control which was nice. I felt that she did awesome on her part of the presentation and the group activities. Adfs We had a variety of communication skills in our presentation. Angie started it out with a little bit of lecture but mostly led the class in a great group activity. How I communicated to the class was lecture, and Jesse used a little bit of lecture and visual aid. If I could change one thing about our presentation, then I would change how I presented my information. I wish I would not have been so boring and steered away from lecturing to the class about religion.

When my group first met in the Library, we decided what roles we would take to contribute to the group. I told the group that I would arrange for the speaker to come in, present the group about African Americans and Religion, make our evaluation forms to be handed out, and present the class with a story. I was going to ask Bukata Hayes to speak to our class; he is an African American that heads the cultural diversity department at Bethany Lutheran College, but he was not available. I then went to the cultural diversity office at Minnesota State, and they steered me toward Tonya Phillips, who said she would be glad to do it. Finding a speaker was probably the most stressful and difficult thing I had to do for this presentation. I was worried I would not find one, but it all worked out in the end. After I got the speaker arranged, I printed off a story that was perfect for the presentation and then I looked up information on African Americans and religion. I had a tough time finding information on religion, but the night before the presentation, I finally found a good site that I used. My last job was to do the evaluations. I have done those before for my Physical Education classes, so it was not that difficult to do.

When looking at my temperament letters "ENFJ," I think they really went well with how I contributed to the group. I wanted to be responsible for the speaker, and I feel that was the biggest part of presentation. I was determined to find a good speaker and I felt responsible for that; I did not want to the let the group down. I did do one thing that was not very responsible, and that was telling Tonya, the speaker, the wrong room number which almost cost us not having a speaker. That was not extrovert of me. When we got our evaluations back, a lot of them said that I was pretty much boring when talking about religion. I did not get mad that people were saying that. I took that as something I can challenge myself to get better at being energetic and enthused.

These cooperative group presentations have been so informative, and I have been learning so much about different races and cultures. It was even better to share my knowledge about some of my good friends and their lifestyles of today.