Breaking the Hierarchy: Empowering Students in the Field

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Plaza A

Floor: Lobby Level

Experiential education models can often maintain the myths of hierarchical relationships between educators, supervisors, and students, placing them as subordinates in those relationships. However, when we flip that script, break the hierarchy, and challenge traditional notions of teacher and student, we give them the appropriate confidence, support and tools to share of themselves, their knowledge, and their skills. As externship teachers, we want to foster a receptive environment for student autonomy and agency, and to help them realize how much value they can bring to the profession. This session will allow us to explore this concept individually and as a group, through hypotheticals, role plays, and concrete examples. We will consider how to nurture and strengthen our students to be confident yet humble when they go into placements and to bring their authentic and valuable selves; how to work with supervisors to embrace their role as teacher, but also consider being on equal footing in the teacher student relationship on some topics and being the student on other topics; and how to remain open to teaching/feedback from our students to ensure we are creating supportive yet challenging learning environments. Ultimately, whether it is knowing how to better communicate with different constituents (i.e. a client community), understanding diversity and inclusion practices, offering competency in a particular industry, providing novel insights or expertise, pushing us to expand our programs or challenge our notions of what works (e.g. paid externships), and/or viewing traditional systems with fresh eyes, our students bring real strengths and assets into our classrooms and the field. Whether embracing a bold idea or making a small change, externship faculty have a unique opportunity to empower students and help them own who they are and what they bring.