Many faculty wonder how to help students in the dominant group understand societal privilege without making them defensive. One day, a situation arose in my course that changed my approach to this topic. I was teaching about using APA citations, and, in the course of doing so, opened my spiral-bound copy of the APA manual and folded it back on itself. After several minutes of instruction, I gave students a chance to practice. During this pause, a student spoke up, “I wish my manual had spiral binding,” and the group reverberated with this idea. I hadn’t noticed that my book was different than theirs. But apparently, while I was talking, they were very attuned to the fact my manual was spiral-bound and theirs were paperbacks that didn’t stay open that easily.
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