This is your life! A lifeline exercise to promote discussion of differences

The purpose of "This Is Your Life" is to help students become more aware of how earlier life experiences with those who are different from themselves have shaped their present attitudes, beliefs, and values. The learning from this focus on the past is then extrapolated to the students' current environment, including the workplace, school, family, and social settings. Through drawing, writing, and dialogue, the students develop a greater appreciation for the ways in which their differences are enriching as well as challenging (Baker & Kolb, 1993; Barry, 1994; Edwards, 1986; Nurick, 1990; McKee & Schor, 1994). With proper facilitation, this exercise can also an excellent trust builder and team builder.

Overview of the Activity

Students individually depict on flip chart paper or transparencies their personal critical incidents with diversity over their lifetimes. Following guided reflective writing, students then describe these lifelines (Bowen, Lewicki, Hall, & Hall, 1997, pp. 289-293) to the entire class or to three to five others in a small subgroup depending on available time and circumstances. The exercise concludes with a whole-class discussion.

This exercise is most effective in a safe and trusting classroom environment in which students can feel free to be open about their experiences, feelings, and attitudes. The safer the climate, the more risks the students will take and the deeper their personal learning will be (Schor, 1993).

Conceptual Model

The overall design of the exercise follows Kolb's (1984) experiential learning model. Students begin by graphically and symbolically portraying key experiences in their lives related to diversity issues (concrete experience). Next, they spend time writing about what they have just created and sharing their thoughts and drawings with others (reflective observation). The instructor facilitates a discussion about this experience, extracting themes and tying ideas to theories and concepts discussed in the course (abstract conceptualization). Finally, students are asked to describe action steps they will take to put these new learnings into practice in their school, work, and personal lives (active experimentation). Completing this phase generates new concrete experiences and begins the cycle again.

Suggestions for Effective Use

We have used "This Is Your Life" in a semester-long diversity course at the graduate level and as a diversity module within graduate courses in management and organizational behavior. Although we have...