Charles C. Smith, former UTSC faculty, describes his experience teaching in UTSC classrooms, and the ways in which the lived experiences of a diverse body of students contributes to an enriched learning experience for both students and faculty.
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0:01
I never imagined a campus as diverse, let’s put it that way. Yeah, and you know, I mean,
0:12
I was a senior exec in the former regional government of Toronto. We did a lot of demographic analysis so we kind of knew where things where going.
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But it’s very different when you see it on paper and then you walk into a classroom and you see it, and you see it again, and you see it again.
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In my teaching I’ve been blown away by the lived experience of students. So I grew up in a very different time.
0:39
I was the only Black in my class in high school. There weren’t many Blacks in university when I went there, and then when I studied drama, when I
0:48
studied it in downtown, I lived in New York and I studied in the village, I was the only Black in that class and I went
0:54
to Harlem to study as well and of course it was all Black. So that sort of thing. And I come into these classrooms where
1:02
even young white women have grown up or men have grown up in an incredibly racially, religiously, linguistically, culturally diverse classrooms.
1:14
And so they come in with a kind of knowledge that through their lived experience I never had, tapping into that and letting them explore it a bit more has been some amazing stuff.
