Well, good morning. I'm Michael Greig. I'm a professor in the Department of
Political Science and the story- I'm not sure whether it's the best or worst, and
it's a little bit of both, and I think the degree to which it's the best is
probably more owing to my students than to anything that I did. I teach classes
in conflict and conflict management, and one of the things that I really focus on
when I teach these classes is, I'm really worried about trying to teach about the
concepts that we're talking about but avoiding doing so in a really sterile
environment. Because we're typically talking about awful things that happen
around the world and how we can manage them, so confidence-building measures
amongst parties in an ethnic conflict, or how peacekeepers can be deployed to a
civil war in order to kind of manage the amount of violence, or stop the spread of
violence. And so, during my classes, what I like to do is, at about midterm after the
first exam, have a simulation. And the simulation is one that tries to put the
students in the environments in which we're talking, so that they can kind of
experience some of the things that we're talking about and kind of exercise some
of the ideas that we've explored over the course of the semester. The problem
though is that I'm always worried about that the stakes have to be enough that
they care about the simulation to experience it. And so, one of the early
ones that I did in my time at UNT, I was really trying to weigh how do I do this.
And I thought about making it part of their exam grade, and I kind of wimped
out because I imagined that, you know, things would go crazy, and I'd have
students, you know, that would hate one another. And so, I just decided, well, we're
just gonna have the simulation and so it was modeled on a fictionalized version
of a civil war and the students were kind of randomly assigned to a series of
groups. So some students were assigned to a government group, some were part of a
rebel group, some were part of the United Nations mission, and things like that. And
unbeknownst to me, I managed to- in assigning the groups- have a boyfriend
and a girlfriend, who had been together for a long period of time who were in my
class, one of them was in the government and the other one was in the rebel group
and you can see where I'm headed. And so, the simulation plays out and my worry is
about them not being stakeholders proved to be unfounded, because they were really
engaged, and the class was really engaged, so I was very very
happy. And then, as the simulation is unfolding they are becoming more and
more unhappy with one another. So much so, that by the end of the simulation they
have broken up. And so, now I'm I'm realizing that I am
now Dr. Michael Greig: Destroyer of Dreams which is not good. And so, I'm- I'm
thinking this is the worst moment of my teaching career. Fast forward a few weeks,
and there's sort of this steady cold war in my class between this couple who
won't talk to one another, they're now sitting on opposite sides of the room, it
was a class of about 30 students who had gotten to know one another.
Unbeknownst to me, the students in my class though proceeded over the next few
weeks to apply many of the principles that we had talked about in managing
conflicts. So there were students that were creating back channels of diplomacy
between the couple who were talking about things that they shared in common
and kind of using that basic sort of principles that we talked about in terms
of diplomacy and conflict management. So my students had resurrected what had
been the worst teaching moment of my career and turned it into the best
teaching moment I career and it was sort of a luster though kind of two things
that I've learned in teaching. One: I am NOT the conduit of all knowledge, that my
students oftentimes are able to kind of find that path and they did a very good
job of that there. And, I can never underestimate the degree to which they
will surprise me, and each time I do these simulations in my classes,
invariably they will be surprised. I haven't destroyed any more relationships and I'm
glad about that, but invariably they will come up with something new, and something
different, and something that's surprising.
So, thank you.