{"id":11978,"date":"2025-02-20T12:28:48","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T18:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rctc.edu\/echo\/?p=11978"},"modified":"2025-11-20T08:24:28","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:24:28","slug":"yellowjacket-diversity-series-continues-with-sydney-frye-and-the-art-of-conversations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/yellowjacket-diversity-series-continues-with-sydney-frye-and-the-art-of-conversations\/","title":{"rendered":"Diversity Series Continues with The Art of Conversations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe have lost the art of conversation,\u201d says Sidney Frye, the second guest speaker of RCTC\u2019s Yellowjacket Diversity Series.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, February 18<\/span>th<\/span>, Sidney Frye spoke about how to have courageous conversations with people across a wide variety of cultures. Sidney is a mental health and racial equity speaker; he shared numerous tips with students on how to move forward and embrace difficult conversations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sidney shared that, \u201cin order to increase your understanding of others, you have to increase your understanding of yourself first.\u201d This may sound odd or scary for some, but Sidney makes the important point that the only way to grow in a skill is to see where your comfort zone is and then move out of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Getting out of your comfort zone doesn\u2019t simply mean having a single conversation with someone from a different culture and then reaching a mythical point of \u201cenlightenment,\u201d as Sidney jokes. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In his talk, he explained that developing communication competence is sort of a circular process, in which you have to realize and examine the potential biases you have, based on your own cultural values and norms or upbringing. Making assumptions about another person is something that everyone does, but it\u2019s how you handle these thought processes that makes a difference.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An important takeaway from Tuesday\u2019s session: finding the way into our \u201ccourage zone\u201d is the best way to become more open to intercultural communication. Sidney defines a few \u201czones,\u201d beginning with the zone that we prefer to stay in, which is our \u201ccomfort zone.\u201d On the other end of the spectrum falls our \u201ccritical zone,\u201d which is where you either become confrontational or disassociate from a conversation altogether.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The happy middle of these three zones is the \u201ccourage zone.\u201d This is where you acknowledge where you are at in cultural communication and where you want to be. This is not meant to be a place of self-judgment, but rather a place of self-reflection. Instead of being afraid of offending someone with what you say, it is better to start a conversation with the recognition that you do not know everything, but that you want to learn more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, Sidney reminds students that it is important to \u201cpeel onions\u201d in intercultural communication, which essentially means peeling back the layers of someone\u2019s personality and culture in order to understand them better. Instead of \u201cminimizing,\u201d which is trying to find only commonalities between ourselves and others, we should practice having conversations about the differences. This is an active practice of courage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sidney\u2019s final analogy was about a table. He noted that some people feel apprehensive about having intercultural conversations because they wonder, \u201cWhat do <\/span>I <\/span><\/i>bring to the table? I don\u2019t have any culture\u2026\u201d Sidney demonstrated that\u00a0everyone has culture, and therefore everyone has something to bring to the table, as long as that thing isn\u2019t preconceived notions. He prompted us to ask ourselves, \u201cWhat can I bring to the table and what should I leave behind?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to hear another inspiring talk, please join us next week on February 25th, when we listen to Dr. Jorgenson discuss safe space training, which will be a two-hour session.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This series runs from February 11<\/span>th<\/span> to March 4<\/span>th<\/span> and is a part of the campus\u2019s strategic academic plan for the next few years. One specific goal of the plan is to cultivate inclusivity and collaboration across the campus, which will aid in professional and academic growth. Thus, by attending at least three of the four speaker sessions, students (who have signed up) can earn a certificate of completion to add to their resumes. Besides this, the sessions are a wonderful opportunity for students to learn about different cultural, gendered, and professional experiences and ask questions directly of those speaking about these topics.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

by Theresa Charron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe have lost the art of conversation,\u201d says Sidney Frye, the second guest speaker of RCTC\u2019s Yellowjacket Diversity Series. On Tuesday, February 18th, Sidney Frye spoke about how to have courageous conversations with people across a wide variety of cultures. Sidney is a mental health and racial equity speaker; he shared numerous tips with students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1050,"featured_media":11982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yellowjackets-diversity-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1050"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}