Emery Marc Petchauer

Emery Marc Petchauer

Today while finalizing class norms, we tagged on “no gotcha questions” to the norm about leaning into the discomfort of disagreement. What’s a gotcha question? We said it’s a question designed to show what someone else doesn’t know and/or point out a contradiction between two things they said — in order to (and this is crucial) discredit them. The threat of gotcha questions interferes with learning — especially unlearning — and even teaching. It’s even more the case when disagreement and discomfort might be crucial to the learning — as it is in this course. No gotcha questions in Young Adult Lit + Antiracist Teaching this semester.