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COIL Project of the McLennan Community College (MCC) students in Texas
and Czech students at the Faculty of Education, Masaryk University (MUNI)
Reflective task
created by Zdeněk Janík (MUNI) and Amy Antoninka (MCC
Instructions:
You and your buddies abroad will shoot short videos, vlogs, or create Instagram posts about your
culture. You will then share the video with the pair of students abroad and set a date and time on
which you will meet on-line to talk about the video.
Your videos and talks should not primarily focus on where you are from, but what your experience is.
And your experience is where you are a local. We are encouraging you to share a picture of your life in
a local context.
Taiye Selasi, in her TED talk “Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, Ask Where I’m a Local” (2015)
(https://matadornetwork.com/bnt/dont-ask-im-local/) comes up with a three-step test to find out
where you are a local:
1. Think about your rituals: making your coffee, going to school or work, meeting friends for
lunch. What kind of rituals do you have and where do they occur?
2. Think about your relationships: the people who you meet on your regular day or the people
who shape your weekly emotional experience; whom you meet at least once a week face to
face (not all your Facebook friends )
3. Think also about your restrictions: What are your restrictions where you are a local?
Where are you limited in the ways you want to live? For example, are you restricted by having
to have a passport or visa to travel where you want to? Or do you need to use only a car to
reach your places? Are you restricted by economic situation? Are you restricted by not
speaking the local language?
You are asked to watch Taiye Selasi’s TED talk (see the link above). Think about your rituals,
relationships and restrictions when shooting your videos about your culture and where you are a local.
Reflective questions you will be asked to discuss on-line:
How is what you saw in the video the same or different from what you do in your local culture?
What details did you notice in the video? What rituals, relationships, restrictions? Are your rituals,
relationships, and restrictions similar or different? Give some examples.
What particularly caught your attention and why?
What did you find interesting/surprising/shocking in the video? Why?
Did you make any plans before shooting your video? Why? Why not?
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We also want to hear from you about your learning experience:
• How have you gotten out of your comfort zone through the Vlog assignment?
Continue thinking about how you've gotten out of you comfort zones and the learning that's occurred,
we'd like you to share:
• What opportunities have you experienced through the Vlog assignment?
Having an open-minded and flexible attitude is essential to getting out of your comfort zones. We'd
like to hear about your attitudes and how they are changing.
• What have you learned about your attitude? How have you been working to change it?
Changing our attitudes can help us to be open to others' experiences and perspectives. And it can help
us evaluate our beliefs about other people and their culture. Everyone has stereotypes. They are
ethno-centric views of culture where our own experience shapes how we view others and their
culture. They can become self-fulfilling prophecies if not looked at and used to reevaluate our
attitudes.
• What stereotypes have you identified in yourself? How have you seen them shape your
view? How are you working on them?
Write a short summary of your answers (a report of 400-500 words).