Noticing Our Norms so We Can Change Them

This paper uses the REA [Religious Education Association] 2018 Presidential Address as a case study for noticing the benefits of adopting better norms for facilitating across diversities of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and people groups. It offers four facilitation norms and explains how their use can help create a container in which participants are more likely to notice the re-centering of privilege as it is happening and take action to create more hospitable and equitable spaces before doing harm. It also problematizes two norms of academia -- anonymous evaluation and abiding by implicit hierarchy -- as barriers to creating more equitable and collegial spaces.