The toolkits connected to The Discourse with Dr. Shea are designed to help you pause, reflect, and make meaning after listening to an episode. These resources center Black professional staff in higher education and support movement from individual experience toward structural clarity.
You don’t need to read everything at once. These toolkits are here to return to when work feels confusing, heavy, or isolating.
How to Use the Discourse Toolkits
The toolkits connected to The Discourse with Dr. Shea are designed to help you slow down, reflect, and make meaning after listening to an episode.
These are not assignments.
They are not meant to be completed all at once.
They are meant to be returned to.
Here are a few ways you might use a toolkit:
- After listening, read through the episode focus and reflection questions
- Sit with one question instead of trying to answer all of them
- Journal, pray, think, or talk through what comes up
- Share an episode or toolkit with a trusted colleague or community space
- Return later when work feels confusing, heavy, or isolating
Some episodes include deeper scholarship and analysis than others. This is intentional. As the podcast progresses, the toolkits will grow in depth alongside the conversations.
You do not need to understand everything immediately.
Clarity often comes in layers.
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Episode 1 — Foundations of The Discourse
Orientation, truth-telling, and why this space exists.
→ View Episode 1 Toolkit (Toolkit content coming soon)
Episode 2 — Silence, Survival, and Truth-Telling
How silence operates as professionalism and survival.
→ View Episode 2 Toolkit (Toolkit content coming soon)
Episode 3 — Professionalism, Tokenism, and the Cost of Belonging
Professionalism as a mechanism of control in higher education.
→ View Episode 3 Toolkit (Toolkit content coming soon)