A lyceum anecdote

A lyceum anecdote
In 2006, a two-year tech college decided to implement the state-required course - Diversity Studies. The Social Science Department embarked on this task.
The Diversity Study is an interdisciplinary course heavily related to Economic-political science and Social psychology. Mary felt quite qualified for this course. Her bachelor's and master's degrees were in Sociology, and one of the other masters was in the politico-economic field.
Recalling when teaching at a four-year college as an adjunct, Mary was interested in teaching subject matter relevant to diversity, but due to lacking a terminal degree, she could not do it. (Note, later, she did complete one through 11 years' dual roles as a student and educator.)
Then, Mary was hired by the above-mentioned technical college as the very first full-time faculty whose native language was not English since the school was established in 1912. Like the previous 4-year one where she taught part-time, this school had similar demographic features in the Midwest part of the US.
Suddenly, Mary became very much desired to facilitate this course. (Some said that because she was the only faculty with a foreign appearance in the Gen Ed college?) Anyway, she did pretty well during the previous 4 years teaching in Sociology/Social Problems, Psychology of Human Relations, and American Government at this school. And, shamelessly, she was nominated to the Teaching Excellent Award, and then, not-good-enough to get the trophy.
In short, she was as happy as a singing-bird to take on this brand-new course.
She delved into the subject matters, reviewing relevant history in detail, collecting stories, videos, compiling articles, designing lesson plans with learning activities, and most importantly, laying out assessments which were crucial of this enterprise. Before classes began, multiple rehearsals were done but, never enough.
Then, she stood on the podium. This course had 6 major topics: beginning with race and ethnicity theme, followed by class, gender, sexuality, disability, plus their intersectionality (the rests were not mentioned due to the limited time of 16 weeks.)
After introducing the course structures, state required learning competencies, expectations, and o on routine Week One information, Mary began with the first topic. She was so excited like a kid opening Christmas gifts in introducing a brief history related to the topic: "...before the Mayflowers, the first color, red/brown Native Americans and lands..., the Revolutionary War, Trail of Tears; the Industrial Revolution; the 2nd, 3rd and other shades of color coming into scenes along with the grand waves of immigrants; the plantations..., the minstrelsies, the Jim-Crow..., and Freedom Riders...etc.- touching on what she thought as basic prior knowledge and common sense..." Mary was proud of herself to get the first lesson plan done effectively.
Most students did well on the formative assessments via in-class learning activities and onsite review quizzes.
Then, a couple of days later, Mary's supervisor asked her for a talk.
"A couple of students reported to us that they were very unhappy. They felt uncomfortable and humiliated ... They said the contents were not about Diversities. What was really going on in your classroom?" The supervisor was curious.
Mary, suddenly, falling from her radiating sky onto the hard, cold ground... "How could it be... I thought we had a great rapport. They showed great interest, were attentive, and the majority did well on the assessments...," Mary responded to the supervisor with wide, confused eyes.
Instinctively, Mary realized the challenging tasks had just begun. The teaching-n-learning fun in other classes might not happen often for this subject matter.