Equitable and Inclusive Classrooms

OR: We recognize that 60 minutes is a woefully inadequate amount of time to attend to the nuances of these conversations

but HERE WE ARE, TRYING ANYWAY

Learning Objectives

+ Identify and articulate common forms of oppression in the classroom + Evaluate your own classroom and educational experiences through the lens of

justice and equity + Reimagine and implement equitable and inclusive strategies within your

classroom in order to destabilize or combat systems of oppression

Agenda

Think Pair Share Activity

Key definitions

Things to consider in the classroom

Barriers to having equitable and inclusive classrooms

Tips

Questions

Think Pair Share

What power dynamics may exist in the classroom?

When did you silence someone or witness someone being silenced?

What do you think an equitable and inclusive classroom looks like?

Characteristics of an equitable and inclusive classroom

● Accessibility to the instructor● Foster viewpoint diversity ● Facilitating discussions where all students can participate ● Honor difference and similarities ● Contract/guidelines● Access (for students with disabilities, first generation, etc) of technology and

norms● Give a variety of ways to respond ● Are we practicing what we preach? (creating syllabi etc.)

Equality v Equity v Justice/Liberation

Equitable & Just Frameworks Liberatory Teaching C

onfronts These Tensions

Things to consider

Development of ground rules?

Forms of communication?

What does my syllabus reflect?

What do we know about the students and how can we learn more? (i.e. study habits, experiences in the classroom - NOT demographics)

Barriers to Having Equitable and Inclusive Classrooms

What are things that may prevent you from having a justice-oriented classroom?

● Microaggressions● Tokenism● Accessibility● Institutional Flaws● Current social/political context

Microaggressions

What is a microaggression?

*A subtle but offensive comment or action directed at a minority or other non-dominant group that is often unintentional or unconsciously reinforces a stereotype

*Casual, everyday insults & denigrations against a minoritized group (originally coined in 1970 by Harvard Law Professor Chester M. Pierce)

Examples:

● Where are you from?● “I’m not (marginalized identity), but I am (another marginalized identity)”

● Pronouns

Tokenism

What is tokenism?

*The practice or policy of making no more than a token effort or gesture, as in offering opportunities to minorities equal to those of the majority.

*Symbolic gestures of solidarity OR treating an individual(s) as representative of an entire group

Examples:

● Asking one person to speak for an entire group● Overperforming ● Treating diversity and inclusion as checklist items

Tips

● Reflect on your own practices● Listen to your students● Actively seek resources to enhance your classroom and/or

better your teaching ● Challenge complacency

Questions

When conflict happens, or weird shit gets said, these thoughts run through my mind: Do I open the space in the classroom to address what the student has said or

done? Should peers and colleagues take the lead on the conversation instead of me? Do I table the conversation and design a lesson around what has just

happened to bring in the next day? Do I talk to the student privately? Is the situation serious enough to bring in a supervisor or alert the School of

Education? How am I using my power? What are the strategic uses of shame and embarrassment, and what are the

strategic uses of affirmation, compassion, and validation? When is being nice to this student, or listening to this student, harmful to

other students in my classroom? When am I assuming that minoritized students will automatically be harmed

by something strange that gets said and is that assumption correct? (i.e., if something harmful gets communicated, does that automatically mean that affected students shouldn’t engage in that conversation? When might shutting down the conversation reduce their ability to self-advocate in a brave space?)

How do I balance the tension between the goals of education, which care very much about individual growth and development, and the goals of justice, which care very much about destabilizing systems of oppression, sometimes at the expense of the individual?

And, most importantly, which response will do the most good for this student’s future students?