M. Will-Cole (CNM) post #1 - diversity, inclusion, and equity:
I personally feel diversity, inclusion and equity are key to fostering a positive learning climate in the college classroom. My courses are diverse in student demographics, to include gender, ethnicity, age group, education level, science literacy and socio-economic class. Currently there are two very easy and simple things I do to foster inclusion in my classroom:
1.In order to illustrate a specific concept that might be difficult to understand I usually provide some “real-life” examples. However I have come to realize that my “real-life” examples may not be understandable across my class demographics and student variants. To broaden my diversity inclusion I continue to discuss my examples but I always follow-up by soliciting examples from my students. I have found that more often than not my students bring forward excellent examples that others in the class may resonate with because of their similar cultural backgrounds.
2.Getting to know students as individuals (foster inclusion) is critical in building a good student-instructor rapport and ultimately creating a warm/inclusive classroom environment. One small thing I do to accomplish this, i.e., to foster inclusion, is that I often to come to class a little early to engage with my students. I realize that it may seem like a minor thing to spend 5 or 10 minutes talking with the students prior to class however I have found that this has helped my students bond with me and with the course in general. Often we talk about what they did not understand in the last class or what they did on the weekend. However, regardless of the conversation topic it is apparent that in my students eyes they now see me as “more approachable” to them. Being “more approachable” puts them at ease and provides them a higher level of comfort in the classroom. I have found that after interacting with me as a person they are also more comfortable in participating in the class discussions. Basically, these pre-class interactions has enabled my students to feel more comfortable raising questions during class. The classroom has become more of a “low-pressure” environment and they are more at ease voicing their ideas and questions in this forum.
One thing I still struggle with is learning my student’s names. I realize that students “like to be known” by their professors, it gives them a sense of belonging in the classroom. Learning and remembering student’s names has always been difficult for me. In one of our SAGE 2YC cohort 3 discussion groups held earlier in this program it was suggested by our discussion leader that utilizing “name tents” might help me to match my students with their names. I love this idea and I have just recently implemented this in my lab course. I am still in the process of getting the students matched with their names but utilizing the name tents has made this process much easier. For those of you who are not familiar with “name tents”, well they are basically large scale name tags (i.e., a 8.5” x 11” piece of paper with the students name that is folded in half so it can stand alone without external support) which can be poised on the table in front of the students seating-area. These name tents are great and our discussion leader also suggested that we could use the back side of the name tent to make a table or sectioned areas associated with the lesson dates so that occasionally we could ask the student to add comments about something they had learned or not understood in that particular class period. Then occasionally we can collect the name tents to see the student comments. I have not gotten to this part yet as I am still working on name-student ID, however I love the duality of this process.
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