In the years I have been teaching, I have gathered experience in diversity and inclusion issues in different environments: the setting of an Ivy League, a big private institution, a big public non-selective college, two small liberal art colleges, and, finally, a small public university with Masters degrees but no PhD programs.

I have been very active in campus communities, and as part of that I was able to build a solid portfolio of events that have informed the way I teach.

Some of the events I participated in at these campuses were:

  • The first National Diversity Summit, hosted by Brown March 6-9, 2015, live broadcasted across the world, for which a segment on my own personal story was part of a storytelling sequence for the opening dinner of the summit, and after which a Q&A was held;

Students of underrepresented minorities, international students, first generation students, underprivileged students (those categories often overlap)–all share the same denominator: too often campuses are struggling to keep up with student issues.

A couple of simple statistical problems highlight this, in an area I am most familiar with: national use of counseling services for international students is overwhelmingly low compared to their percentage in global institutions, but the extent of the issue is unknown, as international students’ use of counseling services is not assessed in statistical data. Most estimates vary between 2% to 18% of the overall number of students who come to counseling services, with no consistent data, and very few schools keep track of this (none of the schools I attended/worked at did, despite significant numbers of international students present on campuses at SU or Brown, for example).

Similarly, if some universities and colleges have started to account for first generation college students, graduate schools very rarely tally how many of their students are first generations–estimates vary, with most showing an additional pipeline problem from college to graduate school.

Further, if statistics exist, conversations often revolve around big or top-tier institutions–they significantly ignore the problems students faced in, say, a non-selective institution, or even the variety of situations across elite institutions. In an essay on Nate Silver’s FiveFirtyEight, Ben Casselman eloquently described this phenomenon, and underlined that the top-tier focus of news coverage hid the complex reality of higher education in the United States.

In the daily practice I have of teaching, I have tried to be as up to date and proactive as possible on educating myself on these questions.

What has been interesting to me has been putting in place strategies to make sure students feel included–a lot of those are derived from the Communicative Language Teaching method, which is student-centered. Things such as:

  • Classroom rules: I often start off the year by telling students the classroom is our space–not mine, not theirs, but ours. I ask that they contribute to making it ours, and also cite class rules: no judgement, no snickering, etc etc. My own example in this setting is to be extremely patient, and humorous, not to stand to much on formalities–but yet have clear rules of engagement for debates (do not cut off your classmates, here are communicative strategies to express respectful disagreement,…).
  • Make the learning space theirs as well as mine by adapting the content to each section. I ask them to contribute things so that it truly becomes their classroom: bring songs to class, discuss your culture, tell us words from the languages you speak, etc.
  • Scaffold exercises in a way that actively promotes collaboration rather than competition, such as exercises which they cannot complete if they don’t get answers from their classmates. In some instances I do promote competition, like verb quizzes, but make it a friendly game by having teams work together rather than individual students showing off their skills.
  • When asking for answers, I make a thought-out effort to seek out answers from a fair sample of students–many studies have shown white professors will favor white students, and language teachers will favor women.
  • I showcase students work. Often, and in a variety of ways–the prouder I act, the prouder they are of their achievement, and that works toward making them own their words and work.
  • I work with students on oral skills. This is something I have found to be particularly true in setting where students of color are the minority and the professor is white: students of color, and particularly women, tend to censor themselves and be shier. I encourage them to consider the life skill they can acquire, and sometimes reduce the stress levels by having them do their oral presentations in my office before they present to the class.
  • I am attentive and reach out to students early–there are delicate issues to discuss on which I have had to educate myself, and it has been worth it: students see language teachers much more often than they do most other professors (3-5 times a week), so I often get to know students better than their first-year advisor for example.

All of these are essential to me in creating a good class atmosphere, one where students laugh–they know they will have to work hard, but that doesn’t mean we cannot be having fun!