List some strategies that you could use to enhance teaching and learning in a racially diverse classroom. After you have made your list, read the ideas that were generated by the attendees at the weekend seminar in the document below.
TIPS FOR TEACHERS: TEACHING IN RACIALLY DIVERSE COLLEGE CLASSROOMS
(Copyright © 2002-2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Permission is granted to non-profit educational institutions to reproduce this document for internal use provided that the Bok Center's authorship and copyright are acknowledged. Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University)
Teaching in racially diverse college classrooms often leaves people feeling uncertain about how to proceed and how to behave. Unlike the days when one teaching style fit all students, in today's context there is pressure to acknowledge and accept students with perspectives other than our own, to diversify our syllabi, to be more aware of classroom dynamics, and to pay more attention to how our students are experiencing the learning process. Our collective ability to respond to and be enriched by these challenges will determine the success of our institutions and students.
To assist faculty and teaching fellows seeking to enhance learning for all students, we have put together this Tip Sheet, in the hope that it will empower educators to create the conditions under which diversity can flourish. When teaching in a multicultural context, we suggest that they prepare themselves in several ways:
(1) Plan the course with the multicultural classroom in mind by considering syllabi, course assignments, examples, stories, and potential classroom dynamics.
(2) Find ways to make the actual classroom open and safe for all students, and to make the material accessible to all students.
(3) Learn how to intervene tactfully and effectively in racially charged classroom situations and to manage hot moments or hot topics.
(4) Assess conscious and unconscious biases about people of cultures other than your own.
The suggestions below offer some guidance for all of these stages. Undoubtedly, readers will have ideas of their own; we would appreciate hearing them. Send your comments to bokcenter@fas.harvard.edu.
GUIDING SUGGESTIONS:
1. Educate yourself -- become as sensitive as you can to racial, ethnic, and cultural groups other than your own.
2. Never make assumptions about an individual based on the racial, ethnic, or cultural groups to which he or she appears to belong. Treat each student first and foremost as an individual. Get to know each student individually.
The following tips are meant to be suggestions and not guaranteed solutions for teaching in racially diverse classrooms. Teachers should develop a range of pedagogical skills that best serve the needs of all their students.
The following activity is meant to encourage reflection.
What a teacher can do in preparation for class:
1. Develop a syllabus that explores multiple perspectives on the topic.
2. Design classroom instruction and materials with a diverse group of students in mind.
What a teacher can do to be sure the classroom itself is open to all students:
1. Create opportunities to get to know your students on an individual/personal basis.
2. Design opportunities for students to interact with each other in respectful and meaningful ways.
3. Activate student voices.
4. Generate a challenging but vibrant learning process that encourages students to develop their creative, critical, and analytical thinking skills.
What a teacher can do to intervene in racially charged situations and handle hot moments:
1. Devise personal strategies in advance for managing yourself and the class in such moments.
2. Interrupt blatantly racist and discriminatory behaviors when they emerge in class.
3. Defuse potentially harmful moments by having students step back and reflect on the situation.
4. Turn potentially hot moments into powerful learning experiences.
Teachers will have to decide whether to stop the emotional charge and go on, or whether to use it to explore the topic at hand. Often when things get hot, people are most capable of learning at a very deep level, if the exchange among students is properly handled. To make this possible, however, requires comfort with feelings and with conflict, and enormous skill on the part of the teacher
Questions a teacher might ask to examine his or her own racial or cultural biases in preparation for teaching:
1. How do your own experiences, values, beliefs, and stereotypes influence your knowledge and understanding of groups that are racially different from your own?
2. How do your own experiences, values, beliefs and stereotypes inform the way you interact with individuals whose racial background is different from your own?
3. How do your own experiences, values, beliefs, and stereotypes influence the way you behave in the classroom?
(Please click on the Tips document to read specific ideas relating to each suggestion that follows.)
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