Teaching Diversity

Unlike the current White House administration, the average Lincoln classroom is tremendously diverse. A first glance through Lincoln’s gates, or at our Fact Book*, reveals a largely African American student body composed of more women than men (63% women at the undergraduate level, 71% at the graduate level), but you don’t have to dig very deep to find that our students come from different social, socioeconomic, geographic, religious and cultural backgrounds. Lincoln has a little over 3% international students, many of whom come from west African and Caribbean countries, and we draw American students from 30 states. Many of our student are first generation collegegoers with neither parent ever attending college. About a quarter of our students have parents that live together, more than half (64%) have parents who live apart, while a full 10% have lost one or both parents. Religious backgrounds vary (although a vast majority come from families that identify as Christian), as do cultural identity, sexual orientation and gender identity. Add to that the students’ physical abilities and disabilities, along with mental, emotional, and cognitive abilities, and you paint an even richer picture of diversity. We have students that are athletes, dancers, musicians, writers, visual artists, activists, leaders, followers – the list goes on. The point: our classrooms are diverse. 

With diversity comes strength; any ecologist, whether a biologist or sociologist will tell you that a diverse ecosystem is more stable, resilient to disturbances and recovers more quickly when catastrophe strikes. But diversity can also bring challenges including less cohesiveness and effective communication side by side with increased anxiety and unease. Both faculty and students are bound to make assumptions based on their own cultural frame of reference. For example, you may talk about parents as being married, or assume that a household has a mother and a father, but our Fact Book tells us that this only holds true for a quarter of our students. What if a student was raised by two moms or two dads? Changing the language in the classroom to be more inclusive may mean that more students feel valued, which translates to a sense of belonging. Anytime students feel like they belong, they are more likely to contribute to classroom discussion and to be engaged learners.

It is also useful to identify the assumptions that the students bring to the classroom and begin to deconstruct biases and beliefs that are obstacles to group discussions or projects. I must admit that I don’t always feel like I have the time or resources to talk about classroom diversity with my students. I often ask students to work in groups, and although I am aware of a few techniques for effective team-building, I don’t always use them to help construct functional groups where everybody contributes equally and diverse opinions are respected. These skills are so important that the World Economic Forum has listed them among the top ten skills required by future employees to be successful in a global economy. We don’t even have to look to outside sources for affirmation of the importance of diversity; our very own strategic plan lists Globalization and Diversity as Imperative 6 with the additional description:

   “While we remain committed to our legacy of providing the highest quality education to African American students, we recognize the importance of offering students a diverse environment and global collaborations which will prepare them for leadership in the 21^st Century.”

Have you developed effective tools to celebrate and draw on classroom diversity in discussions and projects? What are your thoughts around classroom diversity at Lincoln? Have you explored the biases that you bring to your classroom, and how those biases influence your teaching?

References:

The web offers a plethora of information on diversity in higher education. I found the following reference to be most concise and useful with several good references for further reading:

https://wiseli.engr.wisc.edu/docs/Benefits_Challenges.pdf

*Lincoln University Fact Book 2016: http://www.lincoln.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/institutional-research/2016-Factbook-Final-web.pdf

Teaching Actively

One of the books in the “New CETL Books Available” section of our library is Mel Silberman’s Teaching Actively: Eight Steps and 32 Strategies.  Since I am always a sucker for things that promise I only have to do a specific number of things to be successful, I opened that one quickly. 

Silberman’s eight steps are logical, basically the things any good teacher tries to do: 

1. Engage your students from the start 
2. Be a brain-friendly teacher 
3. Encourage lively and focused discussions 
4. Urge students to ask questions 
5. Let your students learn from each other 
6. Enhance learning with experiencing and doing 
7. Blend in technology wisely
8. Make the end unforgettable

It was interesting, though, to consider the specific strategies described for each step and consider some new options.  For example, one of the strategies for “making the end unforgettable” --in other words, for helping students to extend their learning beyond the course itself-- was asking students to create an action plan saying how/when/where they plan to use their new skills and knowledge in the future.  Students submit these plans to the teacher, who in turn returns them to the students via email a month or so later, at which point students can revisit the plan, check which actions they have taken, and hopefully reinforce some of the course content. 

Have you ever tried something like that to reach beyond the end of the semester?  Did it work?  If you've had a chance to look at the other 31 strategies, are there any that stand out as particularly useful to you?