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 21st 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?
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:
*Lincoln University Fact Book 2016: http://www.lincoln.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/institutional-research/2016-Factbook-Final-web.pdf
