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Thriving in Academe
Issues To Consider

Obstacles to addressing issues of diversity in class

• “I’m afraid I’ll say something wrong.”
  Start by accepting that we will all unintentionally say things along the way that will hurt someone. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up over it when it happens, but we have the responsibility to learn from it and acknowledge that our words have an impact regardless of our intentions and, when possible, to model this for our students.
• “I don’t know how to respond when a student says something hurtful.”
  A typical response is to pretend it didn’t happen. We don’t want to make things worse or distract from the real learning, but the learning for many students has already been hindered if they feel excluded or unsafe. There is no neutral response in this case. If we say nothing, we become complicit in the behavior, and students will assume we are condoning it. We can’t be afraid to address the issue, even if we believe it is irrelevant to the content of the course. The disruption can be a powerful learning experience for our students.
• “The content in my class doesn’t lend itself to incorporating diversity.”
  If your content lends itself to having students think critically, evaluate multiple perspectives, challenge assumptions, and create better ways of understanding the world, it lends itself to incorporating diversity. That does not mean we simply add, for example, three female Latino scientists to the content and call it a day. It means that we teach toward those higher levels of intellectual and ethical development that we want our students to achieve.
• “How can I make changes in my teaching and classroom when I don’t see that anything is going wrong?”
  It may be easier to see what we need to do in classes where diversity is front and center in content or student makeup, but that only means we have to be more intentional in looking for problems and opportunities in classes where they may be less visible. For example, we should take a good look at the examples we use, at our course policies and the values they reflect, and at the ways students interact. It’s easy for us to assume everything is OK if no one complains, so we need to make an added effort to watch. Are certain students always assigned the same role in groups? Are other students silent? And finally, consider getting feedback from students throughout the term rather than just at the end. If we show an interest in what they are thinking, there’s a chance they will let us know about obstacles they are experiencing. But if we don’t ask, chances are high that we’ll never know.

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