Strategies for the Classroom

An anti-racist teaching presence optimizes student – instructor interactions. Establish the instructor as engaged facilitator by: providing instructor or TA feedback on assignments, learning journals, or other reflective activities; administering surveys or questionnaires and using the results to inform future instruction; participating in discussion forums or chats; sending announcements to summarize the previous week or describe the next week; providing online office hours for teams and individuals; mentoring individual learners; or developing classroom community through “working agreements” that determine how that community will work together.

Instructors can model anti-racist practices and a commitment to dismantling existing patterns of privilege and white supremacy in their interactions with students in many ways (see part 1 for more):

• Ensure that you ask students to speak only for themselves, not on behalf of an entire group.
• Design learning activities that are more often cooperative, as opposed to competitive.
• Intentionally develop and structure group projects in which all students have an opportunity to participate and contribute. Assign project roles for students to assume, for example.
• Structure class interactions by providing goals, procedures, and processes to ensure they don’t reinforce existing patterns of privilege.

When facilitating discussions with students, instructors can increase inclusivity of voices in many ways:

Next, build an anti-racist cognitive presence through student – content and resource connections. From relevant and strategic content to examples and visuals to web quests, design a course devoted to an exploration of diverse ideas. Strive to develop curriculum that models and reflects the diversity of our world.

Working to ensure that all students might see themselves reflected in course content signals that everyone’s identity and group membership are valued and emphasizes the importance of considering multiple points of view on a topic. Diverse points of view can be incorporated through the examples used to explain course concepts, through diverse cultural references, and through diverse scholarly perspectives, among other examples.

Your anti-racist curriculum

• Acknowledges, respects, and makes multiple identities visible and represented in course materials.
• Emphasizes the racial-ethnic diversity and backgrounds of experts who have contributed to your discipline.
• Includes diverse readings, videos, and visuals that acknowledge the contributions and experiences of BIPOC scholars through content—PowerPoint slides are a great place to include diverse examples.
• Is transparent-- clearly communicates expectations, learning objectives, assignments (see Tools for Revising/Creating your Own Transparent Assignments), and evaluation criteria (e.g., use of rubrics).
• Presents course material using a myriad of modalities (e.g., video, text, audio) to ensure greater student access.
• Seeks to understand the experiences and cultures of BIPOC students in order to plan learning activities that connect to prior knowledge.
• Acknowledges that decisions and interpretations are affected by who we are.
• Present counterstereotypes that change perceptions of who scholars/scientists are in your field (see Scientists Spotlights: Implementation Tips and Strategies). A range of activates and modes can help build counterstereotypes such as writing assignments (Schinske et al., 2016) and listening to podcasts (Yonas, Sleeth & Cotner, 2020).

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Finally, establish an anti-racist social presence by focusing on student – student interactions. You can foster these in-person or online through: student-generated community expectations; discussions, collaborative tools and tasks (e.g., Think-Pair-Share, Team Projects, Jigsaw Activities); peer instruction and editing of work; or synchronous / asynchronous Q & A or discussion fora (Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007; Garrison et al, 2000). These types of interactions and learning platforms consider discourse, climate, and tone of the class environment.

Anti-racist climates

• Provide opportunities to examine personal assumptions of a students’ background, prior knowledge, and experience.
• Demonstrate high expectations for all students with an authentic belief that all can succeed.
• Learn and be able to pronounce all students’ names and encourage them to address each other by name.
• Actively monitor for potential stereotype threat and broad generalizations.
• Create an environment prioritizing sense of belonging (e.g., where multiple groups feel “connected”).
• Cultivate connections between students, the discipline, and scholarly and professional communities.
• Ensure that students have an awareness of and access to campus resources that support their unique identities.
• Maintain a classroom free from microaggressions and address microaggressions when they occur.
• Facilitate a space where all classroom exchanges are respectful (e.g., norm-setting, working agreement).
• Are transparent about instructor and student roles in the classroom, discussions, and activities and communicate them explicitly and consistently throughout the quarter (e.g., during the first day of class, in the syllabus, etc.).
• Acknowledge the unique identities, experiences, strengths, and needs of students, embracing student diversity as an asset and celebrating differences (e.g., a safe space where differences are not only respected, but also honored and valued).
• Invite students to approach instructors with concerns or ideas for inclusivity.
• Support the Principles of Community.

Increase inclusivity of student voices in their discussions with each other by first teaching them to: