FOSTERING INCLUSIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

All my teaching has occurred at institutions with diverse student populations, so I have addressed inclusive learning environments for several years. One of my favorite classroom activities asks students to reflect on their experiences before, during, and after an assignment. I also spend time reflecting on my own classroom performance as a culture-bound person. I think that individualizing my feedback and adapting the assignments to student needs and skill levels requires continued sensitivity to foster an appropriate, welcoming classroom environment. My syllabi reflect guidelines that support open scholarly discourse, and I discuss the need for universal design principles.

Recently I taught an advanced essay-writing course in which I used an assignment framework described by Erik Ellis. Exploring the theme of place, my students used literal and metaphorical definitions that evolved considerably during the traditional forms of written assignments. I began with a discussion of Pharrell Williams's project “i am OTHER” that set the tone for the semester. The readings each week related to themes including poverty, race, gender, age, (dis)ability, and religious views. As they peer-reviewed each other’s work, they found that they were not only learning about how one another wrote, they were also finding out about each other’s lives. One student began by talking about the rigors of competitive swimming but ultimately came to grips with his father’s death. Another understood her partner much better after she wrote about their courtship. A third realized that place actually had little to do with geography and much to do with relationships. However, perhaps most importantly, they understood that their public communication about these moments affected large groups of people who could benefit from their experiences. These realizations drove them toward their final projects.

I was concerned that my students' energy would diminish as they approached the capstone multimedia assignment. I knew from their introductory reflection essays that I would encounter many levels of literacy—and I did. I held substantive individual meetings with students to assess their comfort levels and encouraged them to develop their skills beyond their comfort levels. The concluding reflection essays on the multimedia project supported my strategy. Though I knew some of the products were not as polished as others, I understood the progress that my students had made during the semester. They all took risks, whether it was to use a voice-over on PowerPoint for the first time, or to develop a multi-layered website specifically for the course. They knew their projects were important for themselves and for others.

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My aim in each class experience is for all my students to accomplish goals that help them grow as people who live interconnected lives. I always hope that the learning environments I create will further that purpose.

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Reference

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Ellis, E. (2013). Back to the future? The pedagogical promise of the (multimedia) essay. In T. Bowen & C. Whithaus (Eds.), Multimodal literacies and emerging genres (pp. 37–72).