Most of you know that I started my adult working life in mental health. As a recovering therapist, I am still committed to the notion that, no matter how it’s wrapped or packaged by our society, each of us lives a unique story, and paradoxically it is the uniqueness of our stories that can bring us together in empathy and understanding.
In that spirit, let’s have a candid chat about equity and inclusion in our classrooms. When I talk to professors about including DEI in their work, responses fall into two broad categories: I’m already doing this work because I’m already inclusive, and I don’t know what I’m doing so I’d rather not, thank you. In this post, let’s focus mostly on the latter.
First, I get it. It’s part of our identity as professors to look “professorly,” and here’s the story on that issue.
Let’s start with the presumption that professors are smart people, and add to that a tendency toward perfectionism, particularly where their own work and disciplines are concerned. In many ways, this sets the stage for what I call the pursuit of the excellences of our disciplines. But there’s a downside to our character as professors: Our focus on mastery can prompt us to shy away from topics or skills in areas where we feel a bit less “masterly.”
As a philosopher, I feel compelled to ask, Who among us is a master of the human condition? Maybe the best position to take is what Socrates falls back on again and again, namely, his own ignorance: a healthy dose of intellectual humility will help us tackle this necessary task.
I say necessary, because to be blunt, I don’t know any professors still on fire with our mission to educate people who are willing to write students off. Of course, we know that the fire can dim, but for the most part, in my experience, professors do care about their students — all of them.
And that is part of the recipe, too. When I talk to a professor about their discipline, I’m in a conversation with someone who is firmly grounded, who can move the mountains of their specialties like Earth Benders. But when the topics turns to other matters related to our students, anxiety often motivates us to look back at those mountains.
When it comes to asking professors to implement something in their classrooms, we need three kinds of support. (Remember: I’m one of you. I teach philosophy every semester. 😉
- First, we want to see a connection between whatever the initiative is and what we are teaching, namely our discipline.
- Second, we want to be able to implement the initiative with a minimum of disruption or effort. Any time I take on some initiative is time I will have to take away from teaching my discipline.
- Third, we want to appear professorly in the initiative. In other words, we want to be solid in the skills and knowledge required to make it work.
Now, let’s review these needs with DEI in mind. If someone can’t explain a direct connection, in a few sentences, between what we’re trying to teach and DEI, we tend to step back and return our gaze to those mountains.
Here’s a connection that motivates me: I want students to have an experience of philosophy, and anything that gets in the way — even my approach or my assignments or my choice of readings — is the Enemy. If I want to reach every student, then I need to understand the ways in which many of my students have been left out or pushed out of these conversations. And that means learning about how our system and our disciplines and even our own institution have stacked the deck against people. If I want to empower my students to think philosophically, I need to understand not just what students don’t know about philosophy, but what students haven’t had the opportunity to know. That means making my classroom a place where, to the best of my ability, everyone gets what they need to become part of that Great Conversation.
When forces, especially beliefs and expectations, hold students back, those students lose an opportunity to experience my discipline — which is precisely why I am there. So my own dedication to philosophy impels me to reduce those obstacles, in my own classroom, so I can bring more students into relationship with my discipline.
Once the conversation gets this far, a feeling of being overwhelmed often begins to overshadow any enthusiasm that emerged. OK, people often reply, I get what you mean. It’s up to me to clear away obstacles so I can be more effective at teaching my discipline. But how? That’s like . . . scrapping my course and starting over. In other words, It’s too much work. I’ll get to it next semester or next year.
Actually, I believe that response is exactly right — and appropriately pragmatic: Most of us have our hands and our schedules full teaching what belongs in our courses, so how are we going to hit pause and build different experiences? And if we do, how do we fit them in?
In the coming semesters, we’re rolling out an approach that, I think, addresses this challenge. We dedicated one of the Fellowships in our Liberal Arts Gateway to DEI, and one of our priorities in the spring is to share actual assignments and activities that professors have already invented and implemented. Professors can include more DEI-promoting experiences in their courses by dropping these assignments in or adapting them to fit their course design. We’ll also provide opportunities for professors to hear from colleagues who are already making these assignments work for their students.
This approach also begins to address the third concern, namely, feeling solid and secure in what we’re doing. You have colleagues who have already implemented DEI activities and assignments, and those colleagues can help you acquire the skills and knowledge you need. Plus, as part of the Fellowship for DEI, we’re putting together additional resources, both inside and outside ACC, to help you feel more solid in this work. Together with colleagues, you can do things today to remove obstacles and make your discipline more welcoming for every student.
And the best part of this approach is: It’s us — professors working together for our students. We’re fortunate to have Louisa Spaventa as the first holder of the LAG Fellowship for DEI, and you’ll be hearing from her soon. To learn more and get started, reach out.
