Hi Sara, thank you. I think a class size of 20-25 is ideal. If it gets bigger, it’s really difficult to incorporate everyone in the discussion. Just saying from my personal experience, I have taught classes of 20 students and 60 students. I can say that I had great control over the small class. It’s really difficult to listen to most students’ voice in a large class.

My sister’s friend brought it up several years ago in conversation. He may have read this post which expands on the idea: https://alittlemoresauce.com/2014/08/20/what-my-bike-has-taught-me-about-white-privilege/

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Thank you for the post! I really enjoyed reading it! Do you remember where you first heard the metaphor? You bring up so many valuable points in this post and one that really resonated with me is the idea that when we are in the majority, we often do not see what it is like from the perspective of someone who does not share that privilege. When this is the case, I think it is important that we active role, take ourselves off autopilot, listen, and learn from those around us.

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What a great example! And what a relevant example for your field! How do you think you might incorporate empathy into a classroom setting?

What a great example! Thanks for sharing! I am really interested in finding ways to provide these types of experiences to all students even if they are not able to participate in a study abroad program. I think we should encourage all students to develop these perspectives, but there are a lot of factors that impact whether someone can study abroad. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on ways to incorporate this type of experience into a classroom setting!

Thank you for your post! I think it is so important for us as educators to reflect on and challenge assumptions that we make about the students in our classes as those we interact with. As you said, heuristics are born out of experiences, and sometimes our experiences are very limited. But as the video in class showed, there are many dangers to having a single story of others (https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story).

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I agree with Bethany – this was a very insightful and thoughtful post! I really appreciated that you discussed so many different barriers and were willing to talk through some challenging topics. There is so much in here and I would love to just sit down and talk with you about this post, but I wanted to mention that I really appreciated your last paragraph. You described several factors that affect whether students are able to study in a particular program/university/context, and you also stated that we need to support students once they get to these various settings. I definitely agree! For the longest time, I didn’t realize how much privilege I had given my background and my parent’s backgrounds. To name just a few, there were many things that I knew about college simply because my parents and my sister went to college (I knew what the admissions process was like, I knew what resources were available, etc.). So I think we as educators can better support our students once they get to these educational settings so that students can persist as well. However, in supporting students, we can sometimes take a deficit-based approach where we focus on what an individual or group is missing. Like you said in your last paragraph, we should set up environments where all students belong and feel comfortable contributing. As I was reading your article and reflecting on what you wrote, it made me think of this article from my field that discusses different types of capital and the relationship with persistence, and I thought I would share it here. It is related to engineering but I think the concept is applicable in a wide range of contexts. The article is Community Cultural Wealth: An Assets-Based Approach to Persistence of Engineering Students of Color, and you can find it here: http://su8bj7jh4j.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Community+Cultural+Wealth%3A+An+Assets-Based+Approach+to+Persistence+of+Engineering+Students+of+Color&rft.jtitle=Journal+of+Engineering+Education&rft.au=Samuelson%2C+Cate+C&rft.au=Litzler%2C+Elizabeth&rft.date=2016-01-01&rft.issn=1069-4730&rft.eissn=2168-9830&rft.volume=105&rft.issue=1&rft.spage=93&rft.epage=117&rft_id=info:doi/10.1002%2Fjee.20110&rft.externalDBID=n%2Fa&rft.externalDocID=10_1002_jee_20110

Thank you so much for your post and for sharing your experiences! I think you bring up a lot of great points and ask some great questions. As I read your post, I wondered if incorporating what is often known as “think-pair-share” would be beneficial in the situations you described. The idea of think-pair-share is this: 1) the instructor asks a question or provides a topic for discussion, 2) then each student thinks about the question/topic on their own for a few minutes and writes down a few ideas related to the question/topic, 3) students then pair up with another student to discuss their ideas, 4) then groups share their ideas/discussions with the entire class. This can be a great way to give all students some time to reflect on and think about the topic and can lead to some great discussions. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on incorporating something like this!

I totally agree with you that learning with diverse individuals is a valuable experience. In this kind of group, there are so many things we can share with each other. It’s exciting to and the new voice could always bring some unexpected surprises! I really like that!

I agree with you. Discussions with people in a different field always bring up interesting ideas. Last week, I was in a conference, where the speakers have very diverse background. The Q&A session afterwards was just amazing.

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