Category: Week 8 – Inclusive Pedagogy

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

I have been tasked with writing a blog post around the topic of inclusive pedagogy. This is a difficult task Diary. Diary, you have seen my thoughts on inclusive work and the things I try to do each week to include everyone in everything. From ensuring that every one’s voice is heard in staff meetings, to actively challenging students when they have not considered all perspectives in a particular incident. Diary, this is tiring, this is hard, and I sometimes wonder why I do this?

Yes Diary, that last sentence is my faithful friend, doubt and fear (DAF) talking. DAF is one of the most loyal friends I have Diary (but you are the most loyal Diary). See, unlike confidence and certainty, DAF will always be there, whenever I need them or not. DAF often present all the negativity about inclusive work and why we shouldn’t do it. DAF often tells me that the world doesn’t care about creating safe spaces, brave spaces, or any space where all students can be their authentic selves without having to hide any part of their identities. DAF also remind me that for every inclusive action I make, there are three more exclusive (and oppressive) actions being done by someone within a 3.14 mile radius of me. One time, DAF told me that solving racism is as easy as pie. Can you see why I don’t wary of DAF and their presence in my life? And do you know what the worst part about this Diary, this is not an exhaustive list! DAF are always reminding me about the difficulties of inclusive work and pedagogies. And yet, I persist.

I persist even when people assume me to be an expert on diversity because I happen to be the only minority in the room.  Dismantling racism in education mentioned this idea and this resonated with me as I have had a similar experience. By no means am I an expert on diversity, but I am an educator that wants to create environments where we can all learn.
I persist even when students are experiencing or acting out micro-aggressions, without being aware of them. As difficult as it may be to a participant or observer of a participant, as much as I am able to, I will try to make it a teachable moment
I persist even when VT’s POC are not being honored. Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee that students or the general public will adhere to these community guidelines. What I can do, when able, is to speak up when I have a platform
I persist because of the oppressive systems that plague our reality and that I am entrenched in
But most importantly, I persist, because I must. As a future professor, I must be held to higher standards of inclusive practice. I must be aware of the students I am teaching and the various life experiences they are living with. I must recognize that my identity, and I formulate it in the classroom, will affect how my students learn, and if they will learn. Just like my student’s identities are important, so is mine, and I need to be aware of that.

Diary, that is why I persist, even when DAF are nagging at me, I must persist. I must persist because as educators, we need to catch up with the students we teach. Students today are learning in a different environment with students from different backgrounds. Can I really be a future professor if I ignore the complex student identities in my classroom? And show any awareness, respect or recognition of that?

Diary, I have realized that teaching is hard. The way I teach might favor students of a different background than others. I might not realize this but it does. Some students will benefit from the way I speak. Some students will benefit from my values of respect and ideas on what a good student looks like. These have been influenced by the teachers and professors who taught me, and the various identities and cultures they showed me in the classroom. I can’t predict who will be in my classroom and how best to include everyone. What I can do, is be aware of my biases (because we all have them) and teach in a way that allows everyone to be successful.

Let’s erase DIVERSITY and INCLUSION

Hello readers, my apologies for leaving you alone last week, I had the intention to write but it never materialized. I went into autopilot mode, without being mindful about it, and time just kept going. In Shankar Vedantam words: that’s when the problem arises, when our unconscious self takes charge but we are not aware of it (“The Hidden Brain” thinking for us). I could share with you how I ended up in autopilot mode, but that is a story for another moment. Instead, I would like for you to remain with your mind wide open while I attempt to explain why I believe we should erase, destroy, disappear, etc. two very dangerous words: DIVERSITY and INCLUSION.

If you have read my posts before, you might think I am joking, based on my typical sarcastic tone, but NO, I AM NOT. I firmly believe that words such as DIVERSITY and INCLUSION, as well as MINORITY, UNDERREPRESENTED, and similar words that speak of differences and discrimination should be erased from our conscience, from our vocabulary. This might sound controversial, but here is my reasoning for this proposition. All these words have the unattended consequence of “stating, highlighting” the existence of DIFFERENCES, instead of recognizing and giving value to the existence of IDENTITY. I know that for some it might seem a simple matter of interpretation, a matter of linguistics, but words are powerful, as Professor Christine Labuski succeeded to highlight in the description of the Universal Precautions project1. She discussed the great impact that talking about “us” instead of “them” has on discussion of sensitive topics, and the benefit of thinking that the person sitting on your side might have gone through that hard topic situation (e.g. abortion, racism, rape, transgender). When you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you are more mindful about the words you use, you are likely to look at a problem from different angles, from another perspective.

Another problem that I have with the words DIVERSITY and INCLUSION, not with the intention of promoting diversity and inclusion. Is that now you see them almost everywhere, and seems like all organizations need to emphasize that they promote an INCLUSIVE environment, even if in reality they don’t. But hey, it looks good to advertise it. “Corporations spend billions of dollars to attract and manage diversity both internally and externally, yet they still face discrimination lawsuits, and the leadership ranks of the business world remain predominantly white and male”2.

Let’s go back to the previous idea of recognizing the existence of differences versus identities. Probably this is not the best moment to introduce this question but, what do you think of when you read: “we need to promote diversity and inclusion”. It might be my personality, but to me it brings negativity, I directly associate this phrase with the need to overcome differences between us, instead of valuing what each can bring to the table. Why do we have to highlight that there are differences between us? I acknowledge the importance of recognizing that not everyone is equal, each person is unique in multiple senses. Should we talk more about developing OPEN ACCESS environments instead of promoting DIVERSE and INCLUSIVE environments? Perhaps “open access” is not the best term either, but from my perspective it partially removes the focus around highlighting the differences. The later a word which I admit to associate with negativity and discrimination, a perspective you might not have. But then again, the same word could have a completely DIFFERENT meaning and context, highlighting once again that the problem seems to be in: not being open to other perspectives.

Diversity and inclusion/inclusive, bring the same negative effect that terms like minority and underrepresented create for me. The later speak of someone else being superior, even if that might not be the purpose. That is why I don’t consider myself a minority, nor part of an underrepresented group, I consider myself a human.

Following my thought process in this post might not have been as direct as I wished. But I hope you forgive me. At the end, probably I didn’t succeed to explain why I consider DIVERSITY and INCLUSION to be dangerous words, and perhaps my writing was more on the lines of a “confuse the masses and you will be king” speech type. But I hope your mind continues to be wide open, to be prepared to carefully listen and read what others have to said, and not going into autopilot mode, ignoring mode, as soon as you hear ideas coming from other perspectives.

You see, at the end, it is not a matter of erasing DIVERSITY and INCLUSION (the words) and replace them with another term, it is a matter of acknowledging the importance of perspectives and what body language, written words, spoken words, etc. could mean to someone else. How messengers can impact the message being delivered. How we should give always our best, no matter who is in front. How there is always more than one story to be told. If you haven’t heard to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie TED talk, please do so: “The Danger of a Single Story”.

Let’s keep learning. Let’s keep educating. Let’s keep moving forward. Let’s keep asking WHY. Let’s continue to be more mindful. Let’s forget about A, B, C, D, E and F (the grades, not the letters) … easier said than done. Let’s focus on making sure to help each other out. Let’s create successful teams. Let’s remember that we are unique, and the only single common element among us, but the most important one, is that we are HUMANS.

Carlos F. Mantilla P.

  1. Christine Labuski, project description for Universal Precautions (not open for public access)
  2. Katherine W. Phillips, “How Diversity Makes us Smarter” (2014 – updated 2017)

Commoditizing Diversity

It’s regrettable, I think that when science discusses cultural or ethnic diversity in our society, that it does so through the lens of “value”. What is diversity worth to us?  The question rarely seems to be what does diversity do for us as humans or how can it enrich our lives? How can it make us better people more fully aware of ourselves and our place in this world? But rather, science tends to be co-opted into asking how much can diversity produce? What is its economic value?  How can someone (or some corporation) leverage diversity for its benefit?

We have a sickness in our society and the root cause isn’t racism or sexism or any other -ism. These things are the symptoms of the trouble. Instead, the trouble lies in our collective norms that allow these types of things — things that we cannot accept as inherent in ourselves — to be placed onto others.  Psychology might call this behavior negative projection.  Sociology may call it otherization.  Whatever name it goes by in your area of interest, it does seem to be something that is here to stay as a part of the human psyche — something that the wisdom of religious and philosophical thinkers have been warning us about for thousands of years:

 

A Contemporary Summary of the Sermon on the Mount

 

The fact that, as a society, we tend to find trouble with racism and sexism (to name only two) is a profound reflection on the values that we tacitly normalize and promote — the things that are hard to understand that we’re engaging in because most everyone else does also.  In the desert, every mound of sand looks the same.

 

Team Diversity

Globalization is the phenomenon that appeared on nation, economy, education, culture, and society. It to enrich a civilization through a cross-cultural education environment. Especially the increasing number in the high educational institution. There are different voices towards the changes in class. Many people hold the negative attitudes towards new coming nations and culture. However, no doubtfully it will experience the culture shock, at the same time, the immigrate culture push the development of multi-cultural diversity. According to Katherine W.Philllups, the Key to understanding the positive influence of diversity is the concept of informational diversity.

It is an extraordinary experience for both educator and student to learning with individuals primary on a different language, educational background, and culture. There are various understand the issue in class through the cultural environment. For example, in class discussion, there is variety explanation based on the discipline, experience, inter-culture awareness, and knowledge. The new voice, sometimes, is the engine to explore the unfamiliar research area. The inter-cultural innovation thinking method offers various ways to explain and solve problems and improve the cultural communication.

The inter-cultural communication also happened in the class. Especially in the group work. For example, the course project named Renaissance of Dessau Bauhaus I experience when I study in London. It is a unique and initial change for me to cooperate and to learn with professor and classmates in worldwide. There are four team members and two advisors, the students from China, India, Austria, and London; the two professors are from Bauhaus University and Kingston University. There are the different background of team members, which including art history, exhibition design, fine art, and contemporary design. Hence, in the project proposal, we claim the essential ideas and concept of how to renaissance the excellent reputation of Bauhaus in the contemporary design world with different aspects relevant personal experience. Our group is the only one to display the concepts of the project in unexpected ways. It is an example for professors and students in the class that the diverse cultural communication is a positive to the development of learning, education and knowledge structure.

Inclusion and Isolation

Inclusion and Isolation

I attended the University of Scranton for undergraduate, a university that is, according to Forbes, 79.4% white. And I felt it. While I only dealt with one incident with an aggressive form of racism, I spent my entire four years dealing with racist comments and microaggressions. These incidents made me feel so lonely because I couldn’t even talk to anyone. Especially with microaggressions, people think you’re just being oversensitive. I had an incident where a professor I didn’t know told me I spoke English well for someone who grew up in a house of immigrants. This hurt. A lot. It wasn’t the first time I had heard this but it was the first time a university professor had said something of this nature to me. But when I tried sharing my story with other people, they thought it was funny and laughed. But I didn’t think it was funny. It made me insecure. It made me feel lonely. Was my English that different from an “American” or native speaker (I am essentially a native speaker) that people always had to comment on it? I’ve always had a fear of public speaking because of these comments. I’m afraid, will people think my English is bad? What if I mis-pronounce a word, will people judge me more harshly?

I am an IMSD (Initiative for Maximizing Student Development) fellow, which is a training grant from the NIH meant to “increase the number of students from underrepresented groups in biomedical research who complete Ph.D. degrees in these fields.” I’m grateful for this opportunity because it gave me a community, a community of other underrepresented individuals who could understand the difficulties we can face as minorities. Something I didn’t have at Scranton. However, not all programs are like this. Committees will have an iniative to increase diversity, hire a minority, and leave them to fend for themselves. They’re given no support and face the spurn of their colleagues that believe they only got the position due to their minority status. They internalize the idea that they’re only successful due to being a minority as well. There’s no help to integrate people together. And any failures they face? It becomes representative of whatever group they are a part of.

I want to be involved in making academia more inclusive and increasing diversity. But how do we do it? As mentioned in Phillips’ piece, there’s been multiple studies that show diversity has helped businesses be more successful. But we can’t simply increase diversity, we need to work on keeping them in the system and improving retention rates. We need to work on building a community that promotes the idea that they belong because they were good enough, not just because of the company wanted some more color in their staff.

I don’t know, I’m rambly and bitter. I want change but don’t know how to go about it and it is frustrating.

Activism + Verbalism = Praxis

I forget where in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed activism and verbalism come into play, but it’s an idea that has remained with me since reading it in History of Higher Education last year. According to Freire, praxis is putting into action certain behaviors after critically reflecting on the world as we know it. Freire eventually dives deeper into this idea, specifically referring to activism and verbalism. These two isms immediately stood out to me last year because I felt that a lot of educators could fall under these two categories, but rarely did it seem that they were practicing both (myself included). For authentic praxis to occur, there must be both verbalism and activism. This means that one is acting after thorough reflection and after discussion. Often times, people get wrapped up into one – just thinking about/talking about solving an issue, or taking action without much thought. How can we do both as educators, and help students do the same? (All while avoiding oppressive acts of dehumanizing learners, which we may do subconsciously.)

Maybe the answer is realizing that we have a “hidden brain”. As Shankar Vedantam explains in “How ‘The Hidden Brain Does The Thinking For Us’, we develop biases at a young age, and we don’t necessarily do so with animosity or hatred. Instead, these biases develop from what we observe around us, whether we are aware of them or not. Therefore, we need to take the time today to reflect on the biases we have and how we got them. This will take a lot of honesty, but hopefully it helps in knowing that we all have them deep down.

My Story

After the video we watched in class last week, I felt that I should share my story with you guys. From my experience as an international student from Saudi Arabia, I always think that I’m not only getting a degree here in the US, I’m also representing Saudi as a country and culture. Since I got here in 2011, I was fascinated by how whenever I say I’m from Saudi people always ask me to talk about Saudi and they admire that I left my country, family, and language to pursue my dreams. The funny thing they all have to ask is “Do women drive in Saudi”, and of course the answer is no women don’t drive in Saudi not yet (of course at that time, because 3 weeks ago women have be given the permission to drive). Their immediate question will be “Why”, So I have to explain by first making sure that it’s not about religion all women from other Muslim countries drive. It’s the culture, Saudi people really care about their mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. They believe that they have to make sure that they are well taken care of. And of course, I have to tell them that if we don’t drive that does not mean we just stay home and don’t go out. We still have fun and go out we have shopping malls, cafes, and restaurants.

So that now women are allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, there is a lot to think about.

First, Before driving in Saudi Arabia I need to know all the rules and laws I have to follow, to make sure I’m not violating any of them. So, what kind of rules are putting in place for this now movement? As a Saudi woman who drives and learned how to drives here in the US, I did so by learning the rules here and what to do and not do according to the US laws.

Second, how we as citizens will adapt to this transition, and what is the public opinions are. What I hear from my close friends and family is that for now, they are waiting to see how this transition affect the way people look at it and how the government is handling that. Other people are actually taking action and start driving an hour after the announcement. And of course, there are some who are totally against the idea who thinks that it will affect the norms and values of our culture.

For me, even though I’m driving here I’m not going to drive in Saudi Arabia until I see that everything is in place. I’m really excited for this movement and looking forward to seeing how my country and people will go about this transition.

Why Fit in If We Were Born to Stand Out?*

Diversity is everywhere, no matter where you go. That’s the amazing thing of this world! Don’t you think? I had not had the opportunity to be around a lot of people from different countries, cultures, ethnicities, languages, abilities, backgrounds, beliefs, religious, etc., “on a daily basis” until I came to Virginia Tech. This was a completely new experience for me!

As Katherine Phillips discusses in her article, it is really powerful when people with such diversity work together. It is not only the background what makes a big difference, there are the experiences and philosophies what bring to the table different perspectives and information.

I love being different and I do not want to appear something that I am not just to fit in a place or a culture. However, sometimes I feel that everyone is looking at me just because I do not look like a typical American student. Sometimes, even I do not feel comfortable speaking because I know that my English is not good enough. This, sometimes, may affect students’ performance. There are several questions that come to my mind. Do the professors really care about diversity in the classroom?

I am taking a course this semester in which the professor, at the beginning of the class, posts trivial questions to engage students. We use i-clicker to answer those questions. From my point of view, this does not engage students at all or at least it does not work for me. I do not know any of those answers because all of these are related to movies/series of the United States. There are more than 150 students in that class and I would dare to say that there is a lot of diversity in that classroom. Could not he be more inclusive?

So, my questions for you are:

Are you promoting an inclusive environment in the classroom? If not, how can you do it? And, are you taking advantage of all the benefits that diversity groups may have on students’ creativity, work, and interpersonal interaction?

It is time for an inclusive teaching and learning!

*Quote taken from Dr. Seuss

Encouraging Discussion. Emphasizing Gracefulness.

Dr. Labuski writes, “My classrooms are spaces where students are encouraged to hold and express opinions that may not be popular and/or
conventional. I generate intellectual safety by framing discussions around phrases like ‘What do people say about ….’ rather than ‘What do you think about …’ “ (Diggs Scholar Award).

I’m passionate about this. Whether we’re talking about race, gender identity, politics, religion, or anything else, I never want a student to feel that he/she cannot bring up a discussion point or offer a perspective for fear of being ridiculed, isolated, or shunned. I thought about this plenty, especially during the election season. I saw a lot of open hostility between both sides of the political parties, even on this campus. I heard a lot of what I call “absolute rhetoric”–my way is the only way, and everyone who thinks differently is wrong and evil. I saw people who could have been great friends hating each other because of their opposing political beliefs. I still do. It’s terribly heartbreaking.

College can be a time of growth for undergraduates. I truly believe that it is a time to re-examine beliefs and to be open to hearing other viewpoints on many subjects–but really, any time is good for doing that, right?  But for undergraduates, I would never want them to think that I “hate” them because they might believe something not as popular or something that they think I don’t personally believe myself. I’ve always appreciated professors who didn’t openly criticize religions or political beliefs in class because it truly made me feel like they understood the definition of tolerance and did not want anyone to feel isolated, stupid, or irrelevant. This has become important to me as an educator. And I truly appreciate the inclusive strategy that  Dr. Labuski utilizes in in order to make students feel safe in suggesting a particular perspective that may or may not be their own.

This can also be tricky to navigate because I would never want the words of one student to wound the heart of another. I make clear in my syllabus that everyone must be respectful to each other. Delivery, I think, is key when expressing opinions. The English department requires some kind of argument paper as the final paper of the semester. My students will be picking a topic (I’m not sure how narrowly I’m limiting the topics yet) and writing a paper expressing their argument. I will be going over gracefulness in class because it’s something that I maintain is a necessary virtue when explaining one’s opinion. It’s important to remember that when we come across people who believe starkly different things, this is a time for open discussion. Listening and explaining. Sometimes, we forget to listen. We start forming responses before the other person in the conversation is even finished speaking. Often, we aim to win, not to learn. I’m guilty of this myself sometimes, but I truly want to work on being intentional about understanding why and how a person believes the things he/she does. I think the way we can even hope to encourage people to consider changing a perspective begins with making them believe that we genuinely care about understanding what they have to say. Then we follow this by explaining our viewpoints with grace.

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