Sarah Le Pichon

 

SARAH LE PICHON, Assistant Instructor, Department of French and Italian, College of Liberal Arts 

What does inclusive teaching mean to you? 

Inclusive teaching means recognizing that each student has their own identity and their own unique set of experiences. While we cannot know everything about our students’ experiences, we can teach in such a way that focuses on welcoming all students into our classrooms, and striving for the well-being of each of them. Education is our first priority, but a student who feels unsafe or simply unrecognized will not be able to learn effectively or reach their potential in our classrooms. An inclusive teaching classroom is a space in which students from a wide variety of backgrounds and identities are given equitable opportunities to learn. There are myriad small ways that we as teachers can create an inclusive classroom: from including a self-care statement on the syllabus, to implementing a late-day policy or a fair absence policy, to gathering mid-semester feedback on classroom climate, and being prepared with appropriate referrals when necessary. When possible, we can be flexible about the different ways students can succeed in our class. If the text addresses difficult or traumatic material, we might check-in and/or check-out with our students to ensure that none of them are leaving the classroom at risk. No student can check their identity, their experiences, or their trauma at the door; we must be mindful of that in the pedagogical methods we choose to employ.  

 

Please give an example of what thinking inclusively looks like to you in your teaching or your work around campus. 

Thinking inclusively begins with the creation of our syllabus and curriculum––whose voices are we including? Whose are we excluding? More importantly, though, thinking inclusively is about how we teach our material. It’s important to question our pedagogical methods, not in such a way that makes us doubt our teaching, but in a way that allows us and our pedagogy to grow and adapt with our students and their needs. Keep asking questions: does the material I’m teaching include many different voices? Am I teaching it in an accessible way? How can I adapt the material and my teaching to be still more accessible, to include a wider variety of voices that are not always represented on traditional syllabuses and curriculums? Are my privilege, my identity, or my assumptions affecting my teaching in an exclusive way? Do research on new pedagogy, and stay open and curious about new teaching methodologies. And remember that affect has a place in the classroom––that affective responses have just as much of a place in our classrooms as cognitive ones do.  

In an attempt to learn more about and bring this kind of inclusive teaching into the UT classroom, I have put together a series of workshops on Trauma-Informed Teaching, in partnership with Lauren White from Voices Against Violence. I will also be creating a separate series of workshops in partnership with Dr. Pauline Strong and the Humanities Institute specifically for TAs and AIs (this series is tentatively titled “The TA/AI Guide to Difficult Dialogues”). Together, these workshops form a series on inclusive teaching and affective pedagogy; topics covered will tentatively include: how to promote self-care in your classroom, how to foster an inclusive environment, and how to address texts that include violent material (i.e., trauma-informed teaching).