TALK: CREATING AN INCLUSIVE CLASSROOM

How do you design your classes to enable all of your students to succeed? Students arrive at University from a wide spectrum of intellectual and social experiences that may unevenly prepare them for coursework across the curriculum. Furthermore, students may begin your class with a conception of themselves as inherently capable of flourishing in some disciplines but not in others, a mindset which might limit their academic success. We all know students who say they are “not math people” and we see others quietly disengage from a risky discussion of ambiguities in a text. This lunchtime discussion opens a conversation to share how we view the range of our students’ academic strengths and how we can surface their tacit learning preferences. Whatever differences our students bring to us, then, how might we encourage all of our students to discover their potential for intellectual dexterity and engagement in an academic setting? What diverse paths to learning can we design for coursework and class meetings?