Inclusive Pedagogy Statement
When I am designing classes, I think about inclusivity in many ways: I make sure course materials are uploaded in formats accessible to disability support software; I strive to create policies that are flexible yet fair; I remind myself not to focus too much on any one style of teaching. But the element of my pedagogy that most speaks to my commitment to enacting inclusivity is my desire to create a classroom that is meaningful to each student. When students work on projects that are meaningful to them—projects they care about and see the purpose of—they respond with creativity, investment, and curiosity. My challenge is to create classes, prompts, and class activities that are meaningful to a wide variety of students.
What is meaningful writing? What is a meaningful assignment prompt? This is where inclusive pedagogy becomes difficult. The truth is that different students have different goals for my class, interests, and backgrounds. Luckily, I am not working alone on this project. My students are my greatest resource for creating meaningful learning experiences. For example, when I taught at Indiana University South Bend, my composition course was themed around investigating professions that students were considering entering. They learned about writing conventions in their field and about complex issues facing that field. For those students—many of whom where older and knew exactly why they were in school—the assignments in my class generated enthusiasm and deep engagement. Yet, when I tried to import a similar course to a nearby community college, Ivy Tech, I found that students were disengaged. To diagnosis the problem I assigned in-class writing prompts that gave them a chance to talk about their lack of interest, I listened to them talking to each other before and after classes, and I engaged them in one on one conversation. I found that, for these students, simply being in college was the accomplishment. They were too busy adapting to a new world to think too far into the future. Worrying about future professions felt overwhelming. But because I had listened to them, I reworked the course to focus on the tension between the languages and dialects they spoke at home and the language required in college, including some sources that painted learning academic language as empowering and others that argued academic language acquisition came at great personal cost. Suddenly, they had a lot say; their investment in the course deepened. The lesson in this, one that I remind myself of as often as I can, is that students will tell us what matters to them. It is our job to listen and to use that knowledge to make our classes meaningful.
At the end of the day, an inclusive pedagogy must always be an incomplete pedagogy: I may never have the perfect classroom, but I can always be finding ways to a do a better job of meeting my students where they are. In this work, our students are our greatest allies. Working with my students—learning from them and about them—I look forward to building inclusive and meaningful classes wherever I teach.