SECTION TWO

“There is no teaching without learning.”

—Paulo Freire

Inclusive day-to-day teaching practices and decisions are as important as equity-focused course design, perhaps more so. We can plan and prepare, yet at the start of each academic term, we are entrusted with a new set of students who have a new mix of identities, aspirations, background knowledge, abilities, and so on. It’s up to us, as equity-minded faculty, to get to know them and assume some responsibility for their social and academic growth—growth that will differ for each student. As we’ll discuss in this section, everyday teaching strategies are most effective when they focus on both promoting student growth and understanding as clearly as possible where students are on their respective pathways. Teaching expert Stephen Brookfield puts it this way: “The most important knowledge that skillful teachers need to do good work is a constant awareness of how students are experiencing their learning and perceiving teachers’ actions.”¹

Faculty striving to advance more equitable outcomes use a variety of approaches to monitor and sustain inclusion throughout students’ learning experiences. These include ways to welcome students and get to know them, validate their abilities, demystify our expectations of them, and help them learn deeply. Unit 4 describes strategies for building and maintaining trust, the foundation upon which we can champion students’ growth and development. These strategies are especially important for online classes, where the absence of physical proximity makes trust harder to establish and maintain. Unit 5 focuses on the impact of students’ sense of belonging and the ways in which you can cultivate a learning environment where students feel they belong, matter, and can thrive. Unit 6 outlines how to intentionally structure class meetings, online modules, and individual activities in order to promote equitable outcomes. Section Two concludes with a one-of-a-kind Unit 7, consisting of two case studies that illustrate what it looks like when the practices described throughout the guide come together in the day-to-day work of teaching.