Topic 5 – Equity & Cultural Competency
I very much enjoyed the presentations for Topic 5.
Dr. Lisa Flores’ systems perspective is a framework that especially resonates with me, given my training in Community Psychology.
Dr. Flores also placed emphasis on connectedness in her talk, which I believe is key to success in school and throughout our lives. I want students to feel connected to the class, their classmates, the campus, and throughout the community. I want them to be aware of the campus services that are available for free to them as students. When responding to assignment prompts, students at times describe experiences of stress etc. and my feedback will include information about the Student Counseling Center and include the center’s contact information. I also include an assignment at the end of my PSY 100 class that asks students to identify 5 mental health resources in their communities (the school counseling center can be one of them) as some students are not always nearby campus. They are asked to provide details on each resource. I view this as an important take away from the course, one that they can use, can refer back to should they need to utilize the services in the future, or to share with someone in their life. It has made them aware of how to locate these resources and how many they can find.
Representation: The environmental cues that can discourage people from pursuing a STEM course of study or career were discussed. Having more visual representation of women and persons of color is essential. To increase representation, I loved Dr. Christy Byrd’s example of showing pictures of authors instead of just citing the names, to visually represent authors that are women and people of color. Additionally, Dr. Foust asked each of us to research one author/researcher from an under-represented minority group and to share this with our institute colleagues, thereby growing the number of contributors to our field that are from under-represented minority groups that we can share with our students.
Supportive: Schools have historically made STEM tracks “cutthroat,” it was that way in my undergraduate years as well. Professors looked at it as their mission to weed out students. I hope significant progress can be made to shift this to being supportive environments. These conversations can help get us there.
This also connects to trust…
Trust: The topic of student trust came up. Additionally, the article, “Why Black Adolescents are Vulnerable at School and How Schools Can Provide Opportunities to Belong to Fix It” authored by two of our Institute speakers Dr. DeLeon Gray and Dr. Christy Byrd, along with Dr. Elan Hope, explored the importance of belongingness and spoke to the concern of “when educators are not in their corner.” I have found that occasionally there will be a student concerned that there must be a catch or something in the course that is designed to trick students somehow. It sometimes takes a few interactions, patiently and consistently sharing that there are no tricks, I am here to help, I am routing for them, and want them to do well. My hope is that their experience with me will help to soften this perspective of anticipating that professors will “not be in their corner.” At the same time, I encourage questioning, as I can also appreciate how this anticipation and some level of skepticism can help to ensure that both professor and student are on the same page and that requirements are clear.
Identity: Dr. Lisa Flores shared the approach of fostering a “scientist identity” and this especially resonated. I share with my students that learning how to research and navigate the journal database will shape their outlook moving forward, that they will develop a scientist mindset. That, after learning these skills, they will read magazine and newspaper articles in a new way. When these articles cite research, students will want to go to the journal database, locate the original research to both verify facts and take a deeper dive on the subject.
Environment: One of the questions posed for this topic on our website was, “How can colleges (faculty/administration/staff) use and arrange physical spaces to support student learning and sense of belonging?” This is an area of particular interest. The physical space has an impact in many ways. One example is classroom layout. I used a horseshoe and circle shaped arrangement of desks for a few semesters. I had particular success when I did this one winter session. I wanted to communicate a seminar style atmosphere for the classroom, especially since this was a condensed learning experience, where we met everyday. I would sit in this arrangement along with the students and wished to communicate the sense that we were all colleagues around the room and to encourage discussion. The fact that in winter session students meet so frequently and see each other everyday, may have helped this to work especially well during the winter semester.
Additionally, in the article posted to this topic on our website titled, A Model of Success, physical infrastructure was referenced as well. It was noted that, “improvements to physical infrastructure could be categorized for several purposes, one of those purposes was to create learning spaces that facilitated new approaches to learning. To fulfill that purpose, two institutions purchased classroom and lab furniture that could be easily rearranged into group seating (a change from individual seating and lab stations). Changing the student orientation facilitated collaborative learning.”
This is an example of how simple changes to the physical environment (which I believe we can likely extrapolate in various ways to the online environment), such as seating layout can make powerful changes.
Thank you for presenting this topic and for the opportunity to discuss and reflect!
