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The Friendly Classroom
“Dare I say it -- at the orientation session for GTAs especially, I felt that the tonality was very much that a student with accommodations would be an inconvenience to us as a GTA, not an opportunity to foster an environment of inclusivity and practice pedagogy that should already be designed to be accessible, not accessible as an afterthought. It really made me wonder, back to my own research interests in terms of inclusivity for LGBTQ+ populations, how that process of inclusive communication and rhetorical appeal could be extended throughout university language. What is profoundly clear to me is we are not doing enough.” -- A reading response from my writing pedagogy course, dated October 18, 2021
I share this response because it was the first time I openly declared that I was interested in the subject of queering composition, and, notably, the first time I felt assured enough in my own positionality to leverage a critique of wider university messaging around inclusivity. It was true: in that orientation session, the act of inclusivity felt like just that--an act. Coming from student affairs, inclusivity was underscored in every initiative, every effort made, every consideration of student experience. Even as a minority, I learned more about what it meant to be inclusive in student affairs than I could have imagined. In fact, there were multiple moments of learning when I realized that on the academic side of my university experience, my identity had not been supported or honored. To me, inclusivity in the classroom as a teacher was a given: something that should be inherently understood, agreed upon, and considered at every turn. I was so concerned about being inclusive not only because it mattered deeply to me, but because I wanted to honor what I understood to be existing standards of teaching excellence.
Further in the process of (un)growth, this was a moment that was somewhat representative of a loss of innocence. In combination with discovering that teaching writing was so much more than I assumed, there were steps back too, as I recognized that messaging around practices of inclusion and critical or student-centered pedagogy was far from consistent, even negative, unintentionally or intentionally. In some contexts, inclusivity was treated as an option, an afterthought, something that would be good to enact, though not required. To me, in building a friendly classroom, and a welcoming, caring classroom, being inclusive, whether it was sharing my pronouns to ensuring my PDFs were accessible to allowing students mental health days, were clear choices. In this moment, my restlessness is clear: though I had not set foot in the classroom, I was feeling the strain of how far we have to go to be the best for our students as a collective community.
Pedagogical Strategies: Inclusivity is Not an Option
Scholarship, with Shapiro (2020) as one of many examples, notes how creating an inclusive space is complex, nuanced, and sometimes a challenge, but goes a long way for students. Doing this as a graduate student presents additional layers, including a degree of personal risk if we take the route of sharing our own liminal positioning with our students. However, I argue that treating inclusivity as a minimum standard, rather than an option, opens our classroom up to radical possibilities. For example, I have a conversation with students early in the semester about the barriers of seeking formal accommodations, particularly around mental health. I work with students who have concerns about their ability to complete the course individually to find a plan that will work for them, even if that plan looks different than their accommodations. I encourage, in all my assignments, even traditional research writing, that students reflect on their identity, and provide scaffolding assignments to foster that work.
In my teaching, I’ve shifted modality for a student who had a critical injury, shared my own story with students who came out to me, invited students to write in their own language. Inclusivity is sometimes more about flexibility and adaptability, rather than mandated university language.