Inclusive Teaching in the Law School Classroom: Classroom Management

In this handbook you will find specific designs, approaches, and techniques to ensure that the classroom is a safe space for students to have conversation about issues that matter.

You make a remark that instigates a strong emotional reaction in a student or group of students. A student offers a comment that marginalizes a range of people and perspectives. Someone is wearing a piece of clothing or taking up space in a way that surfaces ideological disagreement. Now what? While there’s often no single “right” response, as the instructor, how you address difficult moments in the classroom has implications for learning. Your response can communicate indifference or even hostility; alternatively, it can show that you’re aware of your classroom’s dynamics, you aim to promote learning even through struggle, and you care about your students’ well-being. Here are some tips for helping you to respond productively. Here are some tips for helping you to respond productively.

Constructive dialogues on race have been proposed as a means to heal racial and ethnic divides, reduce prejudice and misinformation, increase racial literacy, and foster improved race relations. Studies on the psychology of racial dialogues indicate social and academic norms that dictate against race talk between White Americans and persons of color: (a) the politeness protocol, (b) the academic protocol, and (c) the color-blind protocol. These protocols discourage race talk and allow society to enter into a conspiracy of silence regarding the detrimental impact oppression plays on persons of color. Facilitating difficult dialogues on race requires educators to recognize what makes such discussions difficult. For people of color, engaging in race talk exposes them to microaggressions that invalidate and assail their racial/ethnic identities. For Whites, honest discussions are impeded by fears of appearing racist, of realizing their racism, of acknowledging White privilege, and of taking responsibility to combat racism.

Creating an inclusive and positive online learning environment is crucial to meet the needs of all SAFE Strategies to deal with Difficult Moments in your Online Classroom
students. Thus, it is important as instructional faculty to think about how you will respond to discriminatory comments or behaviors should they arise. The following strategies can help ensure students that you are committed to equity and inclusion in your online class.

The following guidelines can help instructors facilitate classroom discussion around controversial issues. Whatever the context, it is helpful to structure such discussions in a way that defines boundaries for the process and provides some degree of closure within the classroom. Such discussions are an especially important time to explicitly discuss expectations for respecting a range of perspectives and experiences in the room.

This guide seeks to help teachers feel more confident leading difficult dialogues by encouraging reflection on how such discussions connect with larger learning goals, and by providing specific strategies and resources that teachers can use to create more productive conversations in their classrooms.

While the classroom can be a space for open, respectful discussion of sensitive or controversial topics—such as topics related to identity and inequality, religious beliefs, or political ideologies, for example–facilitating such discussions can be a challenging prospect. The following suggestions are intended to help instructors guide such discussions, which can be great learning opportunities.

Establishing ground rules for classroom interactions and discussions can help to promote an inclusive learning environment for all participants. Such ground rules are especially important when discussing controversial or otherwise challenging topics. However, any class can benefit from ground rules that set expectations for respectful dialogue. Establishing such ground rules at the start of the semester provides a common framework that will be very helpful if it becomes necessary to talk with the class, or with individual students, about any conduct that could be negatively affecting the learning environment.

This document was developed to assist faculty, instructors, and teaching assistants in addressing and preventing microaggression in the classroom.

A qualitative study supports the observation that difficult dialogues on race and racism are often triggered by racial microaggressions that make their appearance in classroom encounters or educational activities and materials. Difficult dialogues are filled with strong powerful emotions that may prove problematic to both students and teachers. When poorly handled by teachers, difficult dialogues can assail the personal integrity of students of color while reinforcing biased worldviews of White students. The success or failure of facilitating difficult dialogues on race is intimately linked to the characteristics and actions of instructors and their ability to recognize racial microaggressions. Implications regarding specific education and training recommendations are presented.

Abstract: Racial microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color. Perpetrators of microaggressions are often unaware that they engage in such communications when they interact with racial/ethnic minorities. A taxonomy of racial microaggressions in everyday life was created through a review of the social psychological literature on aversive racism, from formulations regarding the manifestation and impact of everyday racism, and from reading numerous personal narratives of counselors (both White and those of color) on their racial/cultural awakening. Microaggressions seem to appear in three forms: microassault, microinsult, and microinvalidation. Almost all interracial encounters are prone to microaggressions; this article uses the White counselor – client of color counseling dyad to illustrate how they impair the development of a therapeutic alliance. Suggestions regarding education and training and research in the helping professions are discussed.

Chart from UC Santa Cruz student affairs providing concrete examples of classroom microaggressions and the messages they sent to students.

Chart from UC Santa Cruz student affairs providing examples of classroom microaggressions with suggestions on how to respond.

Universities and instructional faculty are committed to building a safe learning environment for all students. Despite these efforts, bias incidents (bigotry, hate messages or symbols, verbal, physical, or online harassment (e.g. text, social media), coercion or intimidating language, ridicule of a person’s language, accent, or cultural background, or use of racial, ethnic, or other type of slur in a joke or comment), which can be disruptive and hurtful, do occur in and outside of our classrooms. The following strategies provide you with guidelines on how to prepare and respond to such incidents efficiently and appropriately.

Defines bias and microaggressions and provides concrete advice on dealing with in-class microaggressions.