Teaching and learning are never entirely void of politics, but this fall—as a new U.S. president is elected mid-semester—the tension, drama, and controversy of the political moment will no doubt be especially palpable in classrooms across the university.

Instructors in every discipline have cause to prepare thoughtfully for the impact of this election season on their students, their curriculum, their classroom climate, and themselves. Maintaining a commitment to inclusive teaching during an election that is itself fraught with hostility around questions of diversity requires a renewed insistence on the free and fair exchange of ideas. To support this commitment, we offer the following three questions instructors might ask themselves while preparing to teach.

1. What role does my discipline play in the issues raised by this election?

Our students need to be able to critically evaluate the platforms of candidates and elected leaders. Every discipline is somehow implicated in these agendas, whether the topic is immigration and the rights of refugees; fracking, genetically modified foods, or climate change; education and health care; history, race, and the Black Lives Matter movement; gender (in)equality and LGBTQ rights; or international relations and the “war on terror.”

Instructors can ask:

• Which topics within my discipline might require special attention in light of the election?
• How might the candidate platforms be a resource for teaching and learning these topics?
• What are the diverse perspectives and voices that characterize my field related to these topics, and how do I maintain some balance in presenting them?

​Many U-M students will vote in this election.  By asking questions such as those above, we as instructors can help them engage with the data and skills they need to weigh the issues and make informed decisions.
 

2. How might my courses allow students to practice some of the fundamental, particular skills required by democracy?

In addition to the content of our individual disciplines and courses, there are overarching democratic skills that students can develop in courses across the University.  These include:

“Engaged learning” is a common term at the University of Michigan and a growing movement nationally. What does it mean? U-M’s working definition conceives of engaged learning as providing students with opportunities for practice in unscripted, authentic settings, where stakeholders (including the students themselves) are invested in the outcome. This pairs nicely with Grant Wiggins’s concept of “authentic assessment,” whereby students closely practice and demonstrate the type of work they will be doing after graduation: it is public, involves collaboration, and engages students in representative challenges of a field or subject, which are often ill-structured -- rather than having “right or wrong” answers. A more thorough exploration of engaged learning at Michigan can be found in a forthcoming series of Occasional Papers (more on these below). 

Here are a few of the many ways that students already experience engaged learning at U-M:

As we approach the end of the term, students will be asked to provide feedback to instructors using U-M's course evaluation system. At CRLT, we often hear from faculty and GSIs who are discouraged about a number of issues related to student ratings, including the tone of some written comments, relatively low response rates, and uncertainty about how best to use the results productively. This post provides some resources for each of these concerns.

1) Minimizing Unhelpful Comments: Student ratings comments can be unhelpful when vague or irrelevant, whether positive ("Great course!") or negative (e.g., criticism of instructor attributes not linked to the learning environment). To encourage students to avoid rude or personally hurtful comments, CRLT worked closely with ADVANCE at U-M on a handout that instructors can give to students before they fill out their evaluations. The handout, Course Evaluations: Providing Helpful Feedback to Your Instructors, asks students to keep three key issues in mind when completing their ratings:

In October 2015, CRLT hosted a U-M faculty panel that addressed challenges and strategies for teaching about difference and privilege. In this post, we spotlight some key moments when faculty described tensions or difficulties, and we suggest strategies for leveraging these for student learning.

The panel featured four LSA faculty members:

• Stephen Berrey, American Culture and History

• Alisse Portnoy, English Language and Literature

• Ruby Tapia, Women's Studies and English (video unavailable)

• Al Young, Sociology and Afroamerican and African Studies

(Click on a panelist name to see a video of their talk, or see the embedded videos at the end of this post. Each video runs 8-9 minutes.)

"Several years ago, I was teaching a class on social identity and we were talking about whiteness. Actually, we weren't talking about whiteness. That was the problem." (Al Young)

What happens when discussions about race and privilege turn silent? Faced with the dynamic described above, Young asked students to turn their lens to analyzing the silence they were experiencing by writing a minute paper on the stalled conversation: "What's the problem right now with the conversation on white identity?" After writing for 3-5 minutes, he finds students are more likely to voice their thoughts out loud. For silent or superficial discussions, Helen Fox (2009) also recommends having students write on an index card, "One thing I've been reluctant to say....," which serves as a prompt for follow-up discussion.

“We’re teaching about privilege because privilege is pervasive but knowledge about it is not….Your students, they don’t come in getting it.” (Ruby Tapia)

CRLT is accepting applications through Monday, February 22, for the May Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) Seminar. Interested graduate students can learn more about the program here. In this guest post, past participant Katy Peplin (Ph.D. candidate in Screen Arts and Cultures) shares reflections from 2015 seminar participants:  

After participating in the Preparing Future Faculty Seminar in May 2014, I was lucky to be able to work with the team that facilitated the seminar in 2015. I loved the chance to contribute to a program that was so deeply useful for me, and I loved seeing how valuable the program was for others even more. You’re welcome to read my own thoughts on why I found the PFF experience so valuable, but here are reflections from some of the May 2015 Seminar participants:  

“PFF gave me exposure to what faculty life really looks like (in terms of family, work/life balance, tenure expectations, teaching loads) - at U of M but also at different types of institutions. I had the opportunity to ask questions of U of M faculty that I might not be comfortable asking my advisors, and it was immensely valuable to see what faculty life looked like at other types of institutions.”

“The PFF seminar was an invaluable experience!  It demystified much about professional academic life including the workings of the tenure process, dimensions of faculty work-life balance, and differences between institution settings. And it helped me enormously to clarify and crystallize my own pedagogical values and approach.  I would highly recommend it to others.”

“PFF broadened my horizons, showing the real challenges of the job market but also equipping us to confront them.”