Inclusion for All

Consider a professional moment in your life that you wish you could go back to and do something differently. 

In my first teaching position, as a Jewish studies teacher at a Jewish day school, I taught the life cycle and rituals surrounding it. Traditionally the major milestones include birth, Bar/Bat Mitzvah (coming of age ceremonies), marriage, and death. One day while I was teaching an overview of the life cycle, I asked my students to identify the major events. One of them politely said, "divorce." I responded that divorce is not a traditional part of the life cycle and quickly moved on. Looking back, I realize that this student probably came from a divorced home. I could have made her feel better included within the Jewish community. I blew it. The whole event, a moment at the center of the teaching and learning process, took less than a minute. I still remember it thirty years later. If only I could go back I would comfort this child instead of pushing her away. 

Classroom teachers face situations like this one all the time. Consider the teacher who uses a beach as a metaphor for something without remembering that half her students have never been on a beach. What about the teacher who scolds a student for not having a pencil at the beginning of a math activity when the family could not afford to purchase pencils amongst all their other groceries for the week? Like all humans, classroom teachers tend to perceive the world through their own unique set of experiences. But teachers continuously interact with students representing numerous different racial, ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds. These students have their own unique sets of backgrounds and experiences that differ from everyone else’s. Even the best intentioned teachers often find it difficult to remain aware and act upon this awareness. 

Teaching is an incredibly complicated profession - being expected to interact with many students at the same time while purposefully enabling each one to meet the learning objectives and, hopefully, develop a love of themselves and learning. Not only do different students have different backgrounds, but they are also each functioning at unique cognitive and emotional levels. Teachers should continuously strive to consciously consider the perspectives and needs of all students, but they will never achieve perfection. 

To support teachers in their efforts, educational publishers have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that the content they publish recognizes and honors the backgrounds and experiences of all. This requires conscious effort undertaken by writers, editors, instructional designers, and subject matter experts. The results of these efforts support the entire learning process when teachers use these resources to enhance their teaching. 

Certainly, I can never go back thirty years in time to include divorce as a life cycle event. But, I can contemplate how my answer would have been different if a teaching resource had remarked on divorce within the life cycle.