44 Responding to problematic statements

How did/would you (help your TAs to) respond to instances of racism, sexism, ableism, classism, homophobia, or transphobia in the classroom?

BF: When I began in January, I was following my amazing co-teacher/co-designer Stacy Creech in this year-long course, so our TAs had already worked with their students for a term before I arrived. When we designed the course before it began, Stacy and I had agreed that we would try to work from a place of care and with an aim of fostering community, especially in these difficult times. We communicated that to the TAs whenever we could, wrote it and resource information into the syllabus, posted some links to resources on Avenue, and often addressed these issues within the content itself, so hopefully all of that transferred to students as they needed. I do remember one instructional team meeting where one of the TAs shared some concerns about comments in tutorial, and we talked as a group about how to address those, including whether or not I should join a tutorial to clarify expectations, or speak with anyone further.

EG: I worked with a graduate student assistant for remote learning, Emily Meilleur-Rivers, who developed a ‘tip sheet’ for TAs leading tutorials. One section focused on cultivating anti-oppressive learning spaces, including some phrases/models for responding to a racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/ableist remarks in the tutorial. I think developing something like this with TAs in early meetings would be even better. Some harmful remarks emerged from student essays; in these cases I either worked with TAs to develop student feedback that alerted them (the student) to the impacts of their language, or took on that responsibility as instructor to help make this part of the work safe(r) for TAs.