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Tool: Creating a Safe and Supportive Classroom Environment

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Overview

The physical, emotional, and social safety of all learners requires a supportive classroom environment. In planning for your classes from an anti-racist perspective, consider how you can create opportunities where learners are able to actively participate in their own learning; including an exploration of the lived experiences of other learners.

 

Reflective Pause

Reflect on your current experiences as it relates to this topic.

Consider what you are looking forward to learning more of, or hope to be able to do more of, as you work towards developing anti-racist practices.

 

Goals

  1. Create a safe and supportive classroom environment for all learners.
  2. Establish a learning environment where students and instructors feel valued, comfortable, and empowered to be themselves and achieve their potential.

 

How-to Guide

Safe Spaces

It is important for an instructor to provide opportunities to safely explore different racial and cultural backgrounds thereby contextualizing historical perspectives.

  • Engage your learners in a discussion around classroom expectations. Be explicit about the intolerance of racism and microaggression in your physical classroom or online (both from a KPU policy and professional conduct perspective)
  • Consider your course content: are different populations represented respectfully in images, scenarios, and examples? Have you included diverse viewpoints and opinions?
  • When possible, offer participation and engagement choices for learners (e.g., internet, video, phone, chat)
  • Set guidelines around respect for privacy and resharing of information so that learners feel comfortable to participate in discussions and learning activities
  • Integrate diverse delivery strategies and tools to create a space where learners’ voices are recognized and valued. Consider using videos, written, and verbal methods, or incorporating images, infographics, or arts to deliver the learning objectives
  • Create intentional opportunities for self-reflections and knowledge sharing, modelling respect for diverse backgrounds and lived experiences
  • Create cross-cultural interactions that foster independent learning and empowerment between students through incorporation of group work and team projects

 

Download an Accessible Version of This Table [PDF]
Develop Group
Guidelines
  • Engage your learners in a discussion around classroom expectations. Be explicit about the intolerance of racism and microaggression in your physical classroom or online (both from a KPU policy and professional conduct perspective)
  • Consider your course content: are different populations represented respectfully in images, scenarios, and examples? Have you included diverse viewpoints and opinions?
Participation
Choices
  • When possible, offer participation and engagement choices for learners (e.g., internet, video, phone, chat)
Respect for
Privacy
  • Set guidelines around respect for privacy and resharing of information so that learners feel comfortable to participate in discussions and learning activities
Diverse Delivery
Strategies and Tools
  • Integrate diverse delivery strategies and tools to create a space where learners’ voices are recognized and valued. Consider using videos, written, and verbal methods, or incorporating images, infographics, or arts to deliver the learning objectives
Co-Creation of Learning Opportunities
  • Create intentional opportunities for self-reflections and knowledge sharing, modelling respect for diverse backgrounds and lived experiences
Cross-Cultural
Interactions
  • Create cross-cultural interactions that foster independent learning and empowerment between students through incorporation of group work and team projects

 

Supportive Classroom Environment

Tips for creating a supportive classroom environment:

  • Acknowledge the power and privilege you hold as an instructor
  • Ensure that all learners feel comfortable enough to voice their concerns regarding discrimination in the classroom. This could be done by providing tools for anonymous feedback
  • Know the different resources and support areas at KPU to support learners who believe they were discriminated against
  • Offer a variety of ways (in-person, virtually, with other persons) that learners can share experiences of discrimination
  • Be open to learner expressions of discrimination in accessing teaching and learning in the classroom
  • Invite learners to suggest ways to make the classroom more inclusive
  • Ask learners how they want to be identified in the classroom (e.g., pronouns)

 

CHECKLIST

  • I have addressed my own implicit bias through reading, education and self-reflection
  • I have addressed implicit bias in the classroom through presentations and encouraging discussions around the impact of unconscious bias, why it important to manage it and how we can manage it
  • I consider the background of the learners in each classroom and strive to use that understanding in my style of delivery and other teaching practices
  • I intentionally consider various delivery strategies and teaching techniques that will best accommodate students from different ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds
  • I encourage learners to develop a community agreement describing the basic expectations in the classroom with me, including what they think a safe and supportive classroom should look like and factor these expectations into my teaching
  • I explain all course-related policies and procedures in detail, including what they mean for instructor and student conduct
  • I ensure that all teaching resources reflect the multi-racial Canadian context, use anti-racist and anti-oppressive language, and acknowledge different cultures and peoples in respectful ways
  • I ensure that the curriculum content uses bias-free language, and creates opportunities for lived experiences of learners to be included as part of the teaching and learning process
  • I ensure that class discussions are organized in such a way that is open to different learner expressions and uncomfortable conversation are managed respectfully
  • I consider individual and group activities and assignments by encouraging learners to use their voice against any forms of discrimination, including the regular use of anonymous feedback
  • I consider ways to address the power dynamics in the Canadian and classroom environment, and try to help learners identify and/or claim their own power and privilege for themselves

Reflective Action Point

What is one new technique you can use to manage conversations from an anti-racist approach?

 

Instructor Resources

TOOL: Resources on Campus

TOOL: Student Activity: Social Identity Wheel

TOOL: Implicit Bias

Guidance: Sheridan College’s Inclusive Language Guide “Tip Sheet” on Indigenous peoples, provides a wealth of guidance and information on appropriate and inclusive language and terminology related to Indigenous peoples.

Guidance:  Sheridan College’s Inclusive Language Guide “Tip Sheet” on gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation and sex characteristics, provides a wealth of guidance and information on appropriate and inclusive language and terminology related to gender and sexual identity.

Guidance: Sheridan College’s Inclusive Language Guide “Tip Sheet” on race and ethnicity, provides a wealth of guidance and information on appropriate and inclusive language and terminology related to race and ethnicity.

Blog: Open Pedagogy and the Inclusion of Marginalized Students

Blog: Trauma-Informed Teaching

Webinar: Centre for Race and Culture – Systemic and Institutional Racism in Canada

Pressbook: Inclusive Pedagogies

Asynchronous Course: Foundations in Teaching Excellence: Inclusive Teaching Practices

Website: Resilience BC – End Racism and Hate

KPU Bylaws: Policies, and Procedures

References

 

Author Information

Written By: Judith Gallimore (Associate Chair, Business at NorQuest College)

Reviewed and Edited By: Rebecca Bock-Freeman (Manager, Academic Strategy)

Adapted for the KPU context by: Daniel Benzimra (Education Strategist, Teaching & Learning Commons) and Dr. Nishan Perera (Director, Learning Technologies and Educational Development)

OEIC Reviewed by: Dr. Asma Sayed (Vice President, Equity and Inclusive Communities, Office of Equity & Inclusive Communities)

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

KPU Anti-Racism Pedagogy Toolkit Copyright © by Office of Equity and Inclusive Communities and Teaching & Learning Commons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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