EDUC-1 Courses:

EDUC 6406 - Respecting Diversity: Promoting Equity and Inclusion

(5 credits)

Today’s teachers have a critical responsibility to create and maintain respectful classrooms where every student feels safe to be themselves and empowered to learn. To that end, teachers must ensure that student identities related to race/ethnicity, cultural backgrounds, national origins, languages, sex and gender, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional abilities, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are not only valued but also affirmed as part of the learning environment. Teachers must meet this challenge by engaging in the complex process of continually assessing their own biases and how those biases may affect their teaching practice and perpetuate oppressive systems. As well, teachers must strive to understand the historical and current social struggles and traumas of all groups and how diverse histories, backgrounds, communities, and family situations can sometime promote and sometimes impede healthy development and learning. Most of all, effective teachers today must strive to support the dignity, worth, and uniqueness of every student as an individual with the right to thrive and succeed in today’s schools.