Issues of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Identity in the Comp Classroom

As teachers, how should we be prepared to deal with issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and identity in our classrooms and in our one-on-one interactions with students?  How can we create teaching units that help students explore these issues?

I think the best way to deal with issues of race, ethnicity, gender and identity in the classroom is not complicated, but might be difficult: teachers should interact and engage with students as individuals. These students have already had many years of educational experience in the “system,” where they are no more than a number, or a type, or a list of deficiencies. If we can find a way to interact and engage with students on a personal, one-on-one way, then maybe we can help them find their own strength and confidence as they start to navigate the world of academia.

There are some things that we, as composition instructors, should keep in mind. First, that students have multiple identities and that their home identity may not integrate well in an academic setting. They might have to create a new identity for themselves for success  in college, and family and friends at home might not value this new identity. In fact, they might find it threatening, foreign or disloyal to the home culture. Some students might not have a supportive homelife.

For myself and my classes, I plan to use my love of language and language diversity to deal with these issues.  A large part of my class is going to be related to linguistic diversity and language prejudice. I would like to not only help my students build good academic writing and communication skills, but also help them to uncover, analyze and become aware of their own linguistic prejudices, as well as those of American society. I will have a unit on discourse communities and how our language might change as we move among the linguistic communities that we are part of.