In my teaching statement, I briefly touch on topics of inclusion and equity at various points, because these considerations are integral to teaching. I recognize that the way I prefer to teach does ask for substantial vulnerability from students—regardless of their background, but all the more so if they are a member of one or more groups historically minoritized, discriminated against, or outright persecuted within universities and society at large. It demands a parallel effort to build an equitable classroom, which I attempt in three main ways.
First, I commit to scaffolding in the design phase of a course, especially an introductory course, trying to make explicit some of the unwritten codes of college humanities classrooms (what is a “good” paper, how one contributes to class discussion, what one is expected to take from a reading, etc.). This is especially useful for those students who have not had as much prior exposure to these common but often vague expectations.
Second, I attempt to find case studies by diverse composers and performers, but without reducing the analysis of that art to diversity. For example, I have taught William Grant Still’s Troubled Island as a study in opera in the mid-20th-century United States—but not simply in order to show that Still was a Black man and that Black people composed opera “too.” It is far more impactful to discuss the complex interactions of the Haitian subject matter with a Black US-American composer, the highly European-descendant form (a classical tragedy with influence from Shakespearean history plays) and its interactions with the colonial and post-colonial setting, Harlem Renaissance philosophies of race relations, Still’s political differences with his primary librettist Langston Hughes, the choice of an all-Black cast of characters but not an all-Black premiere cast, gender relations in the opera and on the creative team, Still’s desire to write the “first” African-American “grand opera,” and of course the effect all of this has on the tragedy and music of the opera in performance. In this way questions of inclusion and equity can become matters of classroom discussion themselves, a critical advantage in addressing them.
Finally, I attempt to be transparent with my students about the difficulties and advantages of these plans of action, and about what they demand from us in the classroom: a commitment to listening, to respect, to trust, tolerance, and (attempted) understanding. Taking a moment at the beginning of the course to speak candidly about this helps build a common set of values to which we can refer, as a community, when necessary during the semester. It helps students understand, for example, that the purpose of the discussion leading is for their peers to hear their opinions and questions, making it easier for them to offer their opinions and questions at other times. Speaking openly about the challenges of these modes of inquiry and education helps establish that the course is a group endeavor and that all students have a place as equal and uniquely valuable colleagues in that group.