Student and faculty diversity offers both opportunities and challenges, particularly when it comes to creating a positive learning experience. Issues, of race, gender class, sexual preference, ethnic identity, and language skills can set up visible and invisible barriers in the classroom. This collection of resources can help you become aware of those barriers and develop strategies to reduce and remove them.

Inclusive Teaching, CIDR Web: This is a remarkably useful tool that identifies the often-unseen barriers—gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference and the like—that isolate students in the classroom, and then provides strategies, tactics, and resources instructors and TAs can use to disassemble those barriers.

http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/inclusive/

Three Resources for Improving Gender Balance in Your Classrooms (PDF): This compact collection of essay is essential reading for all instructors. It was assembled when it was noticed that TAs in the department—regardless of their experience, gender, or background—tended to unconsciously preference men in classroom. The collection includes:

"Teaching a Diverse Student Body: Practical Strategies for Enhancing Student Learning." Teaching Resource Center, University of Virginia. http://trc.virginia.edu/Publications/Diversity/II_Classroom_Dynamics.htm.

(The complete handbook, including citations, available at: http://trc.virginia.edu/Publications/Diversity/Diversity.htm.)

Sandler, Bernice R. "The Chilly Climate: How Men And Women Are Treated Differently In Classrooms And At Work." Bernice Sandler. http://www.bernicesandler.com/id4.htm.

——————. "Eighteen Ways to Warm Up the Chilly Climate: Recommendations For Faculty Members," http://www.bernicesandler.com/id4.htm.

Or you can download the 10-page collection of all three essays in an easy to print and read format.

Working with Multilingual (aka English as a Second Language/ESL) Students (PDF): Multilingual students—whether they are foreign born or grew up in the U.S. among families and communities where English was a second language—pose unique challenges to instructors and TAs. This collection of handouts was prepared by Shawna Shapiro, a a grad student in the English Department in the Fall 2007. It provides a useful framework for identifying and working with multilingual students, including teaching strategies and techniques. Includes a reading list with link to useful online writing resources, many of which discuss how multilingual learners.

How Can I Support Multilingual and Monolingual Students? (PDF) This a companion set of handouts, prepared by Shapiro and her fellow grad student Ben Hambleton that provides guidelines on how to craft presentations, sections, and assignments that work well for all students. Includes a case study as well as a description of the "Quote Sandwich"—a way of explaining how students should incorporate evidence into their writing.