Lived-Experience Case Studies

images to represent all genders and cultural groups in examples and objective assessment questions.

Rethink Class Participation

Participation points often show bias toward boys and young men (Aguillon et al., 2020). Instead of awarding grades solely based on participation, Megan and Nina advocate for reimaging ways that students can show their understanding and knowledge of course material. For example, they have both committed to offering many different ways to participate in class, including through writing, one-on-one conversations, and small-group dialogues.

Teachers and experts are also participants in the class community. Therefore, in considering whose voices and stories to center in the classroom, you should also bring in guest experts and leaders who represent the gender and cultural diversity in your class. Megan and Nina intentionally invite women leaders and guest experts.

Create Experiential Programs

Despite better academic performance, young women often show less confidence and interest in leadership and STEM roles compared to their young-men counterparts (Kay & Shipman, 2014). Create experiential programs and assignments to help build confidence. Examples include job-shadowing experiences with women in the field of interest, internships, and mentoring programs. Coding and robotics clubs provide experiential opportunities. Virtual clubs offer the added benefits of flexibility and connection with girls from around the world.

Greg Soden: How International Travel Inspires Culturally Responsive Teaching

Greg Soden is an instructor in world religions and English language arts at Mizzou Academy. He is the producer and host of The Classical Ideas Podcast (Soden, 2017–present), on which he aims to empower students with the core knowledge of major world religions and improve citizenship and agency in a diverse society.

As a first-year teacher living in Mexico, I was an immigrant and a racial minority (though still a privileged one, due to my ability to come and go as I pleased), something I had never experienced. After Mexico, I taught in the United Kingdom. Suddenly, I was in the most globally and religiously diverse school I had ever worked in. On any given day, I had students from the United Kingdom, Poland, Pakistan, India, Jamaica, Guyana, Turkey, and

more in my classroom. I was culturally out of my depth and wasn’t experienced enough to teach the group of students I did, so I decided to study immigration and native experiences at the University of Saskatchewan to remedy that. This confluence of experiences traveling and learning others’ stories led to my pursuits in teaching about religion in a way that helped me connect with students.

I aimed to equip students with the lifelong ability to practice deeper inquiry into the religious traditions that steer the course of people’s life philosophies across the globe. I once taught a course called “Classical Ideas and World Religions.” I translated this course into an online context while keeping the goal of deeper connection in mind. The major goal of this course was to study religions from a place of seeking to understand. Modules in the course followed a pattern of exploring history, literature, and a selection of current events throughout each religion to demonstrate the modernity and contemporary nature of how religions exist around people today. The course assessed students via an array of student-produced podcasts, personalized journal entries in response to ancient religious texts, current cultural studies, and locally based projects, all of which I attempted to make as meaningful and authentic for students as possible.

It mattered tremendously to me—a white, male, able-bodied teacher—that a wide range of voices across religious, ethnic, racial, age, and professional communities be visible and present in the course content. I gathered a wide range of guest interviews from lay practitioners, scholars, clergy members, and journalists who spanned an immense range of backgrounds and experiences within religion. Throughout the course, I included more than one hundred audio clips of my conversations from The Classical Ideas Podcast (Soden, 2017–present), including firsthand accounts of religious practice and scholarship with people from multiple continents.

Students immediately began to demonstrate a global awareness in the course. One student, Chase, opened his first audio podcast assignment in the course with a personalized pondering and definition of religious literacy. In his opening statement, Chase answered the question, “What is religious literacy exactly?” with “I believe it is the ability to understand or comprehend religion, which I think is more important the more the world is connected.” Chase was hypothesizing how he could enhance his own cultural literacy skills in the religious aspect of our social fabric to make better connections. In a single statement, Chase captured the global connectedness for the course I hoped students would realize.

Creating a globally minded and culturally responsive online course required a wide range of personal and professional international experiences on my part as the teacher and course writer. My experiences living, teaching, and learning in international and diverse communities at least partially prepared me for this curriculum-writing and teaching experience. From there, I have had the opportunity to never stop asking questions and the privilege to help students realize the beauty in asking questions for themselves. (Greg Soden, personal communication, October 13, 2020)

Strategies for Making Global Connections

Greg Soden’s narrative and the strategies he shared in conversation remind people that they are each on a journey. They are all works in progress. Reflecting on your journey, learning, challenges, and adventures matters. Connecting that learning across the global landscape opens up the potential for new kinds of pedagogies and understanding. In the following sections, we share three strategies from Greg’s work on making global connections.

Reflect on What Led You to This Point

Greg’s journey to becoming a world religions teacher in a blended school started right out of high school, but he couldn’t have known that. Reflecting on how one choice led to another helped him see the big picture of his life. Then, he was able to use those choices to shape his career path. Use the following questions as guidelines for self-reflection. • What led you to the point where you are right now? • What choices brought you closer to your goals? • What specific lessons can you draw from those choices to influence the way you connect with students?

Travel (Near or Far)

All travel is formative. Greg’s narrative explores how many different geographic locations impacted his teacher journey. While financial barriers may prevent you from packing your bags and hopping on a plane to engage in an international journey, you can learn beyond your comfort zone in many ways. You might have an international learning opportunity, as in Greg’s case, or you might just as likely study a new language, attend a house of worship of an unfamiliar faith, play a pickup basketball game at a park near where students live, or attend a new cultural event. In each of these situations, be open to learning, and seek ways to practice reciprocity, and afterward, continue reflecting on how these experiences mark an educator’s narrative.

Apply Personal Lessons to Student Lessons

Over time, Greg realized that the study of world religions helped create a context to house the important values he held around cultural literacy. As he spent more time pursuing knowledge and experiences in that area, he was able to find a focus for his passions. Use the following prompts for self-reflection about values. • What are your core values? • What impact do you hope to make in your classroom, community, and world? • Think about the people you can talk with, the places you can explore, and the resources you can consult to strengthen your experiences and teaching around these values. Write about them.

Key Classroom Takeaway: Story Sharing Makes Space for Empathy and Connection

The narratives in this chapter share a commitment to intentionally connect with, learn from, and honor students right where they are. In educational work, teachers advocate for people-centered approaches. People-centered approaches recognize differences and acknowledge everyone shares the human experience. A middle-aged mother and educator shares humanity with a fifteen-year-old poet and member of the marching band. Seeing each other as people requires vulnerability to share one’s own (and graciousness in noticing others’) complexities, multiple identities, and cultures.

Personality, gender, race, socioeconomic status, nationality, peer group, and a constellation of identities and circumstances contribute to the lived experience. Teachers can’t talk around these things and hope that the class will flourish in spite of them. These topics are a framework for what you have known to be true and a lens for examining new information. They are links in a chain between your experience and someone else’s experience, and they are a map for how to move ahead to where you want to be next. Teachers and students need to talk through their experiences together.

Knowing that classroom spaces, like all group spaces, are arenas for navigating belonging, how do teachers honor and affirm all the perspectives and experiences in their classrooms? Effective change comes from clearly seeing where the margins and center have been drawn and then intentionally choosing to draw new circles (hooks, 2015). Teaching students to notice centering, to practice inclusion, to affirm and welcome marginalized voices, and to celebrate new possibilities is powerful. Everyone has been in the center at times and in the margins at other

times, and they’ve learned and grown through each experience. In all classrooms, whether in person, blended, or online, educators want to teach students to practice radical inclusion and to recognize wisdom across groups. The reproducible at the end of this chapter (page 124) will help you find your own definition for empathy and help you design what radical inclusion looks like in your classroom.

Summary

Personal stories create and strengthen connection. Sharing stories takes courage and vulnerability. Centering moments happen both organically and intentionally and on large scales and in small moments. As Lou Jobst shares, “Every time I see that special glimmer of talent, no matter how small or huge, I point out students’ effort, their talent, and their potential.” Vulnerability, courage, empathy, and storytelling in the online classroom (as in all classrooms) carry lifelong, life-changing rewards.

In this chapter, you heard from Jill Clingan, who is passionate about how cultivating empathy creates a bridge between teachers and students as they navigate online spaces. Lou Jobst shared how he notices who students are and uses music to honor their personalities and encourage them to express themselves in new ways. Megan Lilien and Nina Sprouse share an astute observation about the role gender plays in the classroom and how educators ensure an equitable experience for students of all genders. Greg Soden’s invaluable experience traveling the globe highlighted that self-awareness of your identity in the world becomes easier to locate when you have become the stranger; simply put, taking yourself out of your comfort zone to learn about other cultures can be a formative act of humility and empathy.

This chapter transitioned the book into part II, “Ensuring Equity and Inclusion in the Online Classroom.” So far, you’ve seen how teaching starts with relationship building, which you cultivate through time and intentional moments of connection, and which deeply matters to both academic success and social-emotional health. In chapter 5, you’ll see how the class community is often a cultural and linguistic tapestry of strengths and experiences.