Anti-Racist Teaching Practices

This list provides guidance for instructors on how to engage in anti-racist practices while fulfilling their instructor duties, promoting a compassionate classroom environment, and fostering students’ critical awareness: 

1. Grade exams, papers, and projects anonymously. Otherwise, the evidence suggests you will give higher grades to men and White people, even if you are neither. 
2. When giving example situations/problems/questions, whether in class, on exams, on worksheets etc., use names and situations that reflect the diversity of humans in your classroom and/or broader community. “Mr. Smith” is not a neutral choice.
3. Read books, fiction and nonfiction, by authors from the communities your students come from or just communities that are not your own, to get some idea of how non-objective your own perspective is.
4. Acknowledge white supremacy to your students. Show them data that people give students of color lower peer evaluations for the same level of performance, etc. 
5. Call on students of color first.  Make sure you let them know that you are interested in their participation in class.  
6. Reflect on the difference between inclusive and anti-racist teaching practices. Anti-racist teaching practices clearly address systemic inequality issues, and consciously promote healing, decolonization, and justice-oriented work.
7. For courses where race is not part of the course content, encourage discussion on who has been leading the field and whose voices have been left out of the discipline.