Dr. J. Luke Wood’s lecture was really helpful in grounding the overall goals we strive for when it comes to teaching equity focuses classes: Be Intrusive, Relational Relevant, Community Centric, and Race Conscious.

Being Intrusive is something I strive for in my f2f classrooms, this is as simple as asking students, “Did everybody understand the homework assignment, anybody need me to rephrase or clarify the objective.” I also go over the syllabus schedule everyday before we transition into the day’s objective. I feel this further enforces students to visually see upcoming deadlines, plug in reminders into their phone, and ask questions.

I’m constantly creating micro-interventions when students work on low-stake assignments that aim toward building an essay or a larger project. I intentionally make myself sound like a broken record to welcome students to evaluate their confidence with the course.

Thinking about OW Course, I can see myself replicating this by monitoring their submissions, sending friendly email reminders to ‘submit’ assignments, to ask questions, to encourage students to communicate with their instructor when necessary.

I also thought about how to build safe spaces for our students via OW courses, and implementing discussion courses on the first or second week regarding microaggressions and helpful tips on how to maintain respect on discussion boards. Normally in a f2f, these are conversations I would have based when introducing the syllabus. But I love the idea of discussion boards where students lead the discussion on the topics and setting some kind of collaborative agreement on guidelines for maintaining respect among their peers via discussion board or private emails.

There’s so much more to think about, but it’s exciting to see so many awesome resources on how to execute the practice of equity via OW courses!