Making Students Feel Welcome

What might make you (or your students) feel welcomed or less-than-welcomed to a particular subject area or discipline in school?

In making students feel welcomed, I think it is important to be inclusive in a way that does not single out those who are different. For example, in my university math classes I was often the only woman in the room. Sometimes this was explicitly pointed out by the professor who would address us as "lady and gentlemen". I appreciate that he was trying to be inclusive by not just referring to us as "guys" but instead it made me feel "othered". I felt much more welcomed in classes where the professors would just treat us as a group of students, not students who are gendered. I also think we can make students feel welcomed by the examples we use. I remember having to give a presentation on one of the Feynman lectures and in the lecture, Feynman uses an example involving having to rescue a "beautiful woman" who has fallen into the water. The sexist nature of this example made me feel less welcomed because it implied that the role of the mathematician/rescuer was to be played by a man and that the woman's role was the damsel in distress. The way this example was clearly not targeted for my demographic made me feel less-than-welcomed.

Based on my experiences, I think the best way to make students feel welcomed is by presenting the material in an inclusive way, regardless of the makeup of the class. We don't need to single out students as different to adapt the material to be inclusive of these differences.


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