The semester at LCC welcomed me with book club discussions on Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. One concept in the book is that America has a rigid caste system in which prescribed social norms dictate group interactions. Gender, race, and class status all play a part. While reading this book, I considered whether barriers to creating an inclusive classroom are at times less about individual choice and more about expected normative behavior within this larger system.

American history is the inescapable classroom backdrop; this is a country where caste has been enforced through violence and legal action. History teaches that mutual exclusion is safer for everyone. This lesson rests beneath interactions among student populations in every college to this day. Much of learning occurs through interaction and it is no secret that students who are isolated have difficulty mastering material. The conflict becomes that the need for safety is expressed through behavior that is counterproductive to learning.

My initial efforts to break through these barriers were limited to assigning student pairs to work together but these interactions were generally polite and not maintained beyond the designated activity. The gold standard I sought was to catalyze student interactions without teacher supervision. This led me to try a new approach. I give students points for going to the tutoring center earning double points if they invite and attend with a student they do not know or have never spoken to before. The goal of this policy is to create an acceptable pathway for students to speak to each even if they are from different social backgrounds. It is a built-in-points-based-incentive for approaching and speaking to peers that reduces the potential embarrassment of violating normative behaviors of separateness. This policy creates room for student driven association.

The first day I announced this strategy to a class, one student, who had consistently been on the outside of every group raised his hand and asked, in a whisper, “what if you are too shy to invite anyone else but you really want tutor points?” Before I could answer, a classmate jumped up, sat next to him, and said, “I’m tutoring today you should come”. It is my belief that students want to include each other and that they are rarely excluding based on conscious dislike. So, as a teacher, I continually look for small ways to incentivize inclusive behaviors when building a classroom community.