Last Saturday I attended a production of Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker at The Chapin School on Manhattan's Upper East Side. I worked with students at this private, all-girls school last year around this time, when my former student and now colleague Sarah Bellantoni asked me to work with her to create an ethnodrama with her students. The experience of making that play was one of the highlights of 2015 for me, so I was excited to see this year's production.
Thinking about classroom inclusivity
In the shadow of the protests last semester regarding campus climate issues, I've been thinking about ways that I could deepen my practice around inclusivity in my classrooms. For a number of years I've included an "Open Door Policy" statement on my syllabi, encouraging students to speak to me if issues come up in the classroom, particularly if those issues are the result of something that I've said or done.