Day 2 - Rachel

What are you most excited to work on?

I think I'm most excited about working to bring more representation and non-white cultural focus and comparisons into my classes this coming year. I credit Miriam with starting me down this path originally, and I am curious to read her entry because we recently discussed this, so if it's similar it won't be a surprise. 
This is also on my mind because I just returned from the American Classical League Institute and this is an interest that was common to many of us. Aside from some great conversations that I had with others at random, there were both a preinstitute workshop, called "Latin When Everyone Can Do It," and a panel, called "Listening to All Voices 2.0: teaching Latin in the inclusive Latin classroom," on social justice, representation, and inclusivity, that not only offered a great list of readings (I'll save that for a later journal entry) but also several ideas for creating a classroom that feels safe for all of your students.

• One thing that I have always sort of done--when putting together pictures, like of a family or of any other random gathering of images that includes humans, I have always thought to choose images of people from all kinds of races and ethnicities. It occurred to me that some of my kids weren't being represented in the pictures I was putting together in a powerpoint and I reconfigured the entire thing. This is an easy thing to start to do to make sure your kids can see themselves, and it's something I'm going to redouble my efforts on to make sure that I'm really making sure I'm being thorough.
• I used to be satisfied to promote the usual white imagery of the Romans and Greeks, but it turns out that the Empire was really amazingly diverse and should be shown that way. This is where Miriam has helped me a lot. I have only recently started pushing myself here, and this is something that I am really excited to start working on in earnest this year.  It's also something that the Alt Right uses to promote themselves, so I have a new level of reason, outside my students' need to see themselves, to change that imagery. Therefore I will be working to incorporate readings that change that perspective and bring forth the multitude of cultures along the Mediterranean that were not white Europeans.
• I have finally come to the conclusion that it is okay to not care whether my imagery is perfectly authentic because representation can be incredibly powerful. This was my impetus for drawing Eurydice as a black woman. I know it seems obvious, but it needs to be stated: beauty should not just be represented as white. Or thin. Or all the other stereotypes that prevent students from seeing themselves valued by the things we usually present them with as Roman in our classes.  But by always worrying about whether we are representing our characters and deities just as the Romans imagined them, we reinforce those ideals. So instead I am going to be creating whatever imagery strikes me for characters, and, better, if kids create that imagery, I'm going to celebrate it and display it.

Those are my steps. Both the panel and the workshop also emphasized the importance of teaching in such a way that all kinds of learners felt safe and valued--with an emphasis on CI--as well. I am already on that journey and continue to try to improve my teaching at all times.

I feel this is one more piece of the CI puzzle too--it does incorporate comprehensibility and compellingness, but most importantly, by making my classroom an inclusive place that represents all of my students, I will have really tackled that third C, Caring, which is my personal favorite.