As a lifelong educator, my number one goal is building positive relationships with students. When students feel welcome, safe, and seen in my classroom, they are more likely to share their thinking and reasoning with me, be vulnerable and share what they don’t understand, and take risks in their work. They are also more likely to discuss and debate complicated situations with nuance. I’ve often heard critics of this approach say that empathy is the enemy of rigor, but I completely disagree–I’ve found that empathy supports rigor. When I push students, when I challenge them, they are more likely to engage with the challenge and more likely to succeed, because they know my support is behind them.

Establish open (and honest) lines of communication and make it easy for students to engage in them.

One of the most impactful things we can do to create welcoming spaces in our classrooms is to make it easy for students to communicate with us. Providing office hours is one way we can make ourselves accessible to students; however, students may face a variety of barriers which prevent them from attending office hours. Email is also an effective form of communication, yet explaining complicated concepts via written communication can be difficult. I have found that providing an opportunity to check-in, via student name tents, has opened an accessible, easy to implement channel of communication between my students and me.

Student Name Tents

I use a special name tent (adapted from Sara Van Der Werf) with students all quarter long. On the outside of the name tent, students write their name. The inside of the name tent includes a form with space for a student comment and the teacher’s response for each of five days. At the end of every class, students are required to write something in the name tent, and I always reply. At the beginning of the next class, they pick up their name tent and read my response. Logistically, the name tents help me keep track of attendance. They also give students an opportunity to inform me of upcoming absences or the need for an office hours visit. Often, a student will share that they are having trouble understanding a particular concept, which allows me to reach out with specific resources or supports that might be helpful. These informal checks of student understanding (or at least their own perception of their understanding) help me plan for future class periods.

Beyond the benefit for reflective practice and improved instruction, I have found the name tent helps me build strong relationships with students. They will often give me a song recommendation or tell me something exciting that has happened in their life lately. They’ll give me riddles to solve or ask me what my favorite animal is. Student athletes will let me know when games/matches/meets are coming up, and they’ll keep me posted on their teams’ progress. When I first implemented them, I was concerned students would find the name tents juvenile. Instead, they quickly became a favorite element of my teaching practice. Students enjoy the ongoing dialogue, and I genuinely enjoy reading and responding to the comments after each class period. It helps me get to know students beyond how they perform in my courses. I have had many students share that they use this name tent with their own students in their future practicums, internships, and eventual teaching jobs.

Sometimes students will ask me for advice in a name tent. “What do you do when you’re having trouble finding motivation?” “Do you have any advice for helping me manage my time?” Occasionally, students will share that they are going through a particularly difficult time. Since the onset of the pandemic, I have been particularly aware of the many ups and downs life can bring. Our students are adults, but many of them are still in the early years of their adulthood. If they are going to be successful in their future careers, they need to learn strategies for weathering challenging times, yet they should not have to sacrifice their mental, emotional, or physical wellbeing for the sake of their academic or career success. Providing an open channel of communication allows me to carefully consider how to approach crucial conversations (for example, a discussion about chronic absences) in a way that is meant to support students rather than chastise them. I do not intend to suggest that I can solve all of the students' problems–I cannot. But the name tents make me more aware of the various challenges students face and helps me connect students to resources and support networks that may be able to support them in ways I am not able to.

Provide access to support networks.

The challenges our students face can be vast and overwhelming. The death of a family member, suicidality, depression, learning to manage a disability, food and housing insecurity–these are just some of the challenges students have shared with me over the years. I am not a mental health professional, nor can I provide monetary or structural support for these issues. Yet I do know that WWU has many services which can provide support in ways I cannot. I have found that students are often unaware of the supports that are available to them as students; and even if students are aware that there is support, they sometimes lack the energy or executive function to find out how to access it.

I keep an updated page of “Student Support Systems” in Canvas for every course I teach. Every time I receive an email about a resource, I add it to the list. At least once a year, I check to make sure all the links and contact information is correct. Students know that if they are dealing with a challenge, there is likely to be information about support for that challenge on that page. Further, if a student shares something in a name tent that indicates a need for a specific type of support, I can reach out to them directly and share that information.

Occasionally, open lines of communication will make me aware of a need that is not yet being met. After a couple of years of teaching at WWU, I’d had several trans/nonbinary students share that they were unsure about whether they could be open about their gender identity and still be a teacher. Some of those students went on to change their major, worried that they would face consequences or insurmountable challenges if they chose to express their gender identity while teaching young people in schools. While I understood these students’ decisions, I was saddened and deeply troubled by this issue. Many children identify as queer, including those who are trans/nonbinary, and it is important that children of all ages and all gender identities have access to queer role models, including transgender teachers.

After sharing my concerns with a couple of colleagues, including folks from LGBTQ+ Western, I connected with a group of motivated queer education students and supported them as they began a new student club, Out in Education. Since their start in January of 2024, the students of Out in Education have shared handouts with advice for instructors and presented sessions on affirming pronoun use. They have created care packages for middle and high school students and distributed them to queer-straight alliance clubs at local schools. They have regular meetings and have hosted guest speakers, movie nights, and lesson plan sharing sessions. More importantly, these queer students, who will be future K-12 teachers, now have a network of other queer future teachers. They can share their questions, challenges, wonderings, and support with each other. I am continually amazed by the resilience, kindness, empathy, strength, and talent of these students, and it is an honor to be their faculty advisor.

Around the same time Out in Education was getting started, another student club was formed. Educators of Color also has regular meetings and provides engagement, support, professional development, and networking for education students. They are “motivated by an unwavering commitment to equity, diversity, and dismantling systems of oppression in education…and are committed to working to cultivate a community that advocates for inclusivity, embraces diversity, and continually strives for excellence in education” (from Western Involvement Network). While I am not an advisor for EOC, I have noticed that many of their programs have connections to what I am teaching in my courses. I try to share their resources and advertise their upcoming events as often as I can.

I also provide small tutorials on a variety of technological tools via my Canvas page. There are resources, such as Pronoun Customization of Online Services, which show students how to change their Canvas and Zoom settings to display their pronouns, how to optimize Zoom to hide self-view (see Hide My Video) if it is distracting to look at yourself during meetings, and how to update your Canvas notification settings so you’re sure to get important announcements from instructors but no emails about updates you’re uninterested in (such as a notification every time your instructor adds something to a Canvas module).

Keep track of board work.

I write a lot on the board during my courses. I often have students write on the board, too, or share posters of their work. I will often have students share their problem-solving strategies using models, pictures, or manipulatives. While my students tend to be good note-takers, I do not want them so preoccupied with writing every single thing we share that they are unable to engage with the tasks themselves. Yet I do want them to have access to this board work (and shared strategies, etc.) after the class period ends. Further, if a student is absent, I want them to have access to this work as well. For a while, I tried to take pictures of all shared work at the end of every class period and upload it to Canvas. However, this took a lot of time, and I found that I wasn’t able to keep up with it regularly.

Rather than abandoning my desire to have a record of all our board work, I turned this instructional goal into a community one. At the beginning of each term, students sign up for one or two class periods during which they will be responsible for documenting the board work. In Canvas, I create a “Board Work” page for each week of class and change the settings so students can edit it. On the day they’re responsible for board work, students take pictures of everything that is recorded on the board or shared posters, etc. They also take pictures of models, diagrams, and other things that are shared on the document camera or through “Gallery Walks” (i.e, when students share and contribute ideas, usually on paper, around the room). After class, they upload these pictures to the Board Work page on Canvas for that week. This collaboratively created resource allows me to hold students who are absent accountable for what they missed, and it allows students themselves to revisit course content as they work on assignments or study for exams. Students have shared that they use this resource frequently, and are happy to be responsible for it once or twice during the term.

Believe Students.

One important yet rarely discussed element of establishing positive communication with students is the fact that you have to believe in students–not just believing in their potential, but also believing what they say. When students tell you who they are–what name they use, their pronouns, other aspects of their identity–believe that they know themselves and honor them by addressing them in the way they have chosen to address themselves. This also means you believe them when they tell you why they need to be absent and that they have followed your guidelines on assignments and exams.

I am not naïve–I know that sometimes students cheat or that they miss deadlines or class for reasons we would consider insufficient. Almost every year, a social media post goes viral in which a college instructor jokingly wonders, “How many dead grandparents can a person have in one semester?” and to which multiple others respond with “ridiculous” reasons students have given for being absent from class. However, I believe that assuming the worst of our students destroys the bridges we hope to build with them. Rather than policing their reasons for absences, I develop attendance policies which hold them accountable for class content while also giving them agency to make their own choices about when they need to be absent. Rather than bending over backwards to try to find every tool students might use to cheat on an assignment or exam and then find ways to block those tools, I instead use that energy on developing assignments that are meaningful and productive and encourage students to collaborate and use appropriate resources. I know it is not likely that every single one of my students finds every single one of my assignments/exams/etc. meaningful and important, but that is, nevertheless, the ideal for which I strive. You can read more about my strategies for exam accommodations and my attendance policy in later sections of this write-up.

Finally, it’s important to have strategies for getting back on track when you find your faith in your students wavering. I have been a teacher at various grade levels (from kindergarten to college) for 22 years. There are absolutely times when my patience has waned and my frustration has taken over. Yet I have never found complaining about students–either to them or to others–to be productive. Instead, I look for ways to remind myself of their brilliance and potential. That may mean we need to pivot to a different activity for the day and just revel in the joy of a fun mathematical task. It may mean I share a persistent challenge (for example, a large number of students not doing their required reading) and ask students to share their ideas about what may be causing this challenge and what ideas they have for overcoming it. If I truly want to have student-centered courses, I need to believe that students’ opinions and ideas are just as important as my own. You can hear more about this philosophy in my podcast appearance (Math and Other Things; On Falling in Love with Math with Rebecca Borowski).

Take a genuine interest in students’ lives beyond their performance in your course.

Our students are whole human beings, with families, jobs, pets, responsibilities, and interests far beyond the content of their college courses. As I have strived to make my own teaching more culturally relevant and responsive over the years, I have begun to realize how important it is that students are able to bring their whole, authentic selves with them into the classroom. I want to not only allow that but to encourage it and make space for it in my courses.

Like Your Students

I truly believe that you need to like your students. Every single student has something I like about them. I take a genuine interest in their hobbies and extracurricular activities, following their sports teams on social media. I ask their opinions on the new book they are reading or a movie they saw over the weekend. I dedicate the first couple minutes of every class period to asking them to share recent celebrations. They share stories about their cultural backgrounds, talk about how their relationship with mathematics has changed over the years, and tell stories about working with children in their various field experiences.

This sharing of interests goes both ways. My students know that I am a single parent, and I am explicit about some of the boundaries that help me maintain a work-life balance. (For example, I do not answer work emails on the weekend.) They lamented with me when my daughter recently got braces, and they good naturedly tolerate my occasional updates about my favorite band, Korean pop sensation BTS.

Name tents have helped with this. They give us space to talk “off-topic” without losing class time. I have learned so much from my students. They have broadened my own world, in ways both subtle and profound. Their music, book, TV, and movie recommendations have developed my eclectic tastes. I have a better understanding of a broader range of cultures and countries. Learning to like them and taking an interest in their lives beyond the classroom has truly made me a better person and a better teacher. It has also made more students want to be in class, because they know that I care about them and I want to see them there. One student shared with a colleague, “Every time I see [Rebecca], she thanks me for being in class and says she loves having me there. It makes me want to cry, because I’ve never had that before.”

Help Students Build Social Networks in Class

Just as students have broadened my own horizons, so too do I want them to broaden each other’s. I build teamwork and collaboration into my course expectations. The first step toward making up an absence is making contact with another person in the class to discuss what they missed. I give them time on the very first day to exchange contact info with at least 2 people around them so that everyone has at least a couple of folks to reach out to. I encourage them to collaborate on assignments, as long as everyone does their own individual write-up and submission. I make a groan-inducing running joke about “Friday night math parties” and share that some of my most meaningful discussions about teaching, learning, and mathematics have happened outside of school while I’m spending time with people who have similar passions for teaching and learning.

I assign seats in my courses, starting with the first class of the term. These initial seat assignments are random, but subsequent seats are carefully planned. One goal of my courses is for students to broaden their strategic toolkit for mathematics problem solving, developing and understanding a wide variety of strategies that can be used to calculate with and reason about various quantities. If they always sit with the same people, they won’t see as wide a range of strategies. Further, as future teachers, it is important they have experience working with all types of people. Assigning new seats every couple weeks gives students practice developing patience and empathy and communicating in a variety of ways.

"Your Mental, Emotional, and Physical Wellbeing Is Important to Me.”

I repeat this phrase to students often, and I mean it. However, if I want students to believe me, I need to build my course expectations in a way which reflects this assertion. When I make decisions about assignments, policies, and practices, I consistently ask whether I am holding true to this belief.

• What is the purpose of this assignment? Does it help me achieve one of my course goals?
• Is there redundancy in the work I’m asking students to do? If yes, can I restructure things to eliminate the redundancy?
• Does this decision reflect my care for students’ wellbeing?
• Is this policy going to help students be successful, or is it only punitive?

I do not argue that punitive policies (for example, a reduced grade when an assignment is late) are never appropriate. I do, however, feel that we should think very critically about punitive policies and whether they actually support student learning. If they don’t, perhaps they can be removed or replaced with more affirming policies.

Good teachers know how to advocate for their students. We often don’t teach advocacy strategies in teacher education courses, at least not explicitly. Yet college is where many people learn advocacy skills. For many students, this begins with advocating for themselves. When a student questions why they received a certain grade or when they ask for an extended deadline on an assignment, I resist the urge to bristle and perceive them as argumentative. Instead, I listen and carefully consider their reasoning. I encourage their self advocacy, because I know the more effective they are at advocating for themselves, the more prepared they will be to advocate for others, especially their own future students.

Many of our students carry heavy burdens. Life can be hard, and some of the hardest situations happen in the most unexpected times. If I can help ease students’ burdens by giving them empathy when it comes to course policies, I am only increasing the likelihood that they will succeed in their college courses and beyond. As academics, we frequently request and are granted extensions on deadlines. It does not hurt to extend this grace to our students as well.

Maya Angelou said that “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I know students are unlikely to remember every single thing they learn while taking my course. However, if they feel safe, supported, and seen in my classroom, then they are more likely to work to build affirming environments themselves in their own future classrooms. If I make them feel like they want to be in class, like I’m happy to see them, like they belong and have valuable things to share, they will be motivated to make their own future students feel the same way.

Use Universal Design for Learning.

Universal Design for Learning UDL is an approach to teaching that considers different networks of the brain that impact learning. The UDL framework considers what motivates, challenges, and interests students, how information and content can be shared in different ways, and differentiation in the ways students can show what they know (Meyer, Rose, & Gordon, 2014). UDL helps teachers focus not on students’ deficits–the things they don’t know or can’t do–and instead focus on their assets (Lambert, 2021). Focusing on students’ assets and strengths–what they do know, what they are good at–can help you leverage those assets to increase students’ learning.

Universal Design for Learning grew out of the work of architects who sought to design spaces that were accessible to people with a wide variety of mobility needs. An oft-cited example is the Ed Roberts Campus–a universally designed, transit-oriented campus located at the Ashby BART Station in Berkeley, California. The campus was designed so that people with all types of mobility needs–wheelchairs, crutches, walkers, canes, service animals, etc.–can access and move freely about the space.

I find the Ed Roberts Campus to be a particularly useful metaphor when I am considering my own teaching. I work hard to design my courses so that all students, regardless of their needs, can be successful. My goal is for anyone to walk into my class and feel welcome, regardless of any disabilities, neurodivergence, cultural differences, or access needs. If I have planned well, when I receive a notification from the Disability Access Center, it takes little effort to provide students’ accommodations–because I will already have implemented practices that make such accommodations needs easy to meet.

Consider students’ access needs and check-in often to ensure they are being met.

Everybody has access needs. Many of us are used to having all of our access needs met; when we walk into a classroom, we can see the teacher, hear what they are saying, raise our hand to draw attention, and use our mouths to speak when we have a question or comment. However, many people have different access needs–captions of audio, interpretation services, or wheelchair access. “Other access needs might include an opportunity to stand and stretch (rather than stay seated for hours at a time), access to gender-neutral restrooms, eating during a meeting, accessible language…or adequate child support” (Reinholz & Ridgway, 2021). The following are a few of the ways I have worked to meet the various access needs of my students:

• Turn on captions in PowerPoint. This setting is available in the current version of PowerPoint, although your computer does need to have an internet connection for it to work.
• Make slides available to students prior to (or at the beginning of) class.
• Allow students to take notes in whatever method works best for them. (Including the use of technology devices).
• Allow students to eat in class (but ask them to avoid bringing common allergens like peanuts, and make sure they wipe down their space when they are finished).
• Make sure students know where the restroom is (including accessible and gender-neutral bathrooms) and allow them to use it as needed.
• Allow students to stand up and/or walk around the room as needed.
• Make sure there are chairs in the classroom which will accommodate a large variety of body sizes.
• Allow (and encourage) students to speak in various languages. I often have students whose first language is not English. If they find it helpful to speak in, for example, Spanish as they are working through a task, I encourage them to do so. They are applying new technical vocabulary to their native language, and those of us who don’t speak that language are also learning something new.
• Allow students to have access to their phones in class. I realize this may be controversial. Yet our phones have become integral to our lives. My phone serves as my watch and my calendar. Some people have apps on their phones which track their blood sugar and notify them if they need an intervention. Others may need to keep an eye out for a text letting them know their child has made it home safely from the bus after school. I avoid policies which prohibit cell phones in class. If a student is taking calls, sending texts, being disruptive, or not engaging in classwork or discussion because of their phone, I address it directly with that student. However, I rarely have such problems.

The work to consider access needs in educational spaces has grown out of the work of Sins Invalid, a disability justice-based movement which has developed 10 Principles of Disability Justice (Sins Invalid, 2019). I find these principles to be challenging and engaging, and the voices of disabled advocates are very meaningful as I continue to learn and consider how to make education truly accessible to all.

Design exams and other forms of assessment to be aligned with your philosophy of teaching.

Because I am committed to implementing the principles of Universal Design for Learning in my courses, I make sure students have multiple ways of showing me what they know and have learned. I think of my course and all of its elements as a puzzle. Our class meetings take up a large amount of the puzzle. Course readings are another piece, their assigned reflections on those readings are another. Problem sets and other homework make up additional pieces. Group projects comprise additional pieces. My goal is to avoid redundancy in all of these pieces, and I make sure students know that in order to get the “full picture” of everything they need to learn in this course, they must engage with all of the pieces.

Because of the pieces of this big puzzle, students have multiple ways to show me what they know and have learned in multiple ways. Exams are one of those ways. Yet exams can be more stressful for students than other forms of assessment and often bring anxiety and stress. I want students to see exams as just another form of assessment–an opportunity to show me what they have learned and what they still have yet to learn. Thus, I have a number of exam practices that help this form of assessment be in line with my philosophy of teaching rather than in opposition to it. I do not use all of these practices with every exam, but rather choose which ones are most appropriate for each particular class and group of students.

• Access to resources during the exam: Occasionally I will allow students to use their textbook or notes during the exam. More often I will allow them to create a notecard or other reference sheet ahead of the exam and use it during. Creating such reference sheets often encourages students to study systematically, and I’ve found that students with the best notecards often don’t need to use them during the exam because the creation of the notecard itself prepares them well for the exam.
• I almost always allow students to have extended time on exams. As a former K-12 teacher myself, I know that there are rarely situations where you can’t take extra time to do important work well. Thus, if students need additional time to show what they know on an exam, I give it to them.
• Because my courses teach elementary math methods in addition to math content, we frequently use manipulatives in class. I often make these manipulatives available for students to use on exams as well.
• I provide a study guide (usually just a list of expected topics) before each exam, and make sure students know what the format and expectations will be.
• “Read Time, Talk Time” at the beginning of the exam. I adapted this strategy from Howie Hua, a math instructor at Fresno State University, after he shared it on social media several years ago. Before I pass out the exam, I tell students to put their writing utensils aside–they will not use them for the first ten minutes. When they get the exam, I give them five minutes to read the entire exam and think quietly to themselves. Then I give them five minutes to talk to each other. Students are often surprised by this, but quickly get out of their seats and move around to discuss content with each other. This strategy takes some strategic planning–I rarely have multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank questions on exams for which I use this strategy. Instead, I write questions which require students to reason deeply about concepts. I’ve found that this strategy encourages collaboration (which is a skill that is critical for future teachers) and also considerably eases my students’ test anxiety.

Be flexible.

I was deeply impacted by the pandemic. During the first few months of the lockdown, my daughter and I mourned many lost opportunities–field trips, science fairs, family visits, holiday celebrations. As the pandemic waged on, the number of opportunities we lost (in addition to the people we lost) became too great to be counted. I returned to in-person teaching with a renewed sense of what is truly important in life, and with reorganized priorities. I have always viewed my work as an educator as a vocation rather than a job. I love the work I do, and even after more than two decades of teaching, I am never bored. Yet teaching is not the only thing that brings me joy, and it is important to make time for people, opportunities, hobbies, and interests outside of work and school. This is true for me, a professor, it is true for my daughter, a child, and it is true for my students as well.

The pandemic taught me how important it is to be flexible in my teaching practice so that everyone–students and teachers alike–can make time for the various things they value in life.

Flexibility and empathy are not the enemy of rigor. Being flexible with students in the modalities of their work, the deadlines you assign, or in the way they engage in class meetings does not require you to lower your standards or the expectations you have of students. Neither does flexibility require you to be a martyr. I do not extend flexibility to my students in a way that requires multiple additional hours of work from me. Instead, I find policies that allow me to continue to hold high expectations yet also provide flexibility, autonomy, and empathy to students. For a detailed discussion, see Examples of Empathetic, Student-Centered Policies. and Attendance and Participation Assignment.

Conclusion

I do not argue that all of these strategies will work universally for every instructor and every course. These strategies have been carefully cultivated for my own setting–relatively small courses which are directly relevant to a future career in K-12 teaching. My students are usually upper-level students who have already been accepted into the Woodring College of Education. Yet each of these strategies was created out of a deeply held belief in the importance of creating welcoming spaces. Establishing open lines of communication, taking an interest in students’ lives, implementing universal design, and being flexible are principles that can be implemented in any setting, although specific strategies may differ.

I work with my students knowing that they will one day (soon) be my colleagues. I work hard to build collaborative relationships with them in a way that encourages them to keep in touch beyond my courses and beyond their degree at WWU. If nothing else, I want them to remember me and my practices for creating welcoming spaces so that they will endeavor to create welcome spaces of their own in their future careers as teachers. Their commitment to “paying it forward” is the greatest reward I could hope to receive.

Resources

• 10 Principles of Disability Justice - Sins Invalid
• A Strategy for Reducing Math Test Anxiety - Howie Hua, Edutopia
• Ed Roberts Campus - national and international model dedicated to disability rights and universal access
• The Universal Design Guidelines - CAST.org