On the one hand, we are fortunate at Penn to have so many students who care deeply about social inequalities influenced by such issues as race, gender, sexual orientation, class and poverty. Our students want to learn how to make a more equitable world. On the other hand, engaging with students in the classroom when such issues arise is often very challenging. I share here several classroom strategies that have helped me, since “hot button” issues are prevalent in all courses at the University, even if they’re not obvious. 

The first thing is to let students know that I am comfortable talking about challenging topics. I introduce myself by sharing a little about my academic interest in economic mobility among low-income families, my research on the same and my community activities—all of which have focused on stratification and opportunity in one form or another. Even these brief biographical pieces seem to encourage students to begin to share their interests and concerns as they introduce themselves.

Next, students and I talk together about ground rules we want for the class, since challenging issues that arise are often intersecting and emotionally charged. Ground rules often include listening respectfully without interrupting, using “I” statements, asking clarifying questions rather than making declarative comments, thus avoiding zero-sum debates, and throughout the semester, using material learned instead of opinion to ponder or disagree with another’s statement or position.  

As the semester proceeds, I use examples from my community activities to demonstrate my ground-level concern about equity and equality, which incrementally encourages students to join the conversation. One example is when I earlier headed my community’s A Better Chance (ABC) residential academic enrichment program for high school students coming from educationally disadvantaged school systems across the country. The ABC students related how challenging it is to leave home for high school in a very different educational, racial and social milieu, which helps me be particularly vigilant about the experiences and needs of international students, first-generation college students, especially those from low-income families and students of color at Penn—multiple categories that are frequently experienced by a single student. As a result, the Penn students share similar reactions with each other, which deepens their empathy for “differences.” 

Using findings from my research is a similar strategy that encourages engagement and discussion. For example, I conducted my PhD research in the HUP Family Planning Clinic where Ellen Freeman generously allowed me to conduct in-person interviews with 95 young women, who Dr. Freeman and her team had studied a decade earlier, to learn about their education, employment, income and reproductive pathways since that time. The women’s narratives illustrate the impact of labeling and stereotyping and lead students to deconstruct societal declarations such as the “epidemic of teen pregnancy” and the notion that having a child as a teen ruins one’s life. These new awarenesses then enable the students to identify and query other “taken-for-granted” assertions. Similarly, in my Family Economic Mobility course, findings from my five-year, five-city ethnographic study among families trying to move up through work offer students real-life examples of the historical and contemporary material about discrimination in education and employment that we read in the course (e.g. Harrington, DuBois, Murray, Moynihan, Coates, etc.). Buttressing the narratives with quantitative reports further helps students see how using multiple research methods can produce more robust and informative findings.

Students also seem to benefit from recognizing that issues such as poverty, racism, social class and other forms of marginalization and discrimination, have been part of societal life for millennia. For example, reading about poorness and status differences in Plato’s Republic and about political processes and ethical dilemmas in Aristotle’s Politics and Nichomachean Ethics provides a floor for students in my doctoral Social Theory course to better understand why scholars still address such topics. Students’ responses suggest that when historical material is presented alongside rigorously evaluated contemporary examples of even small societal advances, students are better able to stave off discouragement and hopelessness and become energized toward educated social change. 

Students also seem eager to hear about the particularities of poverty, class, racism, (un)employment and other challenges in Philadelphia. Examples from my research on those issues and my years of service on the Advisory Committee for the Shared Prosperity Philadelphia initiative (originally begun by Mayor Michael Nutter and continued by Mayor Jim Kenney) intersect with students’ intern or work experiences to foster vibrant example-sharing in the classroom. As I found with my qualitative and ethnographic research participants, students similarly relish having their ideas and voices heard, even when the issues are painful and thorny. Accordingly, the depth of understanding that occurs by the end of courses in which topics engender “hot button” issues is palpable, both in students’ assignments and in articles and emails they send me during the course and years later.

An important caveat here, however is that being aware of class process (i.e. how students interact with each other, their body and facial language, etc.) is essential. I learned this the hard way one semester when I was preoccupied with a new research grant that involved travel and was focused more on “covering the course material” than on process when I was in the classroom. As such, I didn’t initially catch the signals of class members’ angst about poverty and race, but when I finally did, I stopped immediately to hear and talk about their concerns. If I hadn’t, I’m quite sure that further course learning would have been blocked. Staying attuned to class process is not easy, but learning is most fruitful when I stop to address conflicts and concerns as they arise.

At the granular level, I find that identifying our shared goal to learn about social issues, such as poverty/poorness and class/positioning, that we identify through rigorous reading and informative experiences conveys that I have confidence in them to use research and experience for both knowledge production and societal improvement. As many of us find, students talk about sensitive or difficult material more avidly in small groups of around three to six persons, which I structure by proximity or topic and ask students afterward to briefly share the gist of their conversation with the class. In addition, I often use a constructionist lens to help students explore differences between categorical labels, such as the “working poor” and the broader description of “a person who is working but poor.” I find that providing overviews and shorter commentaries on aspects I want to encourage them to consider, versus long lectures, and using visual and auditory materials, such as film, YouTube interviews, photos and brief bios of course authors (to humanize who is writing what they are reading), occasional guests and music, modulate the intensity of 2½-hour classes that deal with challenging social problems and foster active engagement with ideas and each other. Students also appreciate that I post the week’s PowerPoint (if any) and class notes on the Canvas site to read when they miss a class or need to review for an assignment. I also work hard to provide stimulating and meaningful reading—sometimes a bit too much of it, but student evaluation comments help me adjust accordingly. I expect students to engage rigorously in classes and assignments and I grade individually, not on a curve. Students tell me they value the assignments because they require both analytical and personal engagement in some aspect of theory, thought and the world. Their engagement, then, further fosters their learning. 

Ultimately, students and I use ourselves, our readings and our experiences to learn together how to make a better world for all. Personally, I cannot think of a more interesting and meaningful shared venture.

Roberta Rehner Iversen is associate professor in the School of Social Policy & Practice and the recipient of the School’s 2019 and 2009 Excellence in Teaching Award for Standing Faculty. 

This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching. 

See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.