Peer-Led Academic Support Networks: A Pathway to Provide Equity in Difficult Courses in Higher Education

Course number: HIST 18: Health, Medicine, and Science in America, 1600-the Present

SI Leader, Equity, Cultural Responsiveness

Reflection on the implementation of Supplemental Instruction Leader support in my course:

I chose to work with a SI Leader. My SI met with students twice a week for fifty minutes. He developed a rapport with his students, providing space for them to examine their own learning strategies and develop new ones, to explore their cultural connections to course material and to learn about their peers' cultural connections to course content. He also served as a resource for students new to our campus by connecting them with PARC tutors for other classes. My SI attended every class and led five in-class review sessions for students (30 minutes each) to help students prepare for written assignments. These sessions included making sure students understood the assignment, helping them to organize their responses effectively, and ensuring they were engaging critically with the books and articles on which the assignments were based. He also shared his notes with students who missed class and read rough drafts of assignments for SI and non-SI students. It is easy to get lost in a class of 120 students, especially when many of those students are new to CSUS. My SI helped students feel seen, connected with them through the shared experience of attending our university as an undergrad, met with students during office hours, read drafts of essays and provided feedback, and helped students who missed a class stay on track by sharing his notes and discussing the missed content. This helped students keep up with the material and prevented some of them from falling into the trap of missing class(es) and/or assignments and giving up.

Hammond's Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain helped me understand different ways students bring their cultural identities and experiences to the classroom. It also encouraged me to devote time in class to sharing our different cultures with one another and to investigate how our cultures shape the ways that we engage with the world around us and one another.

I worked on improving this learning objective: investigate the ways in which scientific ideas shaped national debates about who can be an American citizen and why. Because this is such a large class, it's hard to break students into small groups and ensure they are working on the task at hand. But the SI section is designed to connect students with one another in culturally responsive ways and is an ideal space for students to reflect on how course content connects with their own experiences. After a week on health activism within Black and Latin@ communities in the 1960s and 1970s, I asked Andrew to break his students into groups of three or four and discuss their own experiences with the American healthcare system and how race/ethnicity/class/(dis)ability/and gender shaped the healthcare they received. When I work with the same SI next semester, I will suggest that he include a similar small group reflective discussion every other week with topics we choose together based upon student interest. The goal with this assignment is to help students connect history to their lives, to help them think critically about how themes of the course play out in the present.

Reflection on My Cultural Awareness

My tree shows that I come from a mixed-faith background and an extended family that has not always been accepting of my nuclear family. That has shaped my commitment to social justice, to using the past to understand the present, and my goal of having every student I teach feel seen and heard in the classroom. The cultural tree helps me visualize the different ways that culture shapes our life and our actions. It is a wonderful resource when working with students because it illustrates our similarities and differences and encourages empathy when engaging with one another.

**Evidence of Instructional Change**
This image illustrates levels of intercultural competence and helps me model cultural attentiveness and respect for my students.	I have always seen learning as a dynamic process not a linear one and was drawn to this framework because it outlines clear methods for achieving that and reflecting that value to students.

Moving Forward

I have seen numerous benefits of peer-to-peer education via my SI leader. Students in the SI section formed a supportive cohort, they helped each other learn and process difficult topics. They viewed my SI as an ally and a guide and have encouraged their peers not in the SI section to use him as a resource for our class as well. I hope to work with the same SI again in the spring semester. After he graduates (in S24), I would like to try working with an embedded tutor to see if that form of peer-to-peer support also works in a large lecture class. Because my SI only had nine students in his section, I wonder if embedded tutor might reach more students. I am also grateful to have been introduced to the Sankofa program through this PLC. I plan to use Sankofa cultural navigators in HIST 175B, Health, Death, and Disease in America in S24.

**Faculty Bio**
	I am a historian of American women and medicine with an expertise in reproductive health and justice. I consider myself a teacher-scholar and want my students to see themselves, their families, and communities in my courses. I teach through stories (rather than memorization of names, dates and facts) and encourage students to develop connects with those who came before us.

Funding Information
	The Peer and Academic Resource Center (PARC) in partnership with The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) The Division of Inclusive Excellence (IE) This work was supported by: CSU Office of the Chancellor Academic Affairs grant for Faculty Professional Development