Culturally Responsive Teaching Fall 23-Spring 24

Course number: RPTA 30: Introduction to Parks, Recreation, & Tourism

Equity / Inclusion / Accessibility

Reflection on Instructional Change:

One of my biggest lessons learned from reading the Grading for Equity book that we worked with this semester is that attendance policies can be a source of inequity in grading. Feldman's book highlighted the importance of grading for learning attainment, and removing other sources of bias in the gradebook. Some sections of the book highlighted how over emphasizing attendance in a student's grade can result in penalizing students who may have work/life obligations that require them to sometimes miss class. However, many of those students may spend copious time on their own reviewing course slides and materials, and working independently to stay on track with course learning objectives. I also recognize though, that in a course with no attendance policies, students may miss so many classes that they fall behind. Additionally, because I work to make my courses very participatory and discussion based, students who miss the majority of class periods would miss out on much of the experiential learning components of my courses.

Therefore, I've oped to review my grading policies in an attempt to better align with an inclusive grading for equity approach while still encouraging student participation in weekly class meetings. Specifically, I am replacing my previous system which offered an ‘excused’ as needed approach wherein I was grading for attendance each week and offering students the option to have the absence excused if they reached out to me prior to class. After taking this course, I realized that this policy was placing me in the role of decision maker in terms of what counted as excused. I recognized that there was a lot of my own subjectivity embedded in this by setting me up to make decisions about whether or not a student's work absence counted while perhaps another students family commitment didn't count as excused. Instead, I've switched to a policy that allows for more flexibility for all students and places them in the role of deciding what situations require that they miss class. My new policy offers two ‘freebies’, or excused absences where students do not need to tell me why they may need to miss class. Using the canvas 'assignment groups' tool, I'm able to set up attendance as a group of grades and apply an automatic grading rule which drops the two lowest grades from this group. I've also reduced the amount of points each absence counts for, so that should a student need to miss more than two classes, there is a point deduction but it’s not enough to ‘tank’ their grade. I feel this increases equity because it recognizes how much students have going on in their own lives, reduces subjectivity in deciding what ’counts’ as excused. After implementing this in my spring classes, I have received very positive feedback from students. They report an increased sense of autonomy and have let me know that this policy has also encouraged a few students to take a mental health day at the end of the semester if that have not missed any classes thus far. From an instructor perspective, it has also improved my relationships with students and reduced the amount of weekly emails I receive about class absences exponentially.

The second practice I will be implementing is removing time limits from weekly quizzes in RPTA 30. This is another change that to better align with the learning goals for the course. In Feldman's grading for equity book, there was a great deal of emphasis placed on aligning assignments with learning goals for the course, and reviewing assignments that may be unintentionally punitive and inaccessible to students. This caused me to consider how the learning goal of weekly quizzes in RPTA are to prepare students for in-class discussions and ensure they are prepared to engage in weekly hybrid activities and reflections. The quizzes are not about memorization, but rather to build the core competencies that this required intro course sets students up with so that they can succeed in future RPTA courses. Additionally, considering that each semester 4-5 students contact me via the disability services office to request extra time on quizzes, it seems reasonable to consider that there may be other students for whom the time limits feel inaccessible as well. Because I will not be teaching RPTA 30 again until the fall semester, I plan to pilot this approach then.

**Evidence of Instructional Change**
Image 1: Equity in Attendance	Image 2: Refocusing Quiz Grades: Removing time limits to better align with preparing for experiential activities
This image shows a slide from Day 1 of the class where I describe to students the flexible attendance policy.	My second practice will be removing quiz time limits which better aligns with the idea that the quizzes are designed to encourage students to read and retain material from weekly readings in order to prepare them for experiential activities (like this visit to the campus arboretum shown above).

Course Syllabus

Since some of my proposed changes will not be added until Fall 2024, I have included a course syllabus from my RPTA 33: Race, Class, & Gender course which reflects my new approach to attendance as well as a review I conducted to increase affirming language through all of my syllabi.

Example Syllabus: RPTA 33

**Faculty Bio**
	Dr. Leah Joyner (she/they) is an Assistant Professor in the Recreation, Parks, & Tourism Administration program. Her work centers on community-based research regarding issues in environmental justice, food apartheid, and food sovereignty. She has worked on several community engaged initiatives to promote food justice and educational equity through experiential education and recreational experiences in urban agriculture. She enjoys spending time outdoors cycling, hiking with her rescue pup, and enjoying ocean or river views with her family and friends.

This work was supported by:
	Grant funding from Sacramento State Division of Inclusive Excellence *Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sacramento State.