Inviting Student Voices 

Dear Professor,

An important component of creating connection between faculty and students is inviting student voices into the classroom. In many classroom settings there is a power imbalance between faculty and students where “….educators exert power through the class materials they select, the learning activities they design, and the ways in which they include students in classroom discussion” (Eva, 2017). While these things are not inherently bad, students may be more engaged in classroom activities and assignments if they feel valued, can provide their own input, and build trust in their professor.

In Karen Ray Costa’s Trauma-Aware Teaching Checklist, a material designed for faculty members to foster more trauma-aware classrooms, she encourages professors to invite student voices into the classroom through obtaining student feedback. She asks professors “where can you shift some authority of yourself to your students?” She also reiterates the importance of letting “…students behind the curtain…”  and inviting “…their feedback when possible” (Costa, 2023). Student check-in resources are an ample way to invite student voices into the classroom and encourage students to think about their own learning. Further, implementing student check-ins into the classroom provides a confidential way for faculty to (1) learn about their students’ identities and (2) provide course material and course structure that engages student input. Further, a student check-in gauges how students respond to course material and informs faculty what goes on in their everyday lives beyond their classroom. Finally, student surveys encourage metacognitive thinking and reflective teaching practices.

In this section, we explain what a student check-in resource is, provide tips for implementing the resource into the classroom, provide example templates and questions to use when building a student check-in resource, and hear from the Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Meena Khandelwal, who discusses how she uses student check-ins in her classroom.