I’m putting together documents to apply for a tenure-track math instructor position at a community college. One of the things they want is a “diversity statement.” No further detail or instructions are given. Googling “diversity statement” brings up some helpful information on what should be written, and examples, but I’m stuck.
I’ve got something written up, from a few years ago when I applied for an MAT program at a university, which I think is a good start. It talks about how I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, surrounded by all types of cultures, and how I ran a restaurant for seven years in Downtown San Jose, surrounded by and working with all types of cultures. (FTR, I’m a white male.) Then I go on to talk about my experience spending months visiting my cousin in a spinal cord rehab unit at a hospital, and getting to know many people who had recently become paraplegic or quadriplegic, and how I learned that they are people too and there’s no reason to be squeamish around them.
When I wrote that, I was just starting out as an adjunct instructor. Now I’ve got more than three years of experience, so I feel that on my statement I should be including classroom experiences with diversity. This is where I’m hitting the wall. I teach math. We’re not talking about issues of culture in my classroom, we’re talking about solving equations. And, honestly, I’ve never given a moment’s thought to diversity in the classroom, because people are people. Everyone gets treated the same, regardless of their race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or belief in UFOs, or whatever.
I don’t want to write something fake-sounding like “we’re all different, and that what makes us special.” But I’m not sure what to write about. The only thing that comes to mind is how I’ve adapted to deal with students with special needs or disabilities. I have two examples that come to mind:
First, there was a young lady with autism who took two of my classes. After the second class was over, her mother wrote to the math department to tell them how impressed she was with me, and how I helped her daughter. The department chair forwarded the email to the division dean, who forwarded it to the Dean of Instruction, and so on… and in the end, the president of the college sent out a college-wide email praising me.
Second, I currently have a student in one of my classes who is blind. He also happens to be foreign-born, which would only be relevant because of the diversity thing. This is the third class he has taken with me. He can barely see well enough to read a computer screen, if he sets the typeface to like 36 point and puts his face right up to the screen. I mean, how do you teach graphing functions to a blind person? So we developed a system during the first class he took, which requires a bit of extra work on my part, to help him learn the material.
Anyway, I could talk about this stuff, but is it really all that relevant to diversity? Technically it is, but I feel like I’m concentrating too much on people with disabilities when the focus being looked for is probably more race/gender/sexual orientation/whatever.
Any thoughts?