During the seven years I worked as a writer-in-residence in the New York City Public Schools, I learned what it really means to teach to diverse populations. My students were of all races and ethnicities, most from low-income neighborhoods in the South Bronx and South Brooklyn. A large number were non-native speakers. Many had severe mental and physical disabilities.

This experience transformed me into a more invested, confident, and aware teacher. It’s the reason I recognize the role that the lack of access to education, technology, and medical resources plays in the lives of many marginalized students before they enter college. It’s why, for instance, I’m sensitive to the needs of students with disabilities. Without that experience, I might never have noticed that although university classrooms are “wheelchair accessible” they’re not wheelchair welcoming, a fact proven to me when a student who was a wheelchair user entered my class on the first day and had to wait for me to move a chair out of the way so he could join the other students at the table.

My creative writing courses are designed to meet the needs of all students and raise students’ awareness of social justice issues, particularly those traditionally underrepresented in higher education. My syllabi center on readings from authors from marginalized communities. My writing assignments ask students to consider how inequity and social justice factor into their own work. My workshops are safe spaces that allow students to present their writing in an open and culturally competent forum. My seminars make room for discussions of pressing issues and encourage all students to participate.

To better meet the needs of a diverse student body, I take advantage of the many faculty resources available. To support students with disabilities, I stay in close contact with Northwestern University’s AccessibleNU and DePaul University’s Center for Students with Disabilities throughout the quarter. To deepen students’ understanding of larger issues facing marginalized students, I schedule intensive diversity-and-inclusion workshops in collaboration with DePaul’s Office of Multicultural Student Success. Coordinators from the Office of Multicultural Student Success and I develop a curriculum individually designed for each course to help students understand the issues and concerns of underrepresented groups, which might otherwise be given lip-service or go unacknowledged.

As part of my professional development, I am in the process of earning DePaul’s diversity certificate and attend Northwestern’s roundtable discussions at the Searle Center for Advancing Teaching. These workshops and discussions give me the opportunity to hear how other faculty and staff engage in DEI practices and have taught me best practices in inclusive interviewing and retaining a diverse faculty. I pursue these opportunities on my own time and out of my own interest, not out of obligation but because I want a solid understanding of what of diversity, equity, and inclusion genuinely means in theory and what it can do in practice.