My commitment to inclusive and equitable education is grounded in my personal experience. As a child, I studied in a highly diverse school. Having peers with different backgrounds and worldviews showed me how much we can learn and grow when diversity is celebrated. Importantly, the school I attended was a reference educational center for deaf and blind students. Interacting with my peers with visual and hearing impairments showed me that education should and could be more inclusive. Ever since, I have been interested in promoting more equitable education tools, the reason why I have pursued training in Educational Psychology, and had done research with children and adults with learning disabilities, genetic syndromes, and low socioeconomic status.

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I do my best to incorporate diversity into my classroom. To me, this starts with active listening. Diversity comes to the classroom in different ways and can only be addressed when we, the instructors, hear our students with empathy. I am open to hearing my students and informing myself about their necessities. I also believe that diversity should be celebrated in the classroom by the development of learning communities. To promote a community in my classroom, I introduce myself to my students, tell them about my background, and show interest in knowing them by their names (asking them to teach me how to pronounce their names correctly), and referring to them using their preferred pronouns. Furthermore, I encourage my students to communicate with their peers and share their worldview with the classroom by promoting discussions and group work.

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I also focus on diversity when preparing my course. I make sure to include different theories when teaching a topic and focus on representation by showing the work of a diverse body of researchers (including but not limited to researches from different genders, races, and ethnic groups). In addition, I promote an inclusive classroom with small acts that can have a strong impact, such as making my material visually adapted to different needs using large fonts and high contrasts in my slides, describing figures when I teach, and including subtitles when using videos. When working on my syllabus, I inform my students about the requirements of the class, the learning goals, and how the activities will be graded. Finally, I also prioritize books and papers that are available for free at the University.

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Besides considering diversity in the classroom, I am also motivated to improve diversity in science. As a mentor, I will embrace students from different backgrounds as mentees. My goal is to develop a welcoming and inclusive research environment and to help minority students to thrive in academia.

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In conclusion, I am committed to promoting diversity both as an instructor and as a mentor. I am open to hear my students and to do my best to adapt my teaching to their necessities.