Assistant Professor Tiffany Atkins L’11 was among the educators in a webinar hosted by the Society of American Law Teachers in which presenters put forward advice for integrating antiracism education into law school courses.
An Elon Law professor shared this summer with hundreds of educators from law schools around the country how to design courses with antiracist ideas embedded into curriculum in such a way that they remain consistent whether classes are taught in person or online.
Assistant Professor Tiffany Atkins L’11 was one of four presenters in a virtual program hosted by the Society of American Law Teachers. “Incorporating Anti-Racism Frameworks into Core Law School Classes” on July 30, 2020, was part of the SALT: Social Justice in Action Webinar Series.
Atkins led off the hour-long webinar by emphasizing that effective antiracism instruction begins with designing the course around antiracist principles that are clearly communicated in the course syllabus.
“Putting antiracist ideas into your course learning outcomes is a wonderful way to get started,” Atkins said. Tell students exactly what you want them to know, understand, or be able to do. “In my public interest legal writing course where I focus on social justice … I want my students to understand the role of legal storytelling in disrupting harmful narratives about poor people and people of color.”
That doesn’t mean she removes more general outcomes but rather adds social justice and antiracism as an additional measure of learning, Atkins said.
Use verbs when drafting your outcomes, she added. “Identify.” “Recognize.” “Understand.” “Develop.” And then link those verbs to antiracist idea connected to your course.
For instance, she said, an outcome in a criminal law class could be “by the end of this course students will understand criminal law in its social context and recognize its disproportionate impact on communities of color.” Including this information up front in the course syllabus sets student expectations and holds professors accountable to the content they will deliver.
Once professors have decided on outcomes, align class assignments and activities to ensure students have an opportunity to achieve that competency. Atkins said this can be achieved by assigning hypothetical problems for students to work through social justice issues, using current events reflection assignments, or including social justice issues in your summative assessments.
Using textbooks, writing assignments, and outside readings that are either written by a person of color, or that present a diverse perspective on a course, is another way to design an antiracist course.
“If your textbook and all the reading assignments in your course are only from one perspective, and only amplify majority voices, then your students miss the opportunity to hear diverse perspectives on the law,” Atkins said. Even if it’s too late to change your textbook, “maybe there are articles you can add to your syllabus that amplify these diverse voices.”
Professors should be sure to design the course so that antiracist ideas and principles come across regardless of modality. Even if a course is fully online, faculty want to think through how to make concepts resilient.
“You might assign reflection assignments, asking students to record their responses rather than write it out,” Atkins said, adding later that “if professors respond with a video of their own it can create a conversation and a sense of community even if the class is being taught remotely. If you make your antiracist concepts core to your course, they will come across clearly to your students regardless of the format.”
Watch the full webinar online.
In addition to her presentation, Atkins has been active over the summer with panel presentations and interviews hosted by legal education professional associations.
- A separate SALT podcast: “Teaching Social Justice”
- An Association of Legal Writing Directors “Virtual Front Porch” on her forthcoming No More “Masks” Project
- A discussion group hosted by the Southeastern Association of Law Schools on recognizing and addressing implicit bias, the attitudes or stereotypes toward people or events that affect one’s understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner
Atkins graduated from Elon Law in the Class of 2011 where she was the recipient of the David Gergen Award for Leadership and Professionalism. She later served her law school alma mater as a Legal Method & Communication Fellow from 2016-2018. Atkins taught in Wake Law’s Legal Analysis, Writing and Research program from 2018-19 before rejoining the Elon Law faculty.
Prior to her entry into legal education, Atkins worked for several years in Greensboro at Legal Aid of North Carolina. She is a graduate of UNC Greensboro’s Political Science and African-American Studies programs.