Teaching Working-Class Students 
Sherry Lee Linkon, Center for Working-Class Studies

Some questions to consider:
Who are the working-class students here?  
What is it like to be a working-class student here?
How does your own class background affect your views about and comfort with discussions of social class?
How does the culture of the institution shape the way faculty and students see social class and education?
Where can we create opportunities to talk more about how class works in our courses and in other groups?
How do we approach social class as a topic?

Some basic things to understand:
We may or may not be able to identify the working-class students in our courses, and they probably won’t identify themselves
WC students may feel conflict about being in college 
WC students may feel alienated from the university environment
WC students may face conflicted responses from their families
WC students may not understand some social practices – like questioning authority, some aspects of competition, how to work the system -- that academics and more privileged students take for granted
WC students may be working many hours in order to pay for college (more than the average college student)
Social class is a contested concept in American culture – hard to define and uncomfortable to discuss
Class makes more sense to most people when we can connect it to our own lives – make it personal before you make it abstract or political
Class makes more sense when we look at examples – consider using popular culture and everyday language as ways of beginning the conversation
Discussions of class can generate shame and confusion, for both privileged and WC students
Discussions of class can provide a useful “back door” path into critical discussions of race, ethnicity, and gender

Resources:
C.L. Barney Dews and Carolyn Leste Law, This Fine Place So Far From Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class, Temple UP, 1995
Sherry Lee Linkon, ed. Teaching Working Class, Massachusetts, 1999
Radical Teacher, journal that often publishes articles on teaching diverse students