Because GSIs work with students in relatively small groups, they can play a significant role in fostering belonging and removing barriers to students’ educational access and engagement.

Generations of GSIs have drawn inspiration and practical steps for inclusive teaching from bell hooks’ 1994 classic Teaching to Transgress. This section of the Teaching Guide draws on hooks, experienced Berkeley GSIs, and other resources to map the kinds of exclusion that undergraduate students may experience and outline foundational practices for teaching inclusively.

GSIs may need to address exclusion as it plays out on multiple levels, including the classroom level, the individual (student) level, the institutional level of the university, and in the broader social context. These levels are interrelated, so factors operating on one level inevitably impact the others (e.g., international armed conflicts—a factor in the broader social context—can ignite interpersonal tensions at the classroom level and increase anxiety and depression at the individual level). This section of the Teaching Guide considers how exclusion operates on various levels, and identifies concrete steps that GSIs can take to intervene.