KIMBERLY TANNER: I would put a lot of money on instructor talk as being one of the reasons why we can have people go out and use very similar strategies, seemingly, but then get really different student outcomes from those active learning strategies. It's not the only variable. But I think it's the one that is prevalent in every classroom. … . And it's also a variable that is quite amenable to quick and easy change. And in terms of overturning structures and making change quickly, I am a firm believer that small change can make big differences. And small changes in language could phenomenally change the experience of an instructor who's really trying their best to promote learning for all of their students.

In many classrooms, teacher talk takes up the majority of class time, and student talk is primarily used for correctly answering teacher questions. In this 'guess what the teacher is thinking' approach, teachers know the answers to most of their own questions, and student talk is only used to verify they know the "right answer."

One way to make conversations more equitable is to pay attention to wait time. This is the amount of time between when a teacher poses a question, and when the teacher either calls on a student, rephrases the question, gives a hint, or answers the question himself or herself—it is essentially the amount of time the teacher gives the students to think. Research has shown that the wait time teachers give students is remarkably short. Believe it or not, the average wait time for most teachers is approximately one second. This is because teachers are almost immediately uncomfortable with silence in a classroom conversation, and seek to fill the void with a student’s voice, or their own.

The phrase microaffirmations was introduced in 1974 by Mary Rowe (2008) and was related to the gender inequality she experienced in the workplace. She defined microaffirmations as "apparently small acts, which are often ephemeral and hardto- see, events that are public and private, often unconscious but very effective, which occur wherever people wish to help others succeed" (p. 4). Powell and colleagues (2013) expanded the term into higher education and academic advising, indicating that microaffirmations are acts that can help students feel welcome, visible, and capable of being successful in the college environment. Other scholars have shared how microaffirmations can contribute to students feeling "respected, strengthened, included, or otherwise affirmed" (Rolón-dow & Davison, 2021). These authors point out that an important aspect of microaffirmations is their potential to disrupt inequities and marginalization (Ellis, 2019). They can even be effective in countering the negative impacts of microaggressions on students' academic experiences. When framed in this way, microaffirmations can be a strategic and malleable tool for supporting students' success while working against inequities.

Macroaffirmations are obvious forms of communicating kindness (conveying respect for the dignity of another person) and inclusion, which may include sharing, helping, obvious facial expressions, politeness, and other readily recognized prosocial actions. Microaffirmations, on the other hand, are subtle or ambiguous kindness cues that can include tone of voice, space left between people when interacting, subtle mimicry, and actions that convey vulnerability...

These interventions of affirming a student or his or her values (i.e., cuing acceptance and affirmation of a person’s identity, values, skill set) strongly suggest that perceiving affirmations may be important to persistence for science students. Further research is needed, however, to better understand the nuances of how HU and majority students are alike and differ with regard to these relationships.