Enhance visibility; highlight strengths. The Syllabus Challenge provides critically reflective questions and practical ideas for inclusive teaching in action. Check out Tips 1-3 here. In this issue, we shift our focus to what reading materials we require students to read over the course term. When we choose a text or reading, we are sending cues about what is valuable, worthy of …
Show students you are a real human. The Syllabus Challenge provides critically reflective questions and practical ideas for inclusive teaching in action. Tip #1 covered updating terminology and Tip #2 focused on inclusive learning goals. Check out Tip 1 and 2 here. In this issue, we are going to challenge ourselves to let some of our academic walls down, …
Rewrite your learning goals. The Syllabus Challenge provides critically reflective questions and practical ideas for inclusive teaching in action. As I mentioned in the Tip #1 issue, no matter the discipline, this one could apply to you. Tip #1 focused on updating our terminology and phrasing throughout the syllabus. For tip #2, I want to move into the …
Update your terminology and phrasing. Some of you may be familiar with a pedagogical tool I began developing back in 2017. This living document continues to evolve four years later and will continue to evolve. In fact, I edited it this morning. The Syllabus Challenge provides critically reflective questions and practical ideas for inclusive teaching in action. …
Full disclosure. I am white. When I get my blood drawn, I usually joke with the nurse that I am translucent. So pretty white. And yet, I am doing my best to offer up a list of some of the essential core elements of an anti-racist pedagogy. Make no mistake, I am missing a lot …
Anti-Racist Pedagogy Part 4: Core Elements of ARP (according to this white girl) Read More »
What harm are we doing? Because my life allows for wonderful things, I recently read bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress for the third time. Although published in 1994, the wisdom in her work still rings true. Her timeless observations about liberatory critical pedagogies highlighted that little has shifted. As I was reading, one passage inspired …
Anti-Racist Pedagogy Part 3: Teaching Silence and Culture vs. Critiquing Systems Read More »
We all want to be “inclusive. Nothing wrong with that. You may have picked up on the trend that diversity focuses on recruitment and maybe representation, but that we need to move deeper for inclusion. Same goes for inclusion being a wonderful shift in education, but we need a more critical approach to power and …
Anti-Racist Pedagogy Part 2: Inclusive does not equal anti-racist Read More »
As I mentioned in previous posts and my recent workshops, academic use of the phrase “anti-racist pedagogy” (ARP) has sky rocketed since George Floyd’s death. Summer 2020 brought a wave of white academics calling for curricular transformation, many in response to student demands, to infuse anti-racism. And yet, if I asked 50 people what they …
Anti-Racist Pedagogy Part 1: Do we even know what anti-racist pedagogy means? Read More »
As social justice leaders, running yourself into the ground is not going to save us all. We need you for the long game. We need you healthy. So why do you/we feel like any slow down is unacceptable? My last newsletter was sent over 3 months ago. Not gonna lie, I have been super annoyed …
Slowing down without feeling like a failure (is it possible?) Read More »
Anyone else noticed the trend of shaming allies and potential allies as the cool thing to do? In our unfortunate culture of social media performance, we seem to have lost ourselves. This trend is not confined to shaming allies from privileged groups, although that may be the most popular version. In addition, I have witnessed …
