Education

For the last 20 years, the exponential increase of high-stakes standardized tests in the US has not only transformed the educational landscape for students, but also for teachers. With the current political and educational landscape, many educators are asking: How do we remain focused in this particularly turbulent time? How do we maintain hope when so much seems uncertain? Compounded by the recent realities and lingering effects of the pandemic, ongoing state-sanctioned racial violence domestically and globally, and globalized neoliberalism, these questions become even more salient.

The purpose of this class is to grapple with these questions and to prepare you as prospective middle and high school educators in developing innovative, inquiry-based, culturally relevant, and socially responsive curricula and classroom methods for teaching social studies, humanities and the arts (distinctly or cross-disciplinarily). While some of you are not in the teacher education program, you will learn more broadly about curriculum design and designing lessons.

This course will help you think about ways that you might develop a practice that seeks to interrupt inequities in schooling, address the socio-political realities and economies that surround us, and engender a transformative and intellectually rich experience for all students. We will spend the first part of the course exploring what it means to employ critical pedagogical and social justice-oriented theories (including critical ethnic studies, liberatory and abolitionist frameworks, critical peace education) in these disciplines. You will be asked to reflect on your own experiences as a student, as well as read about and reflect upon the experiences of others. We will use various text reading protocols to create a more equitable and democratic classroom, though these protocols will also be useful to you as teachers, as you can also employ them in your own classrooms.

The remainder of the course will specifically look at strategies to enact such types of education, focusing on methods, curriculum design, and assessment. In a nutshell, we consider the well-being of our students and their families as something part of and not separate from their academic success. You will demonstrate this by creating a comprehensive learning unit in partnership with other teachers! So you will be helping them with THEIR curriculum! The course will culminate in a reflective exploration of how we might integrate what we have studied, discussed, experienced and applied to help create democratic and caring learning communities so that all students can realize their academic potential.