Inclusive Pedagogies Seminar Showcase

From February 8—18, 2021, in asynchronous and synchronous Zoom settings, participants in four of the Center’s DEI-based professional development programs presented assignments designed for Ableism and Access (AA), Removing Barriers (RB), Language across the Curriculum (LAC), and Women, Gender, and Sexuality (WGS). The showcase featured the participants’ experiences, DEI challenges and benefits, and changes observed among our students and within the institution since the inception of the IP seminars. Each presenter made a short video addressing their work in the seminar and how it has taken form as they teach more inclusively.

 Playlist

Pair A: Misun Dokko, LAC and Derek Stadler, RB

Misun Dokko, English. Her participation in Language across the Curriculum inspired her current research in teaching struggling students. Her video, The LAC Incubator: How I Got There and Where I’m Going, traces the development of her current research interest in supporting struggling students to her reading of elusive characters in Asian American literature through the lens of ethics and otherness vis-à-vis Emmanuel Levinas.  Her background in literary analysis and ethics motivated a self-reflexive awareness of the gaps and fissures of teaching English 101 students who struggle despite consistent attendance and regular work habits. These students pose challenges to her instruction because though they have certain skills to succeed academically, they are withdrawn and reluctant to receive extra help. Her current research is evolving into an “ethics of teaching” that focuses on her practices when responding to these students. Her showcase presentation will propose a way of identifying these students early in the semester and intensifying support for them.

Derek Stadler, Library. My video highlights the way I incorporated inclusive pedagogy into Internet Research Strategies, a course that teaches students analytical thinking, problem-solving, and information literacy skills necessary for academic research and digital citizenship.

Pair A Presenters’ Videos
Misun Dokko
Derek Stadler

Trio B: Anita Baksh, WGS; Lucia Fuentes, LAC; Leigh Garrison-Fletcher, LAC

Anita Baksh, English, details the goals of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality seminar, which she co-facilitates, and offers a brief description of a World Literature course activity designed to frame concepts of colonial history, indentureship, and gender oppression.

Lucia Fuentes, Natural Sciences, Biology, participated in Language Across the Curriculum. Her students researched topics related to COVID-19 and wrote essays which they later summarized and translated to create an informational multilingual brochure that they distributed in their communities.

Leigh Garrison-Fletcher, Education and Language Acquisition (ELA). In my video, I discuss the need to develop language awareness and counter linguistic prejudice, and how this focus is a goal of my Introduction to Language (ELL101) course. Inclusive pedagogy must consider the languages of our students (hence the Language Across the Curriculum Seminar); I outline a major assignment of the course that critically examines language practices and societal attitudes about language. I also share some ways that I incorporate students’ language backgrounds throughout the course.

Trio B Presenters’ Videos
Anita Baksh
Lucia Fuentes
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher

Trio C: Allia Matta-Abdullah, WGS; Judith N. Foster, LAC; Patricia Sokolski, RB

Allia Abdullah-Matta, English, co-facilitates Inclusive Pedagogies: Women, Gender, and Sexuality (WGS): Integrating a Feminist Pedagogy and Process. Her course, “Intersectionality and Poetry,” illustrates a method for teaching students how to use a WGS critical concept as an entry point and frame for reading and analyzing poems.

Judith Foster teaches English composition and was twice a participant in Language across the Curriculum (2018—2019 and 2019—2020). Her classroom assignment, “Languages Introductions,” is a writing activity designed for students and teachers to share and learn from experiences with language in and out of school.

Patricia Sokolski, Humanities, designed a classroom activity intended to build community and raise awareness of equity and accessibility by engaging Fundamentals of Communication students in the exploration of the concept of “disability” in language, nonverbal communication, and culture.

Trio C Presenters’ Videos
Allia Abdullah-Matta
Judith N. Foster
Patricia Sokolski

Trio D: Lucy McNair LAC; Dusana Podlucka, AA; Alice Rosenblitt-Lacey, WGS  

Lucy McNair, English: This LAC-oriented ENG102 assignment raises awareness of linguistic diversity and translanguaging or maneuvering between languages and registers. It invites students to bring their language skills into the classroom as a resource in learning and provides time to get to know each other better. In the video I describe the first part or pre-writing in which students are asked to write or record a reflective translation narrative and attach to it a piece of previous writing. In the second part, they develop a critical reading of a course text that introduces a new concept, “self-translation,” and take an argumentative stance on a debatable question: Are we doomed to lose meaning when we translate? Course materials include excerpts from Algerian-Amazigh writer Mouloud Feraoun’s novel, The Poor Man’s Son and Eva Hoffman’s memoir, Lost in Translation; and poems by Langston Hughes, Rhina Espaillat, and Ilya Kaminsky; and Audre Lorde’s essay, “Poetry is not a Luxury.” Class activities include short lecture, small group work, and large group discussion.

Dušana Podlucká, Social Science, Psychology, participated in Language across the Curriculum (2018-2019); WGS seminar (Fall 2020); and was a co-leader of Ableism and Access: Equity in the Classroom seminar). In her presentation, she briefly discusses the course project developed for the Social Psychology course. The project is based on the principles of transformative, inclusive, and anti-ableist pedagogy that promote equity, diversity and inclusion in the classroom and beyond. Students in this class share personal struggles for inclusion and equitable futures for themselves and members of their communities. Drawing on the critical social psychology perspective, students reflect on developing counter discourses that oppose oppressive and discriminatory dominant discourses and practices and explore their positions of the agency and reimagined selves.

Alice Rosenblitt-Lacey, English: My WGS-related curricular materials explore the concepts “coalition of difference” and “intersectionality of racism and sexism” as framed by the anthology Asian American Feminisims and Women of Color Politics, edited by Fujiwara and Roshanravan. Students also uncover connections among Mirikitani’s poem, “Breaking Tradition,” Issa and Al-Marayati’s essay, “An Identity Reduced to a Burka,” and King’s essay, “Three Ways of Meeting Oppression,” through perspectives offered by two WGS-related videos, “The Urgency of Intersectionality” by feminist theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw and “Sa I Gu” by performance poet Ishle Yi Park.

Trio D Presenters’ Videos
Lucy McNair
Dušana Podlucká
Alice Rosenblitt-Lacey