Developing an Engaged Pedagogy: “Revisioning” the Classroom Using the Social Justice Syllabus Design Tool

The CHSS Teaching Academy is excited to host its first workshop of the academic year. Please join us for Developing an Engaged Pedagogy: “Revisioning” the Classroom Using the Social Justice Syllabus Design Tool. 

The mission of the CHSS Teaching Academy is to support CHSS teachers at all ranks and levels of experience (graduate teaching assistants, instructional aides, lecturer faculty and tenured/tenure track faculty members), and to foster a communal culture of reflective, inclusive, and intentional teaching practices. These practices are aimed at creating CHSS teaching that is accessible, community-engaged, and informed by social justice pedagogy.

The Social Justice Syllabus Design Tool (SJSDT) is JCSCORE's #1 most read article. Much of that is due to the fact that educators are seeking to discover meaningful ways in which love and justice can be centered in the spaces that we co-create with our students... spaces in which we and our students can show up fully and experience the content as relevant to our lives and communities. The SJSDT has been recognized as a leading resource by many higher education institutions in how to do just that and has been used in faculty orientations and faculty development trainings across the country. Training in the SJSDT not only provides educators and staff with an in-depth understanding of what it means to “do” social justice in the classroom, but what it means to “be” social justice in the classroom and through various strategies and activities co-create counterspaces with students where personal and community transformation can occur.

Using critical reflexivity techniques, we will not only explore what social justice educators do in the classroom but also who social justice educators are and can be. We will take a collective deep dive and briefly engage in strategies that promote the embodiment of 1) relationship, 2) community, 3) a growth mindset process, and 4) radical self-care in the classroom. All educators are welcome and will benefit from this training. Staff who facilitate educational workshops on campus would also benefit from this workshop as well.

Facilitator

Dr. Sherria Taylor, Associate Professor of Child & Adolescent Development

Taylor holds a doctoral degree in Family Studies from Loma Linda University with a concentration in Systems-Organizational Consultation and has been involved in research funded by HUD and the Family Process Institute related to family resilience and family support services among low-income families. As the former executive director and current director of program development and evaluation for the nonprofit agency Access for Community & Cultural Education Programs & Trainings (ACCEPT) in Reno, Nevada, she has been successful in securing over 1.5 million dollars in grant funding for community programming. Taylor and colleagues have produced peer-reviewed publications and reports that seek to change the odds stacked against BIPOC communities rather than asking BIPOC communities to beat them. Her research interests include family, community, and cultural resilience and survivance through a lens of Indigenous and Womanist theories, mental health, compassionate inquiry as substance abuse prevention, family life education, social justice pedagogy and the buffering effects of spirituality.