We found 173 results that contain "social justice"

The following is a list of the educators receiving the #iteachmsu Educator Award from College of Social Science. For more information on these awards, check out the article entitled "#iteachmsu Educator Awards".
Kevin Ford: On the first day of the semester, Dr. Ford told us how excited he was to teach this class because he took this class in college and it made him want to get a PhD in Organizational Psychology. Dr. Ford shows up to every single lecture with the same level of enthusiasm and love for teaching. I have never had a professor convey so much passion about their class in my four years here at MSU. He makes himself available whenever he has the time for office hours, questions, advice, etc. Dr. Ford is an effective professor because he's an expert in his field but also an expert communicator. He lectures conversationally, is personable and approachable. Multiple people always stay after class to update them about life events and talk about what they found interesting in the lecture. Dr. Ford has intentionally connected course topics to relevant life skills and knowledge, so I have gained even more than I thought I would from taking his class. Dr. Ford is an outstanding professor, researcher and mentor and deserves to be recognized.
Anyone can recognize a fellow Spartan for their contributions to MSU's teaching and learning mission or for how they made a lasting impression on your experience. All you have to do is click "Thank an Educator" in the left panel of iteach.msu.edu. From there you'll see a short form where you can enter the name, netID, and a short story of the educator you'd like to recognize.

Topic Area: DEI
Presented By: Ryan Smith, Jennifer Cobbina, Kendra Pyle
Abstract:
Restorative Justice in education facilitates learning communities that “nurture the capacity of people to engage with one another and their environment in a manner that supports and respects the inherent dignity and worth of all” (Evans & Vaandering, 2016, p. 8). Through this lens faculty, staff, and students from across campus formed an interdisciplinary learning community in 2019 to discuss how we can further incorporate restorative practices into our work and relationships in and out of the classroom. Over the last two years, community members have engaged in shared readings and discussions, community building circles, trainings, and supporting one another’s efforts at utilizing restorative practice to build inclusive and engaging communities, including racial healing circles. This session will model restorative practice as we discuss our work, and the ways we have incorporated RP on campus to further community, equity, and healing.Session resources:
Community Building Mini-circle (Document)
Racial Healing Circles FAQ (PDF)

Please apply here by February 19:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1N3H76YYEDzlYuN1jZKp3EVy6K7mbo9AivP-142eyd9I 
Epistemic Justice Fellows: Incorporating Students’ Home and Community Knowledge in Teaching and Learning 
 
To instructors in the arts, humanities, and natural sciences and STEM fields: 
We invite faculty (of any appointment type), academic specialists who teach, and graduate students who teach to apply for the interdisciplinary Epistemic Justice Fellowship for this Spring 2025.   
 
This Fellowship is designed to support instructors who want to add or change an assignment, activity, or module/unit in a course to incorporate students’ home and community knowledge, such as students’ home languages, student knowledge about their communities, or home and community knowledge about the natural world. Incorporating and valuing student experiences as assets can positively impact student learning about subject matter as well as enhance student engagement, enjoyment, and belonging. 
 
Fellows will receive $500 at the conclusion of the fellowship. Fellows are expected to:

Develop a new or change an existing activity/assignment/module to incorporate students’ home or community knowledge, and present this work to the cohort
Provide a collegial community for the rest of the cohort who will also be working on their own courses
Attend three Fellow meetings (most in person) from 10AM-12PM on the following Tuesdays:

February 25: Kickoff - foundational concepts and identifying changes to your courses
March 25: Midpoint meeting - check in and group discussion on fellows’ projects, followed by mini-workshop on “Facilitating Teaching Workshops”
April 22: Presentations of fellows’ change or addition to their courses 

Attend the lecture/workshop series connected to this topic, consisting of 3 public talks, some in person and some virtual, throughout the semester (dates TBA - but exceptions/alternatives can be made if those dates are not feasible for a fellow)  
Commit to offering a workshop or mentorship opportunity in the future for colleagues in your own field related to valuing home and community knowledge  

Please apply here by February 19:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1N3H76YYEDzlYuN1jZKp3EVy6K7mbo9AivP-142eyd9I 
 
Please note that if you are not sure if your course would be make sense for this fellowship, you are very welcome to contact the organizers at mollelle@msu.edu and troutma1@msu.edu to ask; for example, if you wanted to allow an existing assignment on any topic to be written in the student’s home language for a first draft, that could apply to any subject matter in any course with any writing. 
 
This Fellowship and lecture series are graciously supported by:
Creating Inclusive Excellence Grant from Institutional Diversity and Inclusion
Office of the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the College of Arts and Letters
Office of the Assistant Dean for STEM Education in the Office of Undergraduate Education
 
Organizers: Denise Troutman, Sophie Huss, Ellen Moll
Additional PIs: Kristin Arola, Marcie Ray, Stephen Thomas

Being mutually invested in issues and initiatives pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion within their College, Tatiana and Courtney worked on developing a survey as a means to gain details on the relative toxic environment within their college. They received the support of several stakeholders, including Dr. Achebe. Their work is currently on-going.

The Cube (publishing - process - praxis) is a publishing nexus housed in Michigan State University's Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures (WRAC). The Cube supports, promotes, and produces open-access works created by diverse members of the mid-Michigan and Michigan State communities. Our publishing focuses on messages of social justice, accessibility, diversity, and inclusion. We provide a space for diverse voices to publish and advocate for their work and engage with audiences they would otherwise have difficulty reaching. This Poster, featuring The Cube's director, its graduate assistant, and its lead undergraduate web developer, will provide an overview of the work the Cube does, from brainstorming to final product, and show how we faced adversity and thought creatively in the wake of massive budget cuts to the humanities. 

To access a PDF of the "We Are The Cube" poster, click here.
Description of the Poster 
This poster is made using something similar to a mind map, with bubbles named “high-impact experiential learning,” “people,” “mentorship and community,” “projects,” “process,” and “skills.” Surrounding those bubbles are smaller bubbles with descriptions (described below). 
We are The Cube. 
Publishing - Process - Praxis  
We are a publishing nexus that supports, promotes, and produces open-access work created by diverse members of the mid-Michigan community, focusing on messages of social justice, accessibility, diversity, and inclusion through high-impact experiential learning. We provide a space for diverse ranges of persons, places, and communities to publish and advocate for their work and to engage with audiences they would otherwise be unable to reach. 
High-Impact Experiential Learning Circle: 
Mentorship is key. Project proposals come to The Cube via our website; from there, we review projects and hire paid undergraduate and graduate interns to complete the work. At any given time, The Cube has between twelve and twenty interns, and our entire budget is dedicated to labor. 
 Throughout our processes, students are mentored by faculty members, encouraged to take risks and make mistakes,  praised for their good work, and given credit for that work. For a full list of our mentors and interns, see our website: https://thecubemsu.com/. 
Experiential learning programs allow students to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes in a safe and supportive environment. 
There are two goals. One is to learn the specifics of a particular subject, and the other is to learn about one’s own learning process. 
Experiential learning works in four stages:  

concrete learning,  
reflective observation,  
abstract conceptualization, and  
active experimentation. 

All of these are key for developing both hard and soft skills, which students will need to be ethical pioneers in their fields and in their communities. 
Representative People Circle: 
Catherine Davis, User Experience and Design Intern 
Shelby Smith, Writing and Editing Intern 
Grace Houdek, Graphic Design Intern 
Jaclyn Krizanic, Social Media Intern 
Jeanetta Mohlke-Hill, Editorial Assistant 
Emily Lin, Lead UX Designer  
Mitch Carr, Graduate Assistant and Project Coordinator 
Kara Headly, Former Social Media Intern 
Community & Mentorship Circle: 
Dr. Kate Birdsall, Director 
Dr. Alexandra Hidalgo, Editor-in-Chief  
Dr. Marohang Lumbu, Editor-in-Chief 
The Writing Center at MSU 
Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures (WRAC) at MSU 
Projects Circle: 
The Current, digital and print magazine 
JOGLTEP, academic journal 
Constellations, academic journal 
Agnes Films, feminist film collective 
The Red Cedar review, literary journal 
REO Town Reading Series Anthology, digital book 
Superheroes Die in the Summer, digital book 
Process Circle: 
Brainstorming 
Collaboration 
Client Relations  
Consistent Voice and Branding 
UX Design and Engineering 
Skills Circle: 
Confidence  
Editing and Writing Style Guides 
Professional Development 
Risk Analysis 
Develop Professional Portfolio 
Human Centered Design 
Developmental and Copy Editing 
Poster by: Dr. Kate Birdsall, Mitch Carr, and Emily Lin (Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures (WRAC) Department)) 

Topic Area: Student Success
Presented By: Candace Robertson, Brittany Dillman, Liz Boltz
Abstract:
How can we support student success by removing the barrier of grading? What impact would this have on feedback and iteration? Members from Team MAET (Master of Arts in Educational Technology) will share how they worked through these questions and others to move the majority of program courses to an ungrading philosophy as an act of social justice. In this session, you will learn from the triumphs, challenges, and solutions from their journey.Session resources:Google Slidedeck (website)

What do you desire as a teacher?
 
What content do you love teaching the most?
 
What do you take for granted in your classroom?
 
What might a questioning of norms do for your classroom?
 
As a queer student and teacher, I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about and working to enact queer pedagogies in my classroom and in my Writing Center tutoring practices. Just as queer theory focuses on pushing back against heteronormativity, queer pedagogy works to move beyond just building an inclusive classroom space, though a value of inclusivity and radical social justice is an important motivator for those who seek to teach queerly. Thus, not all queer-identified instructors enact queer pedagogies, and likewise I would argue that not all those who teach queerly identify as queer.I want to be clear, though, that enacting these practices does not necessarily mean you are doing queer work– because of the nebulous nature of queerness, such a contention is difficult to make for anyone. Instead, this blog post is aimed at providing some queer ways to think about your own pedagogical practices and activities, especially if you are concerned with issues of identity and activism.
 
Queer theory, and therefore queer pedagogies work to resist normativity because our concepts of “normal” are social constructs used to reinforce and bolster the power of the most privileged. Resisting normativity allows us to question why some things are normal and some things are not, which opens up space for exploration, interrogation, and dialogue.
 
Queer pedagogy, at its most basic, is the study of teaching that seeks to resist and subvert (hetero)normativity in the classroom. Resisting and subverting heteronormativity means to also contend with queer sex and sexuality. Queer pedagogy, then, grapples with queer sex and sexuality, often through the concepts of pleasure and desire. Thus, while queer pedagogy does not necessarily mean to teach explicitly about sex, it does mean that desire plays an important role in teaching queerly. To summarize, a place to start when thinking about queer pedagogies is to a) resist normativity and to b) keep desire in mind as you teach.
Resisting Normativity
Thus, one way to think about and enact queer pedagogies is to start by interrogating what is often taken for granted in both the discipline you teach and in the world around you and your students. I suggest starting first by thinking about the language you or your students use, especially when discussing identities. What coded language exists in your classroom that reinforces harmful normative gender, sexual, or racial stereotypes?
 
Some ways you might consider answering this question is to think about the assumptions you make of your students on a regular basis .For example, when I first began teaching college writing, when my students discussed relationships, I caught myself assuming their heterosexuality or monogamy when discussing boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands or wives. I try now, when talking about relationships, to honor relationships of all kinds, including (but not limited to) boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses, friends, or chosen family members when addressing any student, regardless of gender.
 
Additionally, I became aware of the ways in which the male pronoun (he/his/him) was used as a neutral marker of anyone in much of the literature I was assigning my students. While I wouldn’t suggest throwing out any text that does not seem inclusive, I always try to mention the use of pronouns to my students so they might notice similar uses of language. As a practice, I utilize the singular they in my writing and have a conversation with my students about why.
Other examples of challenging normativity might be to acknowledge the overrepresentation of whiteness in many curricula; such a representation indicates that whiteness is the racial “norm.” For example, if you are an elementary school teacher, how many books do you have on your shelves with protagonists of color? Or, if you are teaching at the high school or college level, how might your rubric be geared to put native Standard English-speakers at an advantage by grading for grammar, but not content or ideas?
 
Resisting normativity as a teacher might also be about considering which ideas are taken for granted in your discipline. How does making those norms “strange” help your teaching? For example, the sciences are often considered unbiased, but what does thinking about science as a socially constructed discipline do to our conceptions of objectivity and replicability?
 
Challenging normativity can be uncomfortable for teachers and students alike, but working through that discomfort can lead to illuminating moments of discovery, as well as create space for inclusivity and social justice work. Be transparent with your students about why you are assigning projects or asking particular questions; letting your students know that challenging norms is your priority from the beginning can help student contextualize their potential discomfort.
Desire
Thinking about desire as a starting point for intellectual discovery is another way in which to enact queer pedagogies. For example, you may want to think first about what drives your desire to teach a particular subject in a specific way.  For instance, do you have a favorite unit of your syllabus that you’re most excited to teach? Think about why you enjoy that content and find ways to incorporate your excitement for that content into other content. Working from your desire can help you to think about what you love and why, which can help you encourage a love of the subject matter in your students.
 
It also may help you to think about your teaching methods; is there a specific type of learning activity you like the most? Why? Further, does that type of learning activity align with your students’ desires? Sometimes, I have found myself teaching content in a certain way because that is how I  would like to learn it, only to discover that such a teaching strategy was not reaching my students.
 
I work to align my own teaching desires with my students’ desires as much as I can so that we both get the most out of the course. However, sometimes this alignment is impossible; for example, if my teaching desires of focusing on inclusivity run against my students desires to be racist, sexist, homophobic, or ableist, I won’t compromise. But, I will work to think about how to better reach my most resistant students as much as I can. This is a challenging process, but you can start by having conversations with fellow teachers about they ways in which they have addressed racism, sexism, homophobia and ableism in the classroom. Brainstorm ways to disrupt a disruptor while still creating space for that person to learn and grow. Additionally, change your practices, discussion topics, or activities if they do not seem to be helping your students reach your learning goals. The classroom is an important space to foster personal growth and self-reflexivity.
 
Indeed, beginning with desire as a starting point is a way to think about how our intellectual development can be rooted in pleasure. Thinking about your students’ learning desires helps you to put them at the center of your classroom. Additionally, such a consideration of learning as pleasurable opens up new possibilities for you and your students.
Some Takeaways
Considering normativity and desire are two moves to make in the classroom that can help you to build a classroom environment that opens up space for critical inquiry, inclusivity, and radical change. Here are some final takeaways:

Pay attention to your environment. Consider what norms you take for granted in your field/discipline/classroom and question them.
Put your students at the center. Paying attention to desire should force you to consider what your students want and need. Adjust your pedagogy accordingly.
Be transparent. Work to explain to your students why questioning norms and working from desire can be beneficial to you all. Acknowledge when you make mistakes and explain what you may still not know yourself as a way to challenge your own authority in the classroom.
Change it up! When a lesson, an activity, or an assignment doesn’t work, change it. There is no harm in learning from your and your students’ mistakes.

I don’t want to suggest that enacting any of these strategies or takeaways means you are definitely doing queer pedagogy. The thing about queerness is that it avoids definition; instead, queerness seeks to ask questions. Queer pedagogy enacts practices that are fluid, amorphous, and ambiguous. However, learning is similar; we learn through asking questions and challenging the status quo. I encourage you and your students to do the same!
 
Special thanks to Alex Lange of the MSU LBGT Resource Center!
 

 
Originally posted at “Inside Teaching MSU” (site no longer live): Dixon, E. Teaching Queerly: Beginning from Desire and Non-Normativity. inside teaching.grad.msu.edu

Topic Area: Student Success
Presented by: Jackie Heymann
Abstract:
This workshop will engage participants in critically reflecting on their classroom and co-curricular spaces, the neurotypical "norms" expected of students within those spaces, and the additional challenges experienced by neurodivergent students when those norms are enforced. Then, using the framework of the social and the social justice models of disability, participants will identify tangible action steps they can take to create spaces that are more welcoming of neurodivergent students.
Session Resources:
Presentation Slides (pptx)
ADHD & Autism Communication Learning Resources
ADHD

ADHD & Conversations: (Sandra, @theADHDgoodlife on IG)
ADHD & Masking: (Sandra, @theADHDgoodlife on IG)
ADHD Mind (Zoe, @ADHDactually on IG)
ADHD & Conversations (Zoe, @ADHDactually on IG)
Smilges, J. (2020). Bad Listeners. Retrieved from: https://cfshrc.org/article/bad-listeners

Autism

Tee on masking (Tee, @unmasked on IG)
Tee on autism and auditory processing disorder (Tee, @unmasked on IG)
On language and talking "professionally"(@autistictic on Twitter)
Eiza Wolfe on masking (@eizawolfe on TikTok)
Eiza Wolfe on neurodivergent listening (@autistictic on Twitter)
Brown, L. (2018). The Neurodiversity Movement Needs its Shoes Off and Fists Up. Retrieved from: https://www.autistichoya.com/2018/10/neurodiversity-needs-shoes-off-fists-up.html

Additional folks to learn from:

Cole (@semispeaking on Twitter)
Lydia X.Z. Brown (@autistichoya on Twitter)
Sandra (@theADHDgoodlife on Instagram)
Jess Rauchberg (@disabledpHd on Twitter)
Autistic Self Advocacy Network (@autselfadvocacy on Twitter)
Black Disability Collective (@blackdisability on Twitter)