Teaching in the current political climate

The current political climate creates challenges and opportunities for curricular and co-curricular teaching and learning. Here are some resources to help. Also learn about AAC&U's new initiative, "Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation."

Do you have resources or ideas to share? Send them to tla@csumb.edu

University of Michigan Center for Research on Teaching and Learning Blog

In a recent blog post, we addressed challenges and opportunities in returning to the classroom in the days immediately following an extremely divisive election. Here, we want to provide resources for teaching in the post-election climate over the longer term. No matter their political perspective, instructors are likely to notice that their students' learning or their classroom dynamics have been affected by the big emotions swirling around the new administration.

Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation: a new Initiative from AAC&U

http://www.dayofracialhealing.com/

In July, AAC&U became a partner in the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) enterprise, a large-scale effort to uproot the belief in a hierarchy of human value that has so deformed our national life since the founding. Drawing on practices developed by truth and reconciliation commissions to resolve intractable conflicts around the world, the TRHT process will promote racial healing and seek to eradicate structural bias in communities across the United States. This special issue of Liberal Education is intended to introduce the TRHT enterprise, tracing its broad outlines and beginning to sketch out the role of higher education in it.

As a kind of prelude to the Featured Topic section, we include letters from the two former governors who serve as honorary co-chairs of the enterprise, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and William Winter of Mississippi. These letters are followed by the lead article, in which Gail Christopher, senior advisor and vice president for TRHT at the Kellogg Foundation, reminds us how powerful the nexus of education, activism, and social justice has proven in the past, calls on students and educators to join the diverse coalition now forming to meet the exigencies of our own historical moment, and outlines the principles guiding the TRHT enterprise.

Difficult Topics ~ Podcasts from IDEA

SoundIDEA, delves into an important and timely issue in the latest episode. Check out "Difficult Topics," for ideas about discussing the election, and more, in the classroom.

Go to SoundIDEA

Faculty Focus: Towards a 'Positive U'

You gaze around the classroom, recognizing that a number of students are on their cell phones. Others are on their laptops, maybe taking notes but most likely using social media. A few are blatantly working on homework or assignments for other classes. Several students in the back of the classroom are avoiding your gaze, anxiously hoping not to be noticed. One student even appears to be asleep. A small group of students at the front of the class is stressed about the upcoming assignment. Welcome to the college classroom.

Distractions, stress, anxiety, and social media plague the college classroom making it tough for faculty to teach, and even tougher for students to learn. Is there anything faculty can do to remedy the problems facing the college classroom, or are we to accept this as the new normal?

CSUMB Personal Growth and Counseling Center

The Personal Growth and Counseling Center is a welcoming place, and we are supportive to all students regardless of party affiliation. We are particularly mindful that this election season has included hurtful rhetoric impacting many people. As always, we encourage you to reach out for support as well as extend support to others. It is important for us to stay connected and do what we can to take care of one another.

JED Foundation

Office of Inclusive Excellence

The mission of the Office of Inclusive Excellence is to advance excellence at CSUMB through inclusion and equity. We promote diversity in all its identities and ideas as an asset that enhances student learning and employee effectiveness. Our work is focused on promoting a campus environment where all students, faculty, and staff:

Feel a sense of belonging at CSUMB
Are able to fully engage in campus life
Are able to achieve their academic or professional goals

Faculty resources from the Office of Inclusive Excellence

TLA Resources

TLA Teaching Cooperatives form for the purpose of discussing and improving teaching and learning. They are open to all faculty members (lecturers and tenure-line), student affairs and co-curricular professionals, and university staff who work directly with students.

Spring 2017 teaching cooperatives

Returning to the classroom: strategies, tips, and resources (from fall 2016)