Joyful Tidings #10: All Things Equity (and Student Success)

Equity, Joyful Tidings, Student Success

equity matters

In this post, I offer an invitation to faculty colleagues who wish to explore equity gaps in their own classes and a list of student success and equity offerings during our coming flex week.

Equity in the Classroom: An Invitation to Fellow Explorers

The Situation

Over the past few years, I have been unhappily monitoring an equity gap for Latina/o students in the Humanities 250/251 (American Studies) sequence I teach. I find this gap particularly disappointing  because like most community college professors, I came to MiraCosta to work on addressing inequities, not perpetuating them.

Heroic Individualism Is Not Cutting It

I have tried many things to turn things around on this gap in my humanities classes, but I have been working on this issue in isolation, and I think it is time to invite faculty colleagues with similar concerns — colleagues seeing similar patterns with one or more groups in one or more of their courses — to join me in an Equity in the Classroom Focused Inquiry Group (FIG) to  1) study these patterns in our  individual classes, 2) identify methodologies and pedagogies that might help us address them, and 3) get the training we need to generate change.

Just a Few of Us…

I am not looking for some kind of campus wide initiative here, just a few colleagues — 3, 4, 5… — who want to look at our specific numbers in our specific classes and work together to see if we can develop our teaching skills to chip away at the equity gaps we are finding (with a full recognition that social forces beyond our control also shape these patterns).

Is Somebody Making You Do This?

Nope. This will be a mandate free zone and not some kind of evil plot to develop a model that will then be imposed upon colleagues here or any where else. While we will happily share any thing we learn about pedagogies and approaches that can make a difference with interested colleagues,  participants will sign a solemn pact to never share our results with the chancellor’s office,  present our work at a conference or  describe ourselves as a “pilot,”  “initiative,” or “movement”  🙂

I am just trying to bring together some colleagues who wish to work on equity gaps in their classes.

If this idea intrigues you, please email me. Thanks!

 

Student Success and Equity in our Flex Week Schedule

Our fall  flex week features many wonderful student success and equity related workshops designed to cultivate our campus wide commitment to equity and student success. Because I have highlighted the Guided Pathways workshops and the Cultural Competency Conference in previous messages, I am not repeating those workshops in this listing (but you are welcome and encouraged to go back and check out those messages!):

Friday August 11

Monday August 15

Tuesday August 15

Wednesday August 16

Thursday August 17

You can sign up for flex workshops here at myflex.
And you can visit a list of other flex week planning guides if you want to revisit topics I have previously addressed such as Canvas, Guided Pathways, Cultural Competency, and Teaching and Learning.