Please nourish your professional souls by reading, selecting, and marking your calendars. No RSVPs necessary. Note: Information in this email is in an attached document for your convenience. Email reminders will be sent each Block.
Summary of services and programs presented in this email.
*Block Visitor Orientations & Professional Development
*Visting Faculty Community Building
*Instructional Coaching Program
*Pedagogy Development
*Crown Center Forums
*Mentoring Development
*Conversations about Health & Well-being
*Learning Circles
*SWARGS (Scholarly Writing and Research Groups)
*Crown Manuscript Workshop Call
*Save the Date for January Workshop on “Ungrading”
Drop-in Office Hours for Peony Fhagen (Director of The Crown Center) and Heidi Lewis(Crown Coordinator of Early Career Faculty Development Programs)
Please direct questions about this announcement to Peony Fhagen.
1.Block Visitor Orientations & Professional Development
(1st Thursdays, 3:30-5, Tutt Library 105)
During Blocks 1 & 5, sessions will focus on an orientation to teaching on the Block Plan. For Blocks 2-4 and Blocks 6-7, the first 45 minutes will focus on teaching on the block and the remaining 45 minutes will focus on a professional development topic. All sessions, EXCEPT Block 2, will take place in Tutt Library 105. The Block 2 session will be remote, and the zoom link is provided below. Block visitors can attend as many sessions in this program as they need.
Facilitator: Heidi Lewis, Crown Coordinator for Early Career Faculty Development Programs, Associate Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College
Program Orientation and Professional Development Schedule
Block 1: Teaching on the Block Plan
Block 2: Teaching on the Block & Research and Scholarship (Zoom link: https://coloradocollege.zoom.us/my/heidirlewis)
Block 3: Teaching on the Block & The Job Market
Block 4: Teaching on the Block & Colorado College Culture and Antiracism
Block 5: Teaching on the Block Plan
Block 6: Teaching on the Block & Research and Scholarship
Block 7: Teaching on the Block & Colorado College Culture and Antiracism
Block 8: Teaching on the Block & Work-Life Coexistence
2.Visiting Faculty Community Building (1st Tuesdays, 3-4, Cossitt Lounge)
An informal coffee hour to create space for community building where new and returning visitors can exchange experiences and connect with others.
Host: Andrea Bruder, Associate Dean of the Faculty, Associate Professor of Math & Computer Science
3.Instructional Coaching Program
After a successful first year, the instructional coaching program is back! The goal of this program is to build collective capacity for using anti-oppressive, inclusive, and equitable pedagogies. As far as we know this program is one of its kind in the nation! The program provides coaching support that is non-evaluative and not tied in any way to department/program review processes.
Master teachers for AY 22-23 are Tina Valtierra and Santiago Guerra. They provide the following services:
*Co-facilitate instructional coaches’ development workshops
*Collaborate with instructional coaches to develop instructional development plans
*Meet with instructional coaches and their coachees twice per academic year
*Collaborate with other master teachers to ensure the program runs smoothly
*Assign faculty interested in instructional coaches to coaches
Instructional coaches for AY 22-23 are Howard Drossman, Kristi Erdal, Maybellene Gamboa, Natalie Gosnell, Olivia Hatton, Scott Krzych, Mike Taber, Rebecca Tucker, and Habiba Vaghoo. They provide the following services:
*Provide tailored instructional coaching to a single faculty member (regardless of career stage, but within their division, if possible)
*Collaborate with their assigned coachee and the master teachers to develop an instructional development plan
*Provide supportive resources/information to their coachee as necessary
*Conduct a minimum of 4 informal teaching observations throughout the year, utilizing anobservational rubric on which they will be trained
*Facilitate pre and post observation meetings with their coachee
*Participate in a collaborative meeting with their coachee and a master teacher at the beginning and end of the academic year
Please direct inquiries about coaching services to Tina Valtierra and/or Santiago Guerra.
4.Pedagogy Development (1st Tuesdays & 2nd Tuesdays, 3:30-5)
These sessions or workshops are designed to support and enhance your classroom teaching. Do you have an idea for a topic, would you like to facilitate a session or workshop, or would you like to organize a session or workshop with external experts? If yes, please contact Peony Fhagen.
Note: The Liberatory Pedagogy Series and Equity & Power Course Development Series offered last year have been converted to individual sessions for convenience and subsumed under this category of programming. Spring semester sessions will be announced later.
Block 2
Making the “implicit”, “explicit”: Helping students connect competency development with their coursework.
September 27, 3:30-5pm, in McHugh Commons (Above the Preserve in the John Lord Knight Apt Building)
During this interactive workshop, participants will dynamically engage in the identification and integration of competency development in current courses. After a brief overview of competencies and the research in which it is grounded, attendees will participate in idea generation and action planning for their upcoming courses. Additional resources and examples will be provided.
Facilitators: Leslie Templeton, Ph. D., Professor of Psychology & Associate Provost for Faculty Development and Leigh Lassiter-Counts, M.Ed., Director of Career Services. Both are from Hendrix College
(A partnership between The Crown Center and Career Center)
The Intersections of Racism and Ableism on the Block Plan: Rethinking Rigor, “Smartness”, and “Goodness” as Properties of Whiteness in the Colorado College Classroom
October 4, 3:30-5, in Tutt Library 238
The goal of this session is to examine the ways in which “ableism acts as the polite face of racism” (Bornstein, 2022, personal communication). In this session, we will explore how course expectations, assignments, and norms can uphold a “white supremacy culture” (Okun, 2022) or, alternatively, dismantle it. Using a tool developed on the tenets of Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) (Annamma et al., 2013), participants will examine our own syllabi to look for ways in which long-held norms of higher education may act as barriers or supports for students with multiply marginalized identities in our classrooms.
Facilitator: Nickie Comer, PhD., Assistant Professor of Education at Colorado College, Managing Editor of Multiple Voices
Key Readings:
Annamma, S.A., Connor, D., & Ferri, B. (2013). Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability. Race Ethnicity and Education, 16(1), 1-31. doi: 10.1080/13613324.2012.73051
Leonardo, Z. & Broderick, A.A. (2011). Smartness as property: A critical exploration of intersections between whiteness and disability studies. Teachers College Record, 113(10, 2206-2232.
Okun, T. (2022). (divorcing) White supremacy culture: Coming home to who we really are. https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info
Block 3
Creating Safer Classrooms for LGBTQ+ students
October 25, 3:30-5, in Tutt Library 238
This development workshop is an opportunity for educators to learn about LGBTQ+ identities, gender, and sexuality, and examine our prejudice, assumptions, and privilege. There is a pressure to already know how to be LGBTQ+ inclusive, but what that looks like in practice can be hard to know. And while many of us want to be inclusive, we don’t necessarily feel comfortable with the language, with our own level of understanding, and may not know where to go to learn more. This workshop offers a space for educators to learn together how we can best support our LGBTQ+ students.
Facilitators: Cayce Hughes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Christina Leza is an Associate Professor of Anthropology. Both are at Colorado College.
Making the Most of “Third Space”: Rethinking Instructor-Student Power Relationships through Relational Pedagogies
November 1, 3:30-5, in Tutt Library 238
The goal of this session is to examine how to maximize Third Space through making visible classroom culture and the way power operates within and through it. By explicitly examining how students’ and instructors’ cultural and social capital is exchanged in learning spaces, we will discuss how Third Space provides an opportunity to examine the contestation of competing (and sometimes hidden) narratives in classrooms. We will also discuss how to make this theoretical orientation to learning clear for students so that students—across disciplines— can better understand their role in the sociocultural process of learning.
Facilitator: Nickie Comer, PhD., Assistant Professor of Education at Colorado College, Managing Editor of Multiple Voices
Key Readings:
Gutiérrez, K.D. (2008). Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third Space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148-164. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.43.2.3
Noddings, N. (2012). The caring relation in teaching. Oxford Review of Education, 38(6), 771-781.
