This May, the TLC is hosting two panels that offer space to discuss and share techniques for acknowledging present events in the classroom. The first panel focuses on bringing critical moments into the classroom, and the second panel highlights instructors’ experiences teaching with open educational resources over the past two years.

Teaching through Crises  

Monday, May 2, 3:00pm – 4:15pm on Zoom

Register for Teaching Through Crises Here

How do we make our teaching receptive and responsive to disruptive events and systemic injustices? What happens to our teaching when something extraordinary happens in the world? What about critical events that do not assume disruptive forms but instead operate in the everyday?

In the past two years, because of COVID-19 and the accentuation of structural inequalities, we had to find ways to accommodate global and local timely events in our classroom. We reorganized our spaces, our times, our expectations and standards, our syllabi, and our teaching strategies.

But, despite the uniqueness of the pandemic, this was not the only time faculty, teachers and instructors faced challenging contexts. Biodiversity disasters, climate change, political conflicts, and refugee crises are some examples of critical moments that can inflect our teaching.

In this panel, we invite CUNY instructors to reflect on the meanings and practices of crisis-responsive teaching. Working against a pedagogy of indifference, we will survey strategies to design flexible and open syllabi, as well as classroom activities that can incorporate and accommodate the present.

Teaching through crises means both acknowledging losses and traumas, on the one hand, and promoting a sense of belonging and agency, on the other, enabling the classroom community to envision its capacity and condition for exerting social changes.

We hope to expand our pedagogical toolkits and reflect on the meanings of teaching in critical times.

Panelists

Şule Aksoy is a research associate at the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. She completed her Ph.D. in science teaching at Syracuse University. Her teaching experience includes teaching undergraduate physical science courses at Syracuse University and K-16 learners in a botanical garden and private institutions in Istanbul, Turkey. Her research focuses on postsecondary STEM teaching, teacher identity development, science identity, socio-scientific issues-based education, and inclusive teaching practices.

Angela Dunne is a PhD Student and Social Media Fellow in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center, doing research on community college, open enrollment, democratic institutional practices, social identity, and the development of critical consciousness.

Omnia Khalil is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her research entitled “Urban Geographies of Violence in Post-revolutionary Cairo” focuses on urban redevelopment and securitization where thousands of families were dispossessed. She has been teaching at Hunter College, and during this academic year, she is an adjunct lecturer at City College, and John Jay College.

Ana Flavia Badue (moderator) is a fellow at the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, and is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research focuses on the relations between digital technologies, financial investments and industrial agriculture in Brazil. She has began her teaching career in Brazil, where she taught at a community college, and in NYC, she has taught at Baruch College.

Register for the “Teaching Through Crises” panel here: https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwufuyrqTktEt1dH2BJp5BbRLfqaWOCvZw9

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Teaching with “Open” Pedagogies at CUNY

Wednesday, May 4, 2:30 – 4:00pm on Zoom

Register for Teaching with “Open” Pedagogies at CUNY here

More and more, educators are turning to “open educational resources” (OER) or free-of-charge materials in their classroom practices and course planning for a number of reasons: ease of access, student equity, and more. In this panel, four cross-disciplinary teacher-scholar-activists (some of whom are GC students and/or alums) will share back some of their findings from an extensive research project they conducted (along with GC sociology PhD student/adjunct instructor Joanna Dressel) around how and why CUNY adjuncts instructors drew on free-of-charge and/or open access materials in their pandemic teaching praxes during 2020. Among other things, these scholars will shed light on: how instructors used these materials in light of and to teach with the pandemic, the intersection of educational in/equity and the Black Lives Matter movement, the felt effects of campus austerity measures in classroom contexts on both contingent teachers and students, and how open materials/pedagogies might facilitate access in the context of disability justice.

The panel will consist of a structured, facilitated discussion, with a significant portion dedicated to substantial Q & A with attendees who may be working through related issues in their own pedagogical contexts. All instructors (or future instructors) who are interested in teaching with open materials, questions of pedagogical access, and how to contend with present-day material realities in CUNY classrooms are encouraged to attend.

Panelists

Sami Disu (he/him/his) is an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a New York City-based activist.

Jamila Hammami (they/them/theirs) is a racial and immigrants rights community organizer, researcher, artist, and writer from the South, now based in NYC. They are also an adjunct instructor of Community Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Marianne Madoré (she/her/hers) is pursuing a PhD in sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and teaches undergrad courses at Brooklyn College and John Jay College.

Conor Tomás Reed (all/fluid) is a Puerto Rican/Irish multi-gendered street scholar and freedom maker who teaches American Studies at Brooklyn College. Conor’s book New York Liberation School, on the rise of Black, Puerto Rican, and Women’s Studies and movements at the City College of New York and in New York City, is forthcoming September 2022 from Common Notions.

Anna Zeemont (she/her/hers; facilitator) is a GC TLC fellow and English PhD student in Composition-Rhetoric and American Studies, with a particular interest in CUNY pedagogies and activism. She’s taught as a graduate instructor/adjunct at John Jay and Baruch.

Register for Teaching with “Open” Pedagogies at CUNY here: https://gc-cuny.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqcumqpzIrE9KLi5fyMEqOOc0KTm_pZhux