Using NYC Data for Culturally Responsive Teaching

Culturally responsive teaching requires a learning space that is grounded in local, real-world, and collaborative contexts. These pedagogical approaches help our students find connections and relevance between course content and their backgrounds, communities, and identities. In this workshop, we will discuss facilitating student learning through data that is relevant to their lives and to New York City. We will explore teaching materials that 1) integrate student identities, cultures, languages, and histories as resources, 2) promote active engagement in learning, and 3) problematize community-driven issues. Lastly, we will design our own materials using the NYC governmentโ€™s publicly available environmental health datasets to address concerns that are relevant to CUNY students.

This workshop was offered as part of the TLCโ€™s Fall 2023 Programming.

This workshop took place in person on Tuesday, October 24th, from 4-5:30 PM in Room 3317 at the Graduate Center. The workshop and materials were developed by ลžule Aksoy.

Materials

All materials on this page and in the linked Google folder are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This folder contains a workshop agenda, handouts, and a slideshow.

Materials Folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10huvLcIb4wxwbWlSu8RZqrwE2UhmXwei?usp=drive_link

Workshop Agenda

Introduction

  • Name, pronouns, discipline/program, what youโ€™ve taught / what you are teaching.
  • What is your favorite museum in NYC? Why?

Talk briefly about your plan and what motivated you to do this workshop. What preoccupies my mind? Teaching science to undergrads and my research.ย 

 

Eliciting prior understanding – some kind of activity

  • What are three words that describe culturally responsive teaching?
  • Have you used data sources in your teaching in the past? How?
  • What is the value of using NYC data in your course?

Discussion points:

  • Three central ideas: 1) Integrating assets as resources, 2) Developing critical consciousness, and 3) Centering student agency
  • Seeking perspective = positioning students as doers, knowers, and communicators of science
  • Power to share the response-ability so diverse voices can participate in asking questions, defining problems, and participating in decision-making.
  • Positionality + identity: whatโ€™s the relationship between who you are and what you do?
  • CUNYverse and NYC, student demographics, language diversity.
  • Variety of approaches to data in different disciplines. What do we mean by data?
  • Sociotransformative constructivism = critical cross-cultural ed (theory of social justice) + social constructivism (theory of learning).
  • How? – put a hold on this & switch gears to the next part. Also, remind them of the impact of small changes in teaching.

 

Examining a sample lesson plan/module/scenario/microteaching

Provide the following samples and have participants review them. Individually or in groups. Ask them the following questions:

  1. Which principles or teaching practices did you notice?
  2. What questions does this raise for you?
  3. Who is participating? Who is not?
  4. What, exactly, are students learning?
  5. What would be the next steps for improvement?

Examples:

  1. SPA 207: Stories of New Yorkers by Oriana Mejias Martinez
  2. MHC 150: Conducting Community Research by Cristine Khan
  3. ENV 1003/1004: Date-based NYC Climate Change Patterns by Stephen Gosnell
  4. SCI 104: Question of the Day by Sule Aksoy
  5. Connect Disciplinary Questions to Your Life by Rodriguez & Swalwell
  6. Gay (2018). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice.

Practice possibilities page 86-88, 140-141, 196-201, 244-247

Practice #1

  • How do you enact these ideas and principles? What are spaces that show up in your teaching? How does culturally responsive teaching come into your pedagogy?
  • How can you transfer these ideas to your classroom? To CUNY context?

Practice #2

  • Think about an existing class activity/assignment/lesson plan/case study or a new one, and write about how you may modify it considering our discussion on culturally responsive pedagogy.
  • Check the following link to see if there is any relevant NYC dataset you may want to explore with your students.
  • Questions to consider: see the worksheet.
  • Share your work with your neighbor and with the group.
  • Q&A