Course Development

Difficult Knowledge, Trauma Informed Pedagogy and Safe-ish Spaces

Event Description

Violence and trauma are all around us—fatal shootings by police, sexual violence, family separations, addiction, abuse, displacement of refugees. Often, these situations give rise to individual healing journeys and collective efforts to create change. But the pain and loss embedded in them also have a damaging effect long after the events have passed.

We invite many difficult experiences into our classrooms, historically intimate and distant, often through written and visual text depicting traumatic events and experiences. At the same time, we have many students...

Antiracism Pedagogy & Equity-Based Learning Winter Institute

Event Description

Since 2018, the CDF program has supported instructors in developing creative design assignments, assignments that are intentionally built to support faculty and students in ways that are adaptive, equity-oriented, and foster antiracism. In the CDF Winter Institute participants developed actionable strategies that build antiracist and equity-based education.

In conversation with CDF faculty, staff, and students, the Winter Institute discussed how within the current condition of remote instruction and the devastating effects of the...

The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading

Event Description

Building on the groundwork of the Antiracism Winter Institute, the CDF Program co-sponsored and co-facilitated a follow-up seminar in late April centered on contract grading. The two-day workshop, The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading, invited participants to explore two models of contract grading, Specifications Grading and Labor-based Contract Grading. On the first day, participants engaged in current research that explores how traditional grading methods structure...

Inviting Students to Bring Themselves to Class: Connecting Learning and Lived Experiences

Event Description

In higher education, we want learning to be relevant to students’ lives, but how often do we explicitly incorporate students’ lives--who they are, what they know, where they come from--into our teaching and research? How do we take an asset-based approach, drawing upon the diversity of Berkeley's student population as well as our own subject matter expertise, to create a richer learning experience for everyone? What does this look like across different disciplines and what's at stake?

Panelists:...

How to Have Political Conversations in the Classroom?

Event Description:

Tuesday, September 25th, 2018 marked the largest National Voter Registration Day on record. Over 800,000 people updated their registration or registered to vote for the first time. At the same time that so many Americans are involved in ballot box politics, the country is polarized, partisan and politicized. With sharp political differences seemingly not going away any time soon, how do we support robust discussions in our classrooms? How do we support our students to consider issues from immigration to gun control through deliberation and not shouting...

Teaching in Troubled Times

Creative Project Support

The Creative Discovery Design Team is excited to start consultations again this semester! Sign up to meet with one of our peer consultants who can help you with your creative projects. You do not have to be in one of the supporting classes to sign up – we are open to all students.

Our consultants can help with design principles, Adobe application questions, thinking through your projects with a social justice-centered lens, and more!

One-on-one appointments

If you need...

ACES

ACES Courses

About

ACES courses represent corners of campus that highlights the intent of the AC requirement, while also deepening the meaning of that intent through a combination of multi-disciplinary research and praxis, the development of students and community partners as co-educators, mentoring opportunities, and increased and sustained accessibility of information.

To learn about projects developed with ACES community partners, please visit the...

Collectivity, Community, Mutual Aid

Event Description

On March 22nd, 2023 the American Cultures Center and the Multicultural Community Center at UC Berkeley hosted "Collectivity, Community, and Mutual Aid", an event in the Staff as Students of Social Justice (SSSJ) public discussion series, “Aspirations of Material Anti-Racism: What’s Next?”