Aspirations of Antiracist Pedagogy: Community-Based Learning

We provide service, that’s what we do as teachers…We forget that we’re supposed to actually give…It’s not for the pay, so it’s got to be for this commitment that we’ve made to multiple populations.

Dr. Brandi Summers

Resource Page Summary

On April 10, 2024, the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program held a Spring institute, titled “Aspirations of Antiracist Pedagogy: Community-Based Learning.” This page specifically discusses the lunch portion of the event where guest speaker Dr. Brandi Thompson Summers, from the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley, shared her expertise on community-based learning. Dr. Summers shared valuable insights on the opportunities this style of learning presents and the challenges it poses. She also discussed how to implement antiracist pedagogy in the classroom and beyond, drawing from her experience in leading community projects within her department.

This page features recorded portions of Dr. Summer’s speech for you to revisit her discussion at your convenience. It also includes summarized key takeaways and a list of the resources she mentioned during her speech. These resources can help instructors and graduate students incorporate approaches to community-based learning and community-university partnerships into their teaching and courses.

Dr. Summers has extensive experience in leading community-engaged projects, collaborating with such organizations as Moms 4 Housing, Inc.

Panel:

Neoliberalism within the overall institution destroys collaboration and community. The university doesn’t teach you how to work together, and so you have to build that outside of the institution.

Dr. Brandi Summers

Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP)

The Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) provides an opportunity for UC Berkeley undergraduates to collaborate with faculty members and research staff on cutting-edge research projects.

Students enrolled in URAP will earn academic credit for their participation while receiving hands-on experience in the field of their interest. URAP allows faculty to design semester- and year-long research projects for undergraduate students, presenting them with an opportunity to involve a community partner of their choice. This allows students to apply their academic knowledge to real-world problems, creating a deeper understanding of the subject matter and promoting community engagement.

Public Service Center

The UC Berkeley Public Service Center is a campus hub that offers myriad opportunities for community engagement and leadership development. Every year, it supports nearly 200 student leaders and over 5,000 students who partner with 250 community-based organizations. The Center is dedicated to developing student leadership skills, guiding students in discovering their passion and purpose, and enhancing the capacity of its community partners.

The Center offers many community-engaged scholarship programs that benefit students, faculty, and community members, including the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES), the Public Service Internship Program, and Student Initiated Community Projects, among others.

For instructors and students interested in exploring a wide breadth of established community engagement programs, the Public Service Center can serve as a valuable resource.

Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI)

The Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) is an organized research unit dedicated to fostering innovative, community-engaged research on social justice issues.

ISSI assists faculty in securing funding, and promoting faculty and graduate student research. It also offers training, mentoring, and professional development for graduate student research. Faculty looking to engage with interdisciplinary networks can explore the Institute’s seven interrelated centers, colloquia, conferences, data archives, and training programs.

Navigating the Terms “Antiracism” and “DEI” in Public Projects & Partnerships

Dr. Summers shares her insights on the significance of “antiracism” and “DEI” in public projects and partnerships. She highlights the shortcomings and advantages of using the terms. While “antiracism” can help scholars communicate with external communities, it is important to recognize the term’s limitations. Dr. Summers emphasizes the need to broaden our understanding of racialization as a process implicated in power dynamics.

(Around 04:14) “I've never really used the term or idea ‘antiracism’ in any of my work previously because I think what I'm doing is inherently antiracist….Oftentimes to be legible to communities outside of academia, sometimes it requires us to actually say those words (like antiracism). I can also be more specific and acknowledge or highlight how Blackness operates.
(Around 5:40) “[As opposed to Sociology,] in Geography, I think I have breathing room, when thinking about Black Studies, I have more breathing room and can actually do public work, while being legible for multiple audiences and then also legible in the academy.”
(Around 52:40) “Being a social scientist, and one who was trained in sociology understanding what racism is and how it has to do with power. It has to do with time, location…So if you’re trying to have people contextualize their identities, to understand who they are and how they show up and want to make sure they are cognizant, [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] is not going to do that.”
(Around 54:22) “I need [my students] to understand that racialization is a process, that all these formations are processes.”

Balancing Community Work & Institutional Demands

Dr. Summers emphasizes the importance of developing personal relationships with community partners, transcending the extractive nature of institutional relationships. By sharing her experiences collaborating with Moms 4 Housing, Inc., Dr. Summers provides insights into how she navigated within the university’s framework to assist the organization in achieving their goals.

(Around 11:11) “[With Moms 4 Housing] that experience was illuminating on several levels. One, dealing with the institution…I keep mentioning legibility, but it just has to be legible for the institution. Just like code-switching in terms of having different ways that you speak at home and at work, you also have to code switch on paper.
(Around 13:25) “When I’m doing work with various communities, I don’t bring my academic self…I don’t address the needs from the institution when I’m in conversation with them. It’s just like, what resources can I provide?”
(Around 15:26) “We form full relationships with them that don’t have anything to do with the institution that we get to keep precious because it’s separate and it’s lasting…It’s not extractive…There are a lot of ways this kind of a neoliberal, institutional university wants to individualize us and make us experts to go into these communities, take them, and then present them to the world. But that’s not how I work.”
(Around 17:08) “The university generally wants to show a commodity…But there are parts that are precious that they can’t touch.”
(Around 18:33) “It’s especially women and people of color who receive the burden of the service work…We are parents, therapist, friend, comrade, we’re all those things in one for a lot of students.”

Developing Student Leadership through Community Projects

Dr. Summers speaks passionately about how instructors can help students develop and discover their passions through participating in community-engaged scholarships. She highlights the role that faculty can play in helping students cultivate their collaborative skills and inspiring them to take on various aspects of community work. She gives examples of how she has seen students use their creativity to elevate community projects to new heights.

(Around 21:18) “I’m training people to find out where they want to be in the world, how they want to approach the world, so they can make decisions about how they want to be out there, whether they want to pound pavement, whether they want to be more involved in strategy, whether they want to have knowledge production and development, whether they want to be planners and and do the kinds of work that helps cities thrive like. But I have to give them a foundation so they can at least approach this work, critically and then decide what they want to do."
(Around 28:19) “I don't operate as if time is linear, like a straight line. It’s like these cycles. And so if I teach [my students] how the past informs this present, then they can use those theories and frameworks to be able to analyze what's happening now. Nothing that's happening now is new. So if they understand that and we can mark a time in history where something similar based on the socio-political conditions for like it, then they can use that path to figure out what's going on then they can use that path to figure out what's going on.”
(Around 34:07) “Trust me, I did not start this thinking that there would be a film, one of my students said we should do a film. And I said, I don't know how to do a film, so you need to go figure out how to do a film, and then I will get you. I will introduce you to filmmakers, I will introduce you to funders, I will, but I can't do it…That's learning. Like that's not in the classroom. And so I think that's why I thought this is what grants were supposed to be about, is not just the research but the pedagogy. Like, you have to teach people how to do this. They can't just jump in a lab and know what to do, and they're gonna mess up, too.”

Preparing Faculty for Community Engagement Projects

Dr. Summers highlights troubling trends within the University in which faculty are not fully equipped to meaningfully and ethically engage in community-based partnerships. She poses critical questions on how power and privilege play into interactions with community partners.

(Around 09:15) “I think the model of American Cultures is so good for this where we have to actually do integrated work. There’s not just an add-on. It makes faculty and graduate students have to re-learn how to talk about these things. … We’re all constantly learning how to teach over and over again.”
(Around 32:52) “But with community engagement…ethical engagement, I still think there’s a long way to go, department-wise.”
(Around 33:20) “However, for years…there was this belief that you didn’t need the skill, you just needed the knowledge to go into these communities. And that’s not working anymore.”
(Around 36:21) Scholars need to ask themselves, “...how am I helping [community organizations], and see that this is where power and privilege come into play…You need resources, you need support, you know?”
(Around 47:35) I think what we’ve also lost is our role. We provide service, that’s what we do as teachers…We forget that we’re supposed to actually give…It’s not for the pay, so it’s got to be for this commitment that we’ve made to multiple populations.”

Aspirations of Antiracist Pedagogy: Community-Based Learning

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