Every year, the American Cultures coordinates a 'Teaching in Summer' workshop for all Summer Sessions instructors. Our Center partners with key campus partners to equip instructors with knowledge of the unique challenges and opportunities of summer teaching, important policy updates, and effective summer course planning strategies. This year, in collaboration with Berkeley Summer Sessions, and the Center for Teaching and Learning, the workshop also offered...
Every year we host workshops that focus on some of the best approaches to teaching an intensive six- or ten-week summer course at UC Berkeley. Among the topics discussed include strategies for managing extended summer class time, what to expect from summer student enrollment, the specifics of the American Cultures curriculum requirement, and teaching to issues of racial and economic justice in diverse classrooms.
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...
On May 19th, The American Cultures Center and Summer Sessions facilitated a 'Teaching in Summer' workshop for all summer sessions instructors. This session focused on effective summer course planning strategies, understanding unique summer session challenges and opportunities, policy updates, and insights on teaching racial and economic justice in diverse classrooms. This year’s presenters welcome you to contact them for additional discussion or queries about the workshop topics:
Commitments to the work that connects diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging/justice, anti-racism, anti-Blackness, anti-white supremacy and abolition work, are deep and rich. Each of these terms also have motivations and genealogies. During this event there was a discussion focused on unpacking the relationships between these frameworks and how they help us better understand and situate the work and the questions that they generate. When we think about the relationships that we hope to foster with and between students, how do we use these frameworks to inform our practice?...
According to a July 2017 nation-wide report, 60 percent or more of the total cost of attending a college or university comes from expenses other than tuition, and the cost of living for college students has increased by more than 80 percent over the past 40 years. In a high-cost area such as Berkeley, affordability is especially acute and impacts many aspects of students' lives beyond the financial: housing and food insecurity, commute time, mental and emotional health, the ability to pay for course materials, working for money vs. doing research or taking...
Ideas and Resources to Support Each Other and Give Our Students the Best Possible Learning Experience
As a faculty body, you are in a unique position - teaching students from across campus disciplines, often freshmen-seniors in one class focused within a social justice curriculum in the time of a pandemic, lockdown, and international re-engagement with systemic racism. Your advice on how to engage students, especially at this time, is invaluable. Below, we have compiled advice from all instructors to help you best meet your learning objectives. If you would like to contribute...
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...