By Jenn Polish For the final installment of this series on mental health in college classrooms, I’d like to shift the focus to ourselves as instructors, and consider how those of us with dis/abilities navigate both the classroom and the professional spaces surrounding it. I want to examine the overarching context in which we teach, […]
By Jenn Polish This post will focus on developing anti-racist and anti-ableist modes of assessment, and how things like contract grading can be a way for students to create their own forms of success in classrooms (instead of being held unfailingly to one standard model of “success” that doesn’t fit most students). This Spring, my […]
By Jenn Polish Throughout this series, I’ve argued that anti-ableist practices in our classrooms should begin before the first day of term: before we’ve met our students, before students are forced to either “out” themselves as having dis/abilities, so that we can minimally “accommodate” them, or remain silent and locked out of learning. My last […]
By Inés Vañó García and Naomi Lewandowski Being part of The Open Teaching Initiative’s Class Visit Exchange Program has been an opportunity to reflect on teaching and learning strategies from a brand new point of view. Although as Ph.D. students and adjuncts we deal with Faculty Observations each semester, this time was an entirely different […]
By Jonathan Kwan and Iris Strangmann Though every class is different, each generally entails a spectrum of student participators, from the very talkative to the somewhat talkative, to the completely silent. Building on our conversations and experiences as a part of the TLC’s Open Teaching Initiative, we ask in this post whether teachers should require […]
By Kristen Hackett and Ryan Donovan This conversation is based on our visits to each other’s classrooms during Open Classroom Week, part of the TLC’s Open Teaching Initiative. Breaking Down the Binaries Kristen: At the core of my teaching philosophy is a critical pedagogical approach that understands the classroom as a space in which to […]
By Elizabeth Alsop Last Fall, I attended a talk by Kingsborough Community College professor Lourdes Follins, who presented her research on the experience of historically underrepresented faculty at CUNY’s community colleges. Her findings were illuminating, and often alarming. But one of the most memorable takeaways emerged from the Q&A, when an audience member asked Dr. […]
