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Dear Evergreen Colleagues,
bell hooks passing last month has me reflecting on my own journey as an educator. For me, discovering her writing about teaching was the beginning of an exciting (and frequently challenging) journey interrogating the assumptions I held about teaching and learning. Over the past month, I took some time to revisit three texts that have since that time served as foundational to the way I approach education:
- hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge, 2003.
- Horton, Myles, and Paulo Freire. We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change. Edited by Brenda Bell, John Gaventa, and John Marshall Peters. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
- Palmer, Parker J. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life. 10th anniversary ed. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass, 2007.
These texts led me down a path of reinvention that helped me bring my values in line with my day-to-day teaching practices. Revisiting them reminds me of the critical importance relationship plays in realizing the power of education for social change. I am forever grateful for falling in with a fantastic cohort of engaged and progressive educators early in my teaching career that helped guide me to these writings.
What texts anchor you as an educator?
Share them with us at twitter (@wacenterTESC).
PSA: Advice for in-person instruction for January & Winter 2022
In Community,
The Learning and Teaching Commons newsletter is delivered to your inbox on the first Friday of the month during the quarter. Click here to read past newsletters.
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AnnouncementsLearning and Teaching Commons Faculty Scholar: Application deadline is Jan 17
What would you like to learn this summer? Evergreen's summer institutes are a time to connect, build community, and spend a day (or two) thinking, planning, and dreaming about our collective work. The call for community-initiated summer institutes will hit your inboxes soon! Start thinking now about what you will propose. If there is a topic or skill you'd like to see offered for summer 2022, please contact us.
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|  | The Olympia Evergreen Campus with Snow
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Campus spotlight:
Writing Center updates & a new dean
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The Writing Center continues to devote its energies to supporting your student writers in all their writing endeavors through its 1:1 peer tutoring services. Information on remote tutoring, the Winter Quarter Workshop Series, and helping the Writing Center recruit its next staff can be found in this recent blog post.
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Abir Biswas accepted a four-year appointment as Olympia Undergraduate Curriculum Dean. Abir has been a member of the faculty at Evergreen since 2010, teaching in the undergraduate curriculum in Olympia and serving for this past year as an interim academic dean. Abir has served the College in a variety of governance roles, including as Faculty Chair and Scientific Inquiry Planning Unit Coordinator. He currently serves as chair of the Institutional Assessment and First-Year Experience work groups. Abir earned his A.B. in Geology/Chemistry and Environmental Studies from Bowdoin College, and his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
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Events2021-2022 Commons Seminar Series
Taking inspiration from this year’s common read, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Shaping Worlds by adrienne marie brown, the 2021-2022 Commons Seminar series explores the strategies that faculty are developing and discovering to adapt their teaching practice to emerging contexts. These seminars have been integrated into the New Faculty Academy and support Evergreen’s newest faculty in their first year.
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Emergent Strategies for Mid-Quarter Feedback
Facilitated by Alex Mezei, Julia Metzker, and Wenhong Wang
In this conversational setting together we will explore the purpose and function of midterm evaluations for students. Questions we will consider include:
- What kind of feedback is most useful?
- When is the right time to provide feedback
- What do we do when students don’t or can’t attend feedback conferences
- What strategies can help us deliver timely and actionable feedback to students?
Participants will leave the session with a toolkit they can use to guide future planning to provide effective mid-quarter feedback to students.
Emergent Strategies for Inclusive Seminars
Facilitated by Arita Balaram and Carolyn Prouty
This session will explore strategies to address the challenges and possibilities of conducting seminars related to social justice, including but not limited to racial justice, gender justice, and disability justice. How do we think about how to center those most impacted by structural oppression in these conversations? How do we support students in accessing these conversations from the complex spaces of marginalization and privilege they hold? How can we see education as a “practice of freedom”, as bell hooks calls it, by incorporating social justice principles in our seminars?
For registration details, and upcoming seminar titles and dates, visit the Commons Seminar page on our website.
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Join the Washington Center’s virtual mini-workshop series
The Washington Center Collaborative hosts mini virtual workshops led by the dynamic and talented Washington Center Resource Faculty.
Engaging the campus community: Thinking strategically about communicating your vision
Facilitated by Wendi Dew (Valencia College) and Tate Hurvitz (Grossmont College)
Change is hard, even in the best circumstances. So how can we avoid making important changes even harder - and maybe even help move them forward - by communicating them effectively? Who should do the telling? With whom should we communicate, and when? How do we tell? What do we include (and why)? Come learn some tips and spend some time unpacking the possibilities for communicating a change project at your own institutions
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Faculty ResourcesResources and Reminders from the Deans
Technology Updates
Evergreen is now using Panopto - a video cloud hosting platform. Computer labs are open for drop-in student access, the Visio app is now available through Microsoft 365 to all community members, and information technology (IT) assistance is still available by submitting a support request at help.evergreen.edu. For additional details regarding these technology updates, review this recent communication.
Online Learning Consortium
Don't forget to explore the resources available to you through the Online Learning Consortium! Evergreen holds an institutional membership to the Online Learning Consortium. As a member institution, faculty have access to free webinars, and other online teaching and learning resources. Members also receive special discounts on workshops, teaching certificate programs, conferences, and events.
To access your member benefits, create your free user account here. Be sure to use your Evergreen email to create your account.
Request a Teaching Consultation
Do you have a teaching dilemma, issue or question? Is there an activity you are struggling to translate to remote teaching? Do you need some help designing asynchronous activities?
The Learning and Teaching Commons offers individual and small group remote teaching consultations. Consultations provide an opportunity to get direct feedback on your teaching puzzles. Click here for details.
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Student Resources
These individuals and offices are eager to support students. Keep this list handy when advising students or reach out to schedule a visit to your program or course.
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