For many instructors, COVID revealed unintentional barriers to learning in the classroom. Perhaps it was inflexible attendance policies, or grading policies that focused on behavior and concealed true learning, or hidden curriculum that privileged students who were willing to ask for more time / credit / help over students too embarrassed to do so.
The equitable pedagogy learning community will welcome educators looking to dismantle these barriers. By creating learning environments where all students feel supported, all students can succeed. Students enter our classrooms with different backgrounds, perspectives, identities, and experiences, and the intellectual communities we form can be enriched by those differences.
As a community, we will read and discuss topics such as humanizing the classroom, equitable grading practices, Universal Design for learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, pedagogy of kindness, and similar themes. The goal for each member would be to develop and integrate changes to teaching practices to be more inclusive and equitable. As a community, we would like to create resources to share with instructors; this could look like a collection of reflections from the community members and/or easily digestible professional development documents like infographics.
If you are interested in joining this learning community, find us on Microsoft Teams or contact Valerie Hedges (hedgesva@msu.edu) or Casey Henley (mcgove14@msu.edu). The community will meet the third Friday of every month from 10-11:30 both in person (room TBD) and on Zoom. Every other month (October, December, February, April) we will meet at 9:00 in Synder-Phillips for breakfast. For the fall semester, we will read Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto by Kevin Gannon.