Choose Your (Optional) Texts

There are two optional texts that complement our FLC content well. In each module, we have listed which sections of these texts would be helpful to read along with the rest of that module’s resources. Your FLC may choose to incorporate either text as “Key Content.” We’ve placed this item under “Do These Things” because your FLC participants will want to obtain any chosen text at this point in the group’s progression.

Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, by Zaretta Hammond

Hammond’s groundbreaking text explains the neuroscience behind learning, linking the structural racism of our cultures and institutions in the United States to the disparate outcomes we see in our schools. But Hammond draws on the same research to suggest paradigm-shifting ways that educators can mitigate challenges that our diverse students face in their learning environments, providing specific, evidence-based approaches that offer better learning outcomes for everyone.

Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom, by Kelly A. Hogan and Viji Sathy

Published in 2022, this text weaves lessons learned from pandemic teaching with a Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) approach, using a warm, first-person perspective. The focus is on finding practical ways to reach all students in today’s higher education classes. Hogan and Sathy share not only their own stories, but those of their students, integrating current research around equitable teaching practices into stories of trial and error and (eventual) successes. Many of their topics parallel those we cover in our FLCs: the importance of structure, decentering the instructor, dealing with microaggressions, and more.

Survey

Faculty Learning Communities Pre-Session Survey

As part of our efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of our Faculty Learning Communities and ensure that we listen to faculty as we support your equity work, we ask that you complete our Pre-Session Survey. We will be analyzing your feedback here in comparison to your feedback on the Post-Session survey at the end of our time together.

Discussions

Discussion: How do you like to be greeted?

We introduced ourselves in our kick-off meeting, but we’d like to learn more about who you all are through a question: how do you like to be greeted?

It may be that you love the familiarity of a greeting in a language from your culture. Perhaps you’re a hugger! Or maybe a joke is the best way to put you at ease. When you join a group, what makes you feel at home? Is there anything that you don’t like to experience in a greeting, like common microaggressions you experience or conventions that make you uncomfortable?

Feel free to add a little context, and also to respond to colleagues whose posts resonate with you or bring up questions.

Discussion: Questions about the FLC

You can post here any questions you may have regarding logistics, expectations, timelines, etc. for this Faculty Learning Community. Feel free to respond to your colleagues! The facilitators will also monitor this discussion to ensure your inquiries are addressed.