In our final webinar for the 2021/2022 school year, CRWP’s own Ana Contreras (@AnaContrerasENG), an English faculty member at Harper College near Chicago, helped us evaluate our syllabi to get us to start thinking a bit about our work next year. Ana’s presentation is broken up into chunks of deep thought and discussion followed by examination of our own syllabi and reflective writing. So, grab a syllabus you are interested in looking at and join us!
Ana began her presentation by sharing an equity tool to evaluate syllabi. She told us that this tool would be much more than what she would be able to go over in the hour webinar, but she then touched on some of the main points and encouraged us to use this tool to continue the work later. Before diving in, Ana asked us to reflect on a prompt: “what does equity mean to you?” She also encouraged us to think about how equity is, has been, or has not been present in our classes.
After a brief discussion about the ideas we have related to equity, Ana defined what it is. She also showed some examples of syllabus revisions, from a time before she considered an equity lens in her syllabus design to what she has created more recently.
Then Ana walked us through three big key features that you can start to examine in your syllabus:
- Course transparency
- Welcoming tone
- Diverse representation
After guiding us through questions to consider, Ana shared how she has altered and adjusted her syllabi with these three lenses in mind. She also ended her presentation by asking us to do some reflection and make a list of actionable items to help further this work in our classroom and curriculum planning. At the end of her session, Ana shared Harper College’s tool for Applying Equity Matrix (AEMy) to help us with our work.
Ana’s presentation is one worth checking out anytime before you start your next teaching session, and you can find the recording here!
CRWP is also holding an open summer learning institute to help you restore, reconnect, and rejuvenate as a teacher writer. Come learn with us!
The Chippewa River Writing Project is a site of the National Writing Project at Central Michigan University. Currently, our site is supported only through grants and professional development work. Teacher consultants involved in the webinar series are donating their time, talent, and energy to these events.
If you appreciate the ideas that these teacher consultants are sharing, and are willing to support our work, please visit <giving.cmich.edu> and select “Chippewa River Writing Project.” If you are interested in having us work with your school or district, please contact our Director, Dr. Troy Hicks <troy.hicks@cmich.edu>. Find out more about CRWP at <chippewariverwp.org>.
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