January 2024 FOTL Resources
Creating Brave New Worlds: Possibilities and Alternatives for Promoting Justice and Equity
The January 10, 2024 Focus on Teaching and Learning (FOTL) Conference theme was Decolonizing the Future: Creating Brave New Worlds; Possibilities and Alternatives for Promoting Justice and Equity. With the partnership of several faculty and staff from around the University, we compiled nine presentations around the theme of decolonization. Please peruse the below resources and recordings from each session.
Opening Session
Matthew J. Miller (he/him) is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at Loyola University Chicago where he directs the Race, Culture, and Health Equity Lab, and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Counseling Psychology.
This conversation will explore how Matt, a cisgender heterosexual Korean American male who has spent the latter half of his life trying to understand the many ways in which he has participated in and perpetuated White Supremacy, anti-Blackness, racism, and interrelated systems of oppression including sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, and toxic masculinity, has begun the process of unlearning academia and seeking to decolonize his work. Find out more about Dr. Miller's keynote address.
Breakout Sessions
Description: In the papers on this panel we will show ways that we have approached the canon to allow for reimaginings, revisions, "fan fic" approaches, student voices, binary busting. Greek tragedy rewrites Homer, Vergil rewrites Homer, Dante rewrites Vergil, painters revise prior works, and we, too, can engage in rewriting the canon even as we teach canonical texts.
Check out the presentation slides here!
Description: As a college instructor it is critical to be fair and equitable to all of your students, but how do you accomplish this in a course of 1,000 students? In our session, we will discuss how the senior General Biology Lab staff manages the challenge of delivering an equitable experience to freshmen students.
Check out the presentation slides here!
Description: This session explores how educators can use digital tools and comparative analysis to challenge canonical narratives in humanities curriculums and classrooms. In this session, we’ll examine theoretical approaches that not only strengthens students’ civic literacy but empowers them to take ownership of their learning by ‘doing’ history rather than being ‘told’ about it. In our session, we will also investigate how Persuall can be utilized to humanize the past by putting students in conversation with it.
Check out the presentation slides here!
Description: In this session, you will learn about a few arts-based techniques to engage your community in conversation around the values of individuals you work alongside and how to apply them to your community’s setting. The activities shared can be used in professional or academic settings with faculty, staff, and students. Check out the presentation slides here.
Description: This workshop is intended to engage educators in what it means to cultivate their pedagogical spaces as spaces of “care” and dialogue. The workshop also provides educators with actionable tools around fostering and facilitating such environments, with a practical eye toward the Ignatian values of reflection and discernment.
Check out the presentation slides here.
Description: This workshop aims to enhance culturally responsive pedagogical practices to promote equity, inclusion and empathy in the classroom. The session incorporates social and emotional learning activities to cultivate critical reflexivity and self-awareness, with the goal to further positive student growth and development.
Check out the session resources here.
