I’m always looking for chances to talk about teaching and how our students learn. Two BMCC programs - Open Teaching Week and Peer Teaching Consultations - offer opportunities for us to have more of these conversations.
CUNY’s new rule eliminating credit for class attendance turns the focus to participation. But how to credit participation effectively? One approach is to start each class with a written reflection on the readings required for that day.
Open pedagogy asks us to think radically about access to and creation of knowledge in our classrooms and beyond in a wider social justice context. When I use resources centered on student experiences, it also heightens student access to academic concepts, engages students in notions about what constitutes knowledge, and transforms our academic institutions to places for building communities for social justice.
Land acknowledgments are an invitation to engage in the hard, uncomfortable work of decolonization by making the invisible visible. While a land acknowledgment makes visible settler colonialism and indigenous erasure, decolonization will only happen in partnership with indigenous peoples.
Building a safe space for classroom discussion can bring big payoffs. How can we ensure that every student is enfranchised in a learning community based in active engagement, confidence, and an authentic sense of belonging?
I attempted to address the lack of interpersonal connection in my online classes by incorporating Skype meetings with students. As I came to know the students better, I found myself thinking differently about them.
We have been teaching a BLA learning community focused on the embodied nature of learning a new language and public speaking. The BMCC community is invited to join our learning community for a Dance Day event on November 7!
Online learning can be a great, interactive experience if the discussions are interesting! We've identified five categories of discussion prompts that can help faculty create online discussions that students want to participate in.
CETLS recently hosted a session at which faculty shared their experiences with COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning), an opportunity for classes at BMCC to connect with other classes around the world.
For two years before joining the faculty at BMCC, I taught college courses in six medium- and maximum-security prisons through the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (NJ-STEP) consortium of Rutgers University-Newark. I hope that some of the lessons I learned may help those teaching at BMCC.
