This year's conference was at the Omni Interlocken Hotel in Broomfield. It took me well over an hour to get there with traffic, but at least they had a full breakfast for us with coffee. After the introductions and basic business for the day the keynote speaker was Dr. Philip Butler who is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems.
Keynote Speaker Notes:
-He used the donut theory of relationality as the base of his presentation.
-He believes in holding a space for black emotions.
-The empty space of a donut can be a metaphor for chaos.
-Internal Family Systems is an approach to spiritual philosophical systems.
-instead of using "trigger" since it can be triggering, they are using "trailhead warning" as the same thing. This seemed a bit much since people will always be triggered by something. Changing the word use doesn't change the meaning and can be confusing to people. This is so unneeded and messy that it made you start to question what he was saying.
-your body is part of active listening and you need to pay attention to your body.
-when black people are talking about their experiences it is important to remember these experiences are unique to the people who are expressing them, not you. This was him discounting everyone else's lived experiences since he thinks that only some people can have these experiences and not others. Many people can experience similar or the exact same situation and making only specific peoples' experiences matter eliminates everyone else's. This shows how little he understands of the overall human experience.
Overall this was not a good keynote speaker. A lot of what he was talking about is all of the things wrong with DEI because of the presenter's overall lack of understanding how complex the topic is and he is only coming at DEI from a black perspective and not in a holistic way. I was saddened since last year at this same conference we had started to make progress talking about the physiological harm that these toxic views of DEI can have and then we back peddled this year to the toxic approach.
* Women in Higher Education Leadership Presented by Hannah Brown, Kathryn Skulley Ph. D., Ann McCalley Ph.D., and Ashley Maloney
Notes:
-One of the things they talked about is the American Association for Women in Community Colleges. After working in community colleges for over 5 years this was the first time I had heard about this organization. You hear about gate keeping and this is something that leadership in the Colorado Community Colleges System have been keeping from most staff until this announcement instead of sharing and promoting it like they should have been.
-A couple of the presenters had degrees in engineering, but most of their stories were different.
*Practicing Radical Love through Course Design Presented by Mollye Russell
Notes:
-Currently love is a give and take in our capitalist society.
-When it comes to teaching, instructors give all of their knowledge and get nothing back, so it is not a form of love. This needs to change.
-Ingredients of Love: Care, Commitment, Knowledge, Responsibility, Respect, and Trust
-Care: develop a relationship with your students.
-Commitment: Commit to your students' success. Leverage research on student success and be transparent. Smart goals are helpful with this. Transparency in assignments helps students not familiar with the US education system to be successful.
-Knowledge: Consider students as co-creators of their own knowledge. Design assessments that honors students' knowledge and provides choice. Reflective writing, writing in the discipline, and inclusive projects help get rid of success gaps which can be seen in classes that focus on tests.
-Responsibility: Hold your students to a high standard, but be flexible. Have makeup activities for each class period created ahead of time for students who miss class. Allow students to re-do assignments to get a better grade because it allows them to learn from their mistakes.
-Respect: Approach students with a strengths based approach. use TikTok to help engage students since they use it all of the time. Russell has brought in song lyrics from the students' favorite singers to analyze it with the theories used in class.
-Trust: trust students with their own education. When your students disappear you must understand that life happens.
-One of the panel watchers kept talking about being limited by their discipline (the sciences). They didn't seem to be able to see the creative side of teaching or how to use other mediums/disciplines to expand their teaching. I recommended using movies as an example of bad science and she seemed confused. I think I need to write a book on how to engage students with pop culture, because it can be used for any discipline.
*Thieves and Forgers Wanted!: Problem Base Learning for Intellectual Exploration and Profit! Presented by Marty Church
Notes:
This was a horrible experience. So as this panel was starting a co-worker and I was one of many people sitting near the back of the room. The presenter said that if people weren't wanting to come up to the front and engage in his panel that they could leave. Great way to be inclusive (I say with all the sarcasm possible). He didn't take into account that there could be reasons on why people were sitting in the back. Personally I was feeling drained from interacting with people so much. He was very exclusive and I don't think that he should be invited to speak at one of these events again because how he handled this was very rude. Needless to say my co-worker and I both left the panel to find another panel where the panelist wasn't such a jerk. The problem was that all of the other panels during this time slot was already going, so I wound up just working on my emails.
*What is Culturally Responsive Pedagogy? History, Disambiguation, Terminology Presented by Amy Buckingham, Toni Nicholas, and Jenna Alzona
Notes:
-Started in the 1990s by Dr. Ladson-Billings.
-5 Components: Developing a cultural diversity knowledge base, designing culturally relevant....
-Features: Valuing community language, practices, and ways of being. Schools are accountable to the communities.
-Instructor CRP Competencies (8 different ones)
-If you do a midterm survey as a temperature check with your students, share the results with them so that they know they are part of the education process.
-Have students take notes for other students including those from different languages to help students that can't make it for whatever reason.
-A good thing to look into is CRP Reflexive Praxis.
*Promoting Equity in the Classroom Using OER Presented by Rachel Meisner and Megan Rector
Notes:
-Public Domain, Creative Commons License, Reuse/Repurpose/Remix/Publish are all options that can be used.
-OER Repositories: Open Stax, Pressbooks, MERLOT, BCCampus, OER Commons, Skills Commons, CCCS LOR.
-OER and Equity: Affordability, ease of access, adaptable to accessibility needs, ability to include diverse voices.
-Since 2019 ACC has saved students $2.4 million in course materials by using OER materials. Found form a survey that 17% of students have dropped a course due to the cost of course materials.
Overall I felt like I got less out of this conference then I had the previous year when it had been more days and they could target different groups on different days.
Top Picture From: https://cccsevents.cccs.edu/educationexcellenceconference/
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